White Teeth: Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis

Joyce Chalfen goes to Alsana’s house and asks to speak to her, but Alsana refuses to let her in the door; Samad, who is watching television, puts in earphones so he does not have to hear the women bickering. Alsana begins to sing over Joyce’s pleas: “Whether you want me to be involved or not,” Joyce says, “I am.” Alsana believes that “involved” happens over a long period of time, that it is neither good or bad, just a consequence of living—of “occupation and immigration,” “empires and expansion.” She realizes that the exhausted way Joyce says “involved” suggests that the word means the same thing to her: “an enormous web you spin to catch yourself.”

Alsana finally lets Joyce in and offers her a cup of tea with adding cheerfully that their water may or may not make Joyce sick. She also tells Joyce that she is the only reason that Magid and Millat are apart, since the Chalfens have involved Magid “in something so contrary to our culture, to our beliefs, that we barely recognize him.” Unbeknownst to the two women, Millat has been standing in the hallway, listening in. Joyce suggests that the brothers meet at a “neutral place,” and Alsana tells her that she’s just making things worse. Joyce says that she thinks Millat is still traumatized from Alsana burning all of his “secular” items.

Millat’s subconscious is “split-level”: he is trying to be ascetic in his habits in order to align with KEVIN and its teachings, and he believes that relying on faith, like Samad does, is “contemptible,” since to KEVIN, Islam is a religion that can be “intellectually proved.” Yet he is unable to purge himself of the West, since he is still obsessed with gangster movies. Worst of all, he’s angry and self-righteous, especially when it comes to Magid. These are not pious thoughts, but Millat feels that he has the “fundamentals” down—clean living, praying, fasting, working for the cause. Still, he wants to face off with his brother, gangster-style.

Alsana persuades Samad to talk Magid into meeting with Millat, and Samad takes Magid to O’Connell’s to do so. The other patrons are confused by Magid, since Samad rarely brings guests, and Magid is far younger than the other pub-goers. Mickey tells Magid that he has a “sympathetic” face, and that he is “civilized”; but when Magid asks for a bacon sandwich, Mickey’s mood changes. He reminds Magid that’s a Muslim, and that he shouldn’t upset Samad by eating pork. Eventually, Mickey gives in and goes out to get some bacon; Magid invites him to the FutureMouse launch, telling him that Marcus’s research could help to cure his disfiguring skin condition.

Samad is angry at Magid for talking to Mickey about the FutureMouse, and he calls Magid “a thorn in [his] foot.” He tells Magid that Alsana wants him to meet with Millat, though he wishes that his sons would stay far away from each other. Samad is horrified to hear that Magid has ordered a bacon sandwich, and he calls his son “Mr. White-trousered Englishman with his stiff-upper-lip and his big white teeth.” He tells Magid that KEVIN, including Millat, is organizing against the FutureMouse, but Magid’s expression remains blank. Samad tells his son that meddling with a creature is tantamount to interfering with God, and that he wants to disown Magid for his disobedience. Archie flips a coin to decide whether the two boys should meet, but the coin lands in the pinball machine.

Clara offers to let Millat and Magid use a room at the university where she’s taking classes as a neutral space, since it’s hard to find genuinely neutral spaces. The university, though, is only 12 years old, and built on empty wasteland. Clara gives the key to the room to Joyce, who gives it to Irie, who she wants to set up the meeting. Irie walks to the Iqbal house, thinking back on the memories she has shared with Millat over the years and feeling as if she could “drown” in them. At home, Millat is reading about sajda, the act of prostration during prayer, but he becomes distracted, takes off his T-shirt, and practices lines from gangster movies at himself in the mirror. Irie walks in on him, and she goes up to him to explain the proposed meeting, putting one hand on his chest; suddenly, the two are kissing and making love on Millat’s prayer mat, though they quickly stop. Horrified, Millat begins to pray for absolution, while Irie weeps and leaves the room.

Irie thinks that Millat doesn’t love her because he is too “damaged” to love, but the narrator notes that this isn’t true, asking, “what was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species?” “Not everybody deserves love all the time,” the narrator remarks, though Irie firmly believes that there must be a reason that Millat doesn’t love her. She thinks that the reason must be Magid, since Magid has made Millat feel inferior all his life. She walks to the Chalfens’ house, makes her way to Magid’s room, and makes love to him, too; immediately, though, Magid realizes why Irie has come to him, and after, they lie together in silence. Magid says that Irie has “tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X.” 

Finally, on November 5, 1992, at 3 p.m., Magid and Millat meet together in the university room after an eight-year gap. Magid explains that he sees the FutureMouse project as “correcting the Creator’s mistakes,” but Millat says that the “Creator doesn’t make mistakes”; the brothers begin to argue, and their argument escalates. They use the different items in the room—chairs, erasers, the overhead projector, the filing cabinets—to defend their distinct viewpoints, discussing the Qur’an, Mangal Pande, genetic experimentation, and finally, their own separation.

The narrator comments that immigrants are often thought of as “resourceful,” “constantly on the move,” “footloose”: but Magid and Millat leave the “neutral room” “weighed down” and “burdened,” feeling as if they have made no progress. They seem to occupy a space “equal to themselves” and “equal to Mangal Pande’s, equal to Samad Iqbal’s”: they are both trapped in the present moment together. The narrator refers to Zeno’s paradox, which shows reality to represent both “multiplicity” and a “seamless, flowing whole”: likewise, the brothers are racing toward the future, attempting to differentiate themselves, only to find that they tend to keep enacting their past instead. Immigrants cannot escape their history.