Another depiction of the metaphor of teeth in White Teeth is clearly portrayed in the chapter entitled “Molars,” which turns out to be one of the most amusing, and yet, exotic chapters. This chapter is included in the second section of the novel entitled
“Samad 1984, 1857,” a section which starts with a quote from Norman Tebbit: “The cricket test – which side do they cheer for? . . . Are you still looking back to where you came from or where you are?” (123) The epigraph of Tebbit’s infamous speech is an essential element of the section on “Samad 1984, 1857,” and particularly of the chapter
“Molars,” which will be discussed later.
According to Norman Tebbit, too many Asian British fail an essentially fundamental test of loyalty – by cheering for India during the cricket game between India and Britain. His “cricket test,” in other words, is used to measure whether migrants have been assimilated to Britain.13 Clearly, Zadie Smith takes on Norman Tebbit’s infamous speech as the epitaph of the section narrating “Samad 1984, 1857,”
13 Brah refers to the “cricket test,” noting that: “when a British politician, such as Norman Tebbit, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, argues that young British Asians cannot feel allegiance to Britain if they support a visiting cricket team from India or Pakistan, his ‘cricket test’ is more a reflection of the politics of ‘race’ in Britain than an indicator of British Asian’s subjective sense of their own Britishness”
(94).
with the aim of depicting whether Samad, the first-generation migrant to Britain, will be able to pass “the cricket test,” a test which will ultimately measure his loyalty to either Britain or Pakistan. This quote unequivocally indicates the first-generation migrant’s diasporic position and dilemma.
In light of Avtar Brah’s observation on the relationship of first generation migrants to their place of migration, Samad has been troubled by “memories of what was recently left behind” and by “the experiences of disruption and displacement” as he tries to “form new social networks” (Brah 194). Samad Iqbal, a Bangladeshi Muslim, migrates to England in 1973, as a newlywed, accompanied by his wife Alsana.
He identifies himself as an Englishman based upon his experience of fighting for the British in the Second World War, yet he knows quite well that his racial identity will
not lead to him being accepted by the English:
Blackness. I’m a cripple, Jones. And my faith is crippled, do you understand?
I’m fit for nothing now, not even Allah, who is all powerful in his mercy. What am I going to do, after this war is over, this war that is already over – what am I going to do? Go to Bengal? Or to Delhi? Who would have such an Englishman there? To England? Who would have such an Indian? (Smith 112)
Samad Iqbal’s dilemma is similar to that of the Caribbean soldiers who were recruited to fight for Britain in the Second World War. They considered themselves changed because of their patriarchal duty fighting for their “motherland.” Although Samad feels himself more superior with a university degree from Delhi and with his
experience of fighting for the British in the Second World War, he cannot find a proper job for himself, save for accepting the offer of working in his cousin’s Indian restaurant. “He did leave the restaurant, Samad remembered vaguely, for a short time in 1979 to start up a security firm, but ‘nobody wanted to hire Paki bouncers’ and he had come back, a little less aggressive, a little more despairing, like a broken horse”
(142).
Samad has long been troubled by the questions “where is my place?” and “where do I belong?” as he continues with his struggle to find some sense of direction and to determine his position within British society. Samad’s anguish of “unbelonging”
eventually leads to him devoting himself to the “imagined homeland” which he has left behind. Relating back to Salman Rushdie’s conception of “imaginary homeland,” we see Samad Iqbal, as a migrant, similarly suffering from his “physical alienation from India,” so his images of India are invariably “invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind” (Imaginary 10).
In his attempts to provide an in-depth explanation of Rushdie’s idea of
“imaginary homeland,” John McLeod notes that under this sort of formation, home becomes “primarily a mental construct built from the incomplete odds and ends of memory that survive from the past” (Beginning 211). Thus, homeland for diasporic immigrants is seen as an idea of mentally-constructed home. As Brah observes, home
is “a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination” (192). In the case of Samad Iqbal, his image of Bangladesh, his “home,” is constructed as a place where his Allah dwells, a place to which his spirit goes.
Both Allah and Bangladesh represent Samad’s imaginary homeland, with the idea of such imaginary homeland, or vision of Bangladesh, being crucial to the examination of Samad Iqbal’s “schizophrenic existence”in British society in the narrative focus of the section on “Samad 1984, 1857.” Samad is like the first-generation diasporic immigrants in Britain, like Anwar and Haroon in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, who ultimately choose Britain over India, but who continue to think of India
or Bangladesh as their imaginary homeland. Yet, Samad is different. His relationship with Bangladesh is depicted by Smith as more of a purely spiritual one in which Bangladesh as his homeland is constructed solely as a source of religion and culture.
According to Amitava Kumar, for Samad, Bangladesh is an imaginary homeland “that is everything the inhospitable West is not,” and it therefore remains “the space of wholesome purity” (A. Kumar 215).
