The Black Album

(Sept. 2009)

The Black Album, which is based on a 1995 novel of the same name. The play is currently at the National Theatre, home earlier this year to the admirable England People Very Nice. Was it as good, or at least better than last month’s play, the cowardly and in every sense limp Pornography?

 

The first generation of Muslim immigrants from Pakistan had, if not a strong work ethic, a strong motivation to work hard. Benefits were not generous then, genuine race discrimination went unpunished, and they had to fend for themselves. Born into poverty, they were grateful for the chances that Britain gave them and for the most part strove to blend in. However, second and third generation Muslims have no such gratitude and no such urge. Born into relative wealth, they have no need to struggle as their parents did. Add to this the fact that Islam, about which they know more than their parents, inculcates a sense of entitlement that is diametrically opposed to the work ethic, and you may have an explanation for the refusal to toe the line. But there is another one. The Islam of first generation immigrants was softened, blunted and humanised by the cultural accretions of the homeland – the colourful Shalwar Kamiz, for instance, rather than the black niqab. Adrift in liberal, secular Britain, cut loose from the gentle Islam-lite of their parents, young Muslims rediscover desert Islam, the harsh, barren, implacable Islam of Mohammed.

Tim, who have dropped their English names for the sake of Allah. Then there is hapless Hat, the most stupid of the group: when a copy of The Satanic Verses takes too long to burn, he complains in frustration that “the guy wrote too much. It’s too thick.”. Hat is the kindest of the group, the least committed – and therefore the most dispensable, for he is chosen, in the end, for martyrdom. Riaz, the ringleader, is all bluff amiability when wooing Shahid. Wooing is the word, for he guiltily caresses the sleeping Shahid’s buttocks, while later proclaiming: “We’re not blasted Christians, we don’t turn the other buttock.” Yet the same Riaz, we are told, “reprimanded [his father] for praying in his armchair and not on his knees. He told his friends that if one’s parents did wrong they should be thrown into the raging fire of hell.” jihadists. Fortunately he doesn’t commit to them, as he is pulled – literally – another way. Deedee, his red-headed, free-spirited tutor, seduces him with sex and structuralism. As hedonistic as Riaz and his “brothers” are austere, Deedee is not just a sexy cipher. Unhappily married to an ageing Marxist, who developed a stutter as soon as his beloved Communism collapsed, she is convincing, both to the audience and, in her defence of free speech, to Shahid. Shahid cannot switch off his brain for the sake of Allah. He realises that Western freedom, so alien to Islam, makes it possible for him to criticise the West – or simply to tell stories. The Pornography playwright, and other “transgressive” writers, should take note.

The Muslim students become more and more destructive. A ritual burning of The Satanic Verses compels Shahid to take sides: when Deedee calls the police, the jihadists turn up at her home, bent on revenge. In a farcical scene, Shahid and his brother fight them off, and Shahid and a grateful Deedee begin to fall in love. So love conquers all? Not quite. The jihadists, perhaps there and then, perhaps many years later, encircle the lovers before hapless Hat, the chosen one, detonates a rucksack bomb. The bang stuns the audience into silence, followed by rapturous applause.

apologised “unreservedly” for any offence caused to Muslims by his assertion, as clear as it is truthful, that the Koran has “no ethical dimension”. As a vehicle for ideas, The Black Album works very well. But – a major drawback for a play – it doesn’t work so well as drama. Unusually, I find myself agreeing with the New Statesman:

 

There is humour in the script, but on stage it falls flat. “We will fight for our people who are being tortured anywhere – in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, East End!” is a line with comic bathos, but the delivery is earnest and clunky.

Telegraph critic Dominic Cavendish. Worse, at times it sounds like a university debating society, with characters mere passive vectors of arguments rather than flesh and blood. Riaz lectures Shahid rather tediously on the separateness of women in Islam. How much more telling is the refusal by the niqabbed “sista” of England People Very Nice to shake the hand of the Hampstead liberal, whose face, straining for polite tolerance, speaks louder than any lecture.

I have not read the novel on which the play is based; I understand that it is well thought of, and I have a high opinion of My Son the Fanatic. But a play is not a novel.  I half suspect the script was rushed out in order to be topical, and, to misquote Monty Python, adapted for stage by putting it onto a piece of wood and hammering a few nails through it.

Pornography: 3
The Black Album: 6
England People Very Nice: 8

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