Free Sing Like You Know the Words by martin sowery Page A

and opened more stores,
investing profits for the future.
    But resentment continued to
grow; in fact it worsened. The new people in charge didn’t know how
to run a country. They’d never had the chance to learn, since the
British had never really prepared to leave. Conditions became worse
for the ordinary people, but every day men like Abbas’ father
seemed to grow richer. Even a happy little boy, playing in his
father’s store while his aunt served the customers, noticed
mysterious scowls and heard ferocious voices complaining about
prices: raised voices that suddenly sounded very different to the
happy raucous cacophony of the street, or home.
    And that was before the maniac,
Amin.
    In any case they had left it
behind and things turned out not so badly. His father was
resourceful, knew how to grow a business, but these days he walked
around like a beaten man. He did not say much, but Ali Abbas
thought he understood. It was the prejudice. His father was an
understanding, tolerant man. He’d been able to see why the black
Africans resented them and how the hatred was being stirred up by
bad leaders. It was a bad situation, sometimes terrifying, but the
reasons were clear.
    In Britain it was different.
Being British had always been a source of family pride, and his
father had been pleased to come here, in spite of the weather. He’d
been eager to contribute to the common good and become a respected
person in his neighbourhood. Instead, all the time he was talked to
as if he was both very stupid and incapable of understanding
anything and on the other hand very crafty for having sneaked
himself and his family into the country.
    It was assumed that they had
arrived from Pakistan, a country they only knew about as a name on
a map, and that the family was in receipt of large, unspecified
handouts from the state. Abbas’ father and people like him were
regarded as a problem at best. At worst he met with open hostility,
not so different to what he had left behind in Africa.
    Not long after they arrived,
father had read something aloud to them from the English newspaper.
It was an article reporting that one of the big English cities had
paid for advertisements in the newspapers to advise Ugandan Asians
that they would not be welcome to settle there. Father had chuckled
and told them that it showed that there were a few very silly
people in every part of the world.
    -You might come across something
like this at school in the first few weeks, he had warned them.
Just take no notice and it will all be forgotten before you
know.
    For some reason his father had
taken up a pair of scissors and cut out the article. He’d folded it
away carefully: maybe he had it still, but if so, Abbas did not
believe that reading it again would still make him smile.
    In his turn, Ali Abbas had
started to regard certain doors as closed to him. The old idea that
he would discover the meaning of the powerful forces that shaped
destinies and maybe one day be in a position to influence them in
some small way now seemed very fanciful. And the more he understood
these forces and how they became manifest in the real world, the
more distaste he felt for the structures of power. It was as if
power arose only from the worst impulses of humanity. Ali Abbas was
not quick to pass judgement on anyone, but when he found himself in
the presence of people behaving badly, his first instinct was
always to leave the room.
    Lately he’d started to think
that maybe his life should take a more practical direction. For
example, he knew there were still family members and contacts
spread across Africa. He had a vague notion that there must be some
way to use that network. He could become a merchant, like his
father (though it would break his mother’s heart). Lots of people
seemed to make their living by travelling; perhaps he could do the
same. He couldn’t be like everyone else. He didn’t want to be like
everyone else. And if he could not feel at home here or