People are inevitably prone to different temptations and are invariably beset by their own sins and feelings of guilt; and indeed, Samad Iqbal is no exception. The relationship between Samad and his homeland is not premised on his return to the homeland; nor does he maintain Muslim religious practices in his adopted country. The
complexity of Samad Iqbal’s ambiguous identity becomes even more convoluted when he plans for the future of his twin sons. Samad’s problem lies in his contradictory conflict, which, on the one hand has him fearing that the British culture and education will poison the minds of his sons and lead them astray, whilst on the other hand, sees him vulnerable to the temptations of alcohol and his twin sons’ music teacher, Poppy Burt-Jones, a red-haired young English woman.
Thus, the chapter in White Teeth entitled “The Temptation of Samad Iqbal”
provides the narrative on Samad’s conflicting desires. Upon hearing that his son Magid wishes to participate in the Harvest Festival – a festival which the headmistress in Magid’s school asserts celebrates “religious diversity,” but which is denied by Samad at a school governor’s meeting – Samad becomes furious and chides Magid’s wish to
identify with western culture and tradition:
Samad blew his top. “Whose tradition?” he bellowed, as a tearful Magid began to scribble frantically once more. “Dammit, you are a Muslim, not a wood sprite! I told you the condition under which you would be allowed.
You come with me on hajj. If I am to touch that black stone before I die I will do it with my eldest son by my side.” (Smith 152)
Samad’s greatest fear is clearly that his sons will lose their religious identity as Muslims, and accordingly, suffer moral corruption; however, such fear that either Magid or Millat might be contaminated by English culture is not without good reason.
At the age of nine, Magid already senses that he is different from the rest of society.
Like Irie, he wishes to be the same as his white English classmates, and to merge with them. Thus, in a futile attempt to assimilate himself into English culture, he engages in such pretence by calling himself Mark Smith in front of his white peers. Magid’s rejection of both his ethnic identity and his parents’ culture bring much grief to his parents; yet young Millat is no better than Magid. To Samad’s dismay, Millat naïvely tells his schoolteacher and his parents that he continues to learn western culture from listening to the songs of Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson (Smith 156).
Nevertheless, Samad himself is soon to break his vow with Allah, forgetting all of the deals that he has made with the prophet, when his gaze begins to settle upon the red-haired Poppy Burt-Jones. As Claire Squires observes, Samad “swings between the poles of faith and secularization, between absolutism and compromise, between rejecting and falling prey to temptation” (30). Thus, the metaphor of “teeth” appears once again in the scene in which Samad is caught between his desire for Poppy Burt-Jones and his fear for his twin sons, who, he considers, may be corrupted by their English education.
It is in the chapter entitled “Molars” that Zadie Smith once again uses teeth to narrate the migrants problem of “identity.” At the very point where Samad cannot control his desire for Burt-Jones, at their date in Roundwood Park, where he makes his first attempt to kiss her, he suddenly finds his sons waving and smiling to him, with
“their white teeth biting into two waxy apples” (182). With this blatant allusion to the fairy tale, Snow White, Zadie Smith seems to symbolically cast Burt-Jones in the role of the calculating evil stepmother, whilst depicting Samad’s twin sons biting into two waxy and poisonous apples, obviously containing something of which Samad has a real dread.
For Samad, the poison contained within the apples is “Englishness,” a poison which will ultimately lead to his twin sons losing all memories of their own culture.
Thus, Samad begins to think of the English culture as a deadly poisoning influence on his children, and so, before Magid and Millat become inextricably drawn to it, Samad decides that he must send one of his two sons back to Bangladesh, his homeland, which, in his view, can offer this son a proper education.
Samad’s painful decision is indicative of the crucial message which Zadie Smith attempts to convey to readers in the chapter “Molars.” It is in this chapter that the old white veteran, whom Irie, Magid and Millat go to visit, informs them of the
importance of the third molars.
[W]hile you’re still young, the important matter is the third molars. They are more commonly referred to as the wisdom teeth, I believe. You simply must deal with the third molars before anything else. That was my downfall. You won’t have them yet, but my great-grandchildren are just feeling them now.
