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1. Zadie Smith «White Teeth» (excerpt)
…Click-slam. Click-slam. One Magid, one Irie. Samad opened his eyes and looked in the rear-view mirror. In the back seat were the two(4) children he had been waiting for: both with their little glasses, Irie with her wilful Afro (not a pretty child: she had got her genes mixed up, Archie’s nose with Clara’s awfully buck teeth), Magid with his thick black hair slicked into an unappealing middle-parting. Magid carrying a recorder, Irie with violin. But beyond these basic details, everything was not as it should be. Unless he was very much mistaken, something was rotten in this Mini Metro — something was afoot. Both children were dressed in black from head to toe. Both wore white(4) armbands on their left arms upon which were painted crude renditions of baskets of vegetables. Both had pads of writing paper and a pen tied around their necks with string(3).
“Who did this to you?”
Silence.
“Was it Amma? And Mrs Jones?”
Silence.
“Magid! Irie! Cat got your tongues?”
More silence; children’s silence, so desperately desired by adults yet eerie when it finally occurs.
“Millat, do you know what this is about?”
“Sboring,” whined(4) Millat. “They’re just being clever, clever, snotty, dumb-bum, Lord Magoo and Mrs Ugly Poo.”
Samad twisted(4) in his car seat to face the two dissenters(6). “Am I meant to ask you what this is about?”
Magid grasped his pen and, in his neat, clinical hand, printed:
IF YOU WANT TO, then ripped(2) off the piece of paper and handed it to Samad.
“A Vow of Silence. I see. You too, Irie? I would have thought you were too sensible for such nonsense.”
Irie scribbled for a moment on her pad and passed the missive forward. WE ARE PROSTESTING.
“Pros-testing? What are Pros and why are you testing them? Did
your mother teach you this word?”
Irie looked like she was going to burst with the sheer force of her explanation(6), but Magid mimed the zipping up of her mouth, snatched back the piece of paper(3) and crossed out the first s.
“Oh, I see. Protesting.”
Magid and Irie nodded maniacally.
“Well, that is indeed fascinating. And I suppose your mothers engineered this whole scenario? The costumes? The notepads?”
Silence.
“You are quite the political prisoners… not giving a thing away. All right: may one ask what it is that you are protesting about?”
Both children pointed urgently to their armbands.
“Vegetables? You are protesting for the rights of vegetables?”
Irie held one hand over(2) her mouth to stop herself screaming the answer, while Magid set about his writing pad in a flurry. WE ARE PROTESTING ABOUT THE HARVEST FESTIVAL. Samad growled, “I told you already. I don’t want you participating in that nonsense. It has nothing to do with us, Magid. Why are you always trying to be somebody you are not?”
There was a mutual, silent anger as each acknowledged the painful incident that was being referred to. A few months earlier, on Magid’s ninth birthday, a group of very nice-looking white boys with meticulous manners had turned up on the doorstep and asked for Mark Smith.
“Mark? No Mark here,” Alsana had said, bending down to their level with a genial smile. “Only the family Iqbal in here. You have the wrong house.”
But before she had finished the sentence, Magid had dashed to the door, ushering his mother out of view.
“Hi, guys.”
“Hi, Mark.”
“Off to the chess club, Mum.”
“Yes, M-M-Mark,” said Alsana, close to tears at this final snub, the replacement of “Mum” for “Amma”. “Do not be late, now.”
“I GIVE YOU A GLORIOUS NAME LIKE MAGID MAHFOOZ MURSHED MUBTASIM IQBAL!” Samad had yelled after Magid when he returned home that evening and whipped up the stairs like a bullet to hide in his room. “AND YOU WANT TO BE CALLED MARK SMITH!”
But this was just a symptom of a far deeper malaise. Magid really wanted to be in some other family. He wanted to own cats and not cockroaches, he wanted his mother to make the music of the cello, not the sound of the sewing machine; he wanted to have a trellis of flowers growing up one side of the house instead of the ever growing pile of other people’s rubbish; he wanted a piano in the hallway in place of the broken door off cousin Kurshed’s car; he wanted to go on biking holidays to France, not day-trips to Blackpool to visit aunties; he wanted the floor of his room to be shiny wood, not the orange and green swirled carpet left over from the restaurant; he wanted his father to be a doctor, not a one-handed waiter; and this month Magid had converted all these desires into a wish to join in with the Harvest Festival like Mark Smith would. Like everybody else would.
BUT WE WANT TO DO IT. OR WE’LL GET A DETENTION. MRS OWENS SAID IT IS 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, Magid, I told you the condition(3) upon which you would be allowed. You come with me on haj. If I am to touch that black stone before I die I will do it with my eldest son by my side.” Magid broke the pencil halfway through his reply, scrawling the second half with blunt lead. IT’S NOT FAIR! I CAN’T GO ON HAJ. I’VE GOT TO GO TO SCHOOL. I DON’T HAVE TIME TO GO TO MECCA. IT’S NOT FAIR!
2 Lexical meaning vs grammatical meaning
Lexical meaning – the meaning of a word in relation to the physical world or to abstract concepts, without reference to any sentence in which the word may occur. It is the ratio of the sound shell of the words with the relevant objects or phenomena of objective reality.
Grammatical meaning – the meaning of a word by reference to its function within a sentence rather than to a world outside the sentence. It is a characteristic of a word as an element of a particular grammatical class, as part of a series of inflecting.
Paper
Lexical meaning:
• a piece/sheet of paper
• writing paper
• Dictionaries are usually printed on thin paper
Grammatical meaning:
• to cover a wall, room, etc. with wallpaper
Over
Lexical meaning:
• above or higher than something else, sometimes so that one thing covers the other
• across from one side to the other, especially by going up and then down
Grammatical meaning:
• We can use over to refer to extended periods of time
• Over means ‘more than’ a particular number, or limi
• We can use over as an adverb to talk about movement above something or someone
Rip
Lexical meaning:
• to pull apart; to tear or be torn violently and quickly
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