“Call it quits, yeah?”
“Whatever. Next time, bring a better knife.”
I went home and told Mum some cock and bull story about cutting myself on the fence. I ended up having to get stitches.
I decided there and then I wouldn’t be play fighting again – it was annoying and inconvenient. We had only been mucking about, but if that had been a serious situation I’d have been in trouble.
But I was grateful to Jerome for teaching an important lesson. Next time, I learned, I’d better bring a bigger knife.
Islam and I didn’t get on. We were very young when Mum converted. By the time I got to primary school, Mum was no longer Eleanor Raynor. She was now Ruqqayah Anwar, Muslim convert. My brother Jermaine became Yusuf. My name became Salwa. Try saying that in a south London accent. That’s how Sour was born.
It was annoying at the time, but I hadn’t quite clocked, aged five, how useful two names can be when you get arrested. Later days, I’d thank my mum for it. Probably most useful thing she ever did. Get arrested, use one name; get arrested again, use the other. Keep getting arrested, just make ’em up. Boydem work it out eventually, but it buys you time.
Mum had been in one of her rare calm moods when she met the man on the bench.
She said she liked his aura. “Di man looked pious.”
He was slim and well-kempt. He said he’d show her a different way of life. So she thought she would give him a try.
Do you know how easy it is to convert to Islam? All you need is a front room, two witnesses, an imam and a few sentences and that’s it, you’re a Muslim. Eleanor Raynor was no more.
Now she was Ruqquyah, the pious. She hadn’t been the best Christian, granted. But God’s loss, Allah’s gain.
My brother and I watched from the hallway. He was giggling. I’d soon find out he had plenty to laugh about as a boy. I would be the one who suddenly had all the restrictions. No, as I say, me and Islam were not going to be friends.
Mum didn’t like covering her hair at first either. A wash before prayer, the rules about meat, all those things threw her off at first but she got used to it. She still allowed us to be kids and watch TV and listen to music.
I liked her in her white jilbab though. Better than some of the other outfits she used to wear. I thought she looked beautiful.
I didn’t even mind the mosque, at first. We went to Brixton Mosque. It was one of the oldest in South London. Got a bit of attention later days, when it was reported that that beardy lunatic, Richard Reid – remember him? The Shoe-Bomber? – had attended, but I liked it.
It had a quiet, happy vibe. It was somewhere to breathe beyond Roupell Park. Instead of being indoors, sitting all alone, Mum met all these new Muslim characters. They looked peaceful.
They would cook a lot together. I must say Mum looked at her happiest in the early days of Islam.
When they came round to the house, it had to be segregated. Men downstairs, women upstairs, no cross mixing. Even dinner would be brought separately.
That was the bit I hated the most. I didn’t like being apart from Yusuf. It wasn’t as much fun.
Thankfully, the Saturday madrasa was still communal.
We had to learn the Qur’an. It was lots of recitation, mainly. It sounded like a song. And so much memorising! We’d memorise whole chunks, reciting them over and over again without understanding what we were saying.
We learned the Arabic alphabet. We chanted the days of the week. Once you’ve got the alphabet, you see, what changes the sounds and meaning are the apostrophe and symbols.
I learned Arabic words for things like table, chair, but did I understand the meaty bits? No way.
Still, I picked it up quicker than Yusuf.
“We speak English, innit? What we having to learn this for?”
“C’mon, we’ve got to do what Mum said. It ain’t that bad.”
“But it’s just squiggles and dots.”
“What you complaining for? You don’t have to dress like some ninja. I’m the one who’s got to wear this.”
He looked at the headscarf framing my miserable face.
“You look bare nice,” he said, and burst out laughing.
Whatever Mum put on my bloody head for the mosque, it was horrible. I felt like a misfit on the bus. I wanted the ground to swallow me up. My friends used to tease me.
“What you got tucked under there, Sour? Is you a Rasta without the locks?”
Once I got to secondary school, Mum and I did a deal.
“Listen and listen to me good,” I said. “I ain’t wearing this headscarf shit no more.”
She started to protest.
“I ain’t playing, Mum.”
If she shouted, I shouted louder.
Eventually, she agreed on a compromise.
She bought a hat. It was like something the fucking queen mum would wear. It was brown and rectangular – with a brooch. I looked like a bat-shit crazy old Jamaican lady! Those early bus journeys did little for my brand-name, tell you that much. I was so upset.
Still, somehow I felt less guilty taking off the hat and leaving in the locker, than I did with the headscarf.
But there was no escaping the rest of my new “Islam-friendly” school uniform: MC Hammer trousers, brown sandals and an atrocious top. Lord have mercy, these clothes were taking the piss.
Although I was glad to see my mum happy, something didn’t sit well with me and her new obsession. There were other Jamaican families going to the mosque too. A surprising amount. But it felt oppressive. I was being forced to conform to a society that I didn’t understand, being forced to memorise words whose meaning I didn’t know. I hated the way Islam treated girls. I hated Mum for making me go, and eventually, for all its peaceful atmosphere, I began to hate that mosque. I knew as soon as I was old and strong enough, I would be outta there before you could say Insh’allah.
With Islam came stepdads. Yasim looked like frigging Moses, man. He walked with a big, old stick and smelled like a prophet. He was strong, strict and – like most people in our household – didn’t last long.
He had a strong emaan and he was strong in his faith. He was a nice guy deep down. Had a bit of a lisp. He was ginger and freckled, but of Caribbean descent. He remains the only man I’ve ever known to wear leather socks.
He didn’t work. Nowadays, you’d probably call him “a house husband”. Or maybe just “chronically unemployed”. But it was a home life, of sorts. It used to upset him that because of Mum’s unstable behaviour she couldn’t hold down a job. Never understood what his excuse was.
He tried to get me to go to school wearing a scarf again, but he realised pretty quick it was going to be a struggle making a family like ours stick to any rules, let alone his strict Islamic ones.
It wasn’t that we set out, deliberately, to get rid of him … Not exactly.
He wound Mum up too. When they got in an argument, she would pick up a baseball bat or go rifling through the knife drawer, just like she did when she was in one of her manic states and she caught wind of the fact they were coming to take her away again.
During one of her psychotic episodes, that kitchen drawer was always the first thing she went for.
Oh yeah, Muslim or not, my mum was a violent cookie.