The problem with third molars is one is never sure whether one’s mouth will be quite large enough to accommodate them. They are the only part of the body that a man must grow into. He must be a big enough man for these teeth, do you see? Because if not – oh dear me, they grow crooked or any
which way, or refuse to grow at all. They stay locked up there with the bone – an impaction, I believe, is the term – and terrible, terrible infection ensues. (Smith 173)
As a result of the old veteran’s advice, the reader is unlikely to forget that the molar is used to grind food, and that the third molar is easily infected. In a sense, therefore, it seems that Smith’s intention here is to use the analogy of the crucial importance of the third molar to relate the story of Samad’s urgent wish to send his son back to Bangladesh. In other words, Samad has to send Magid back before he has his third molar and is thus old enough to grind the food, or, as it were, digest the knowledge. Samad’s concerns and fear on the issue of their children’s education comes
to the fore as he argues with Archie:
Well, take Alsana’s sisters – all their children are nothing but trouble. They won’t go to mosque, they don’t pray, they speak strangely, they dress strangely, they eat all kinds of rubbish, they have intercourse with God knows who. No respect for tradition. People call it assimilation when it is nothing but corruption. Corruption! (190)
Corruption turns out to be “Samad’s word for cultural diversification” (Childs, Contemporary 209), but in order to resist the temptations leading to such corruption,
Samad has to take action. Smith borrows here from the mythical allusion of “Odysseus and the Sirens” to describe Samad’s conflicting encounter with temptation. Samad is portrayed as the mythic figure, Odysseus, who is so brave as to listen to the songs of the Sirens, luring all who hear them to temptation, whilst he does his utmost to lead his sons
away from the Sirens, in the same way that Odysseus waxes his crews’ ears:
Roots were what saved, the ropes one throws out to rescue drowning men, to Save Their Souls. And the further Samad himself floated out to the sea, pulled down to the depths by a siren named Poppy Burt-Jones, the more determined he became to create for his sons roots on shore, deep roots that no storm or gale could displace. (Smith 193)
Samad’s conflict is fully revealed when we find his own conduct contradicting that which he demands of his twin sons. Whilst constantly fearing and resisting the corruption of his children at the hands of Western culture, he helplessly surrenders himself to the temptations of the West. Thus, the juxtaposition of his own conduct and his insistence on the “appropriate” education of his twin sons renders him “schizophrenic.”
The comedy and irony which Smith expertly interweaves into this character transformation operate vividly through the mockery of Samad’s careful scheme. In accordance with Samad’s steadfast ambitions for the future of his twin sons, whilst Millat is required to remain in Britain, Magid is sent back to Bangladesh, ostensibly as a means of keeping him away from the corruption of Western culture, but also to enable him to assimilate Eastern wisdom.
It is, however, clear that Alsana holds a different view towards the education of their twin sons than that held by her husband, Samad. Whilst Samad is incredibly implacable when discussing their sons’ acculturation, Alsana, on the other hand, seems to be more open-minded and sensible. “Let go, Samad Miah. Let the boy go. He is
second generation – he was born here – naturally he will do things differently. You can’t plan everything. After all, what is so awful – so he’s not training to be an Alim, but he’s educated, he’s clean!” (289)
Alsana’s plea ultimately proves to be very profound, whenMagid, the elder twin by all of two minutes, returns to England after eight years of absence. Much to Samad’s shock and disappointment, on his return from Bangladesh, Magid seems more English than the English, with Millat, raised in England, appearing to be more Muslim than Magid. This result is the exact opposite of what Samad had anticipated. As Mirze puts it, both Samad and Magid are in exile; “the former is not at home in England during his early arrival, while the latter is not at home in Bangladesh”.14
Under Smith’s portrayal, amongst all of the characters, Samad is the funny and amusing one, and yet, the most pathetic. His character comes across as most pathetic when considering his expectations of his twin sons. Samad, is equally disappointed by Magid and Millat; “The one I send home comes out a pukka Englishman, white-suited silly wig lawyer. The one I keep here is a fully paid-up green bow-tie-wearing fundamentalist terrorist. I sometimes wonder why I bother” (407).
As a first-generation migrant to Britain, with another “homeland” culture always looming over him, Samad is continually troubled by his sense of belonging, of finding
14 As Esra Mirze observes, “What Samad does not understand, however, is that Magid is not at home in Bangladesh, but rather has been sent into exile, just as out of touch with the new realities forced upon him as Samad was when he arrived in England” (194).
his place in his adopted country, and yet, his sense of “unbelonging” is further aggravated when he finds that his sons have even greater problems with their identity.
Samad painfully confides in Irie:
Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers - who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally housebroken. Who would want to stay? But you have made a devil’s pact … it drags you in and suddenly you are unsuitable to return, your children are unrecognizable, you belong nowhere. (407)
As Dawson comments, White Teeth “satirizes Samad’s belief in cultural determinism” (164). Samad might well have expected that one of his sons would learn Islamic doctrine and become a proper Muslim; yet, the end result is exactly the opposite of his expectations. Instead of Magid, Millat has been cultivated to take on Islamic piety through fervent practice, in Britain of all places. As Jane Lowe observes, Samad’s manipulation of his twins’ future indicates a mistake, in that he “misreads the global current of politics that blows the wind of change and continuity in the most unpredictable directions” (170).
Samad’s wish to control his twin sons’ future has failed. With his futile attempts at moulding his sons, Samad represents what the old white veteran related to Irie, Magid and Millat, the problem with the third molars. As one is never sure whether one’s mouth will be quite large enough to accommodate the third molars, so Samad can never be certain whether the cultures and identities he prepares his sons for
assimilation into will be sufficient to accommodate them. Throughout her references to the “third molars,” Smith is apparently developing another metaphor of teeth. In writing about the problems of identity with which Samad Iqbal and his sons must learn to cope, Smith uses the wisdom teeth as the metaphor of identity. In light of the old veteran’s words, as wisdom teeth are passed down by the father, so Samad’s identity is passed down to his sons.