White Teeth: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Samad has “caught children like a disease”: after 40-odd years, he has finally had children and is surrounded by them, including other people’s children and his children’s friends. In July 1984, he has found himself in the position of parent-governor, involved in the parents’ association at his children’s school. At one meeting of the governors, Samad is particularly belligerent, criticizing the school for putting on a “Harvest Festival” instead of a Muslim event. Afterward, the music teacher Poppy Burt-Jones approaches him and tells him that she thinks he made a good point about the festival; she mentions that she is interested in Indian culture, and Samad corrects her gently, saying that he isn’t actually from India. As Poppy compliments his children—remarking that it is unusual for Indian children to be loud instead of subdued—Samad realizes that he is enormously attracted to Poppy.

In 1976, just after his marriage to Alsana—which he found deeply unsatisfying, sexually—Samad asked an elderly Alim (a scholar of Islamic law) in the mosque in Croydon if a man would be permitted to masturbate. He was told that masturbating is against Islam teachings: “stay away from your right hand.” Instead, Samad decided to masturbate with his left hand, which he does every day after returning from the restaurant at three in the morning. On January 1, 1980, Samad decided to give up masturbating so that he could drink—a “business proposition” with God. But after he sees Poppy Burt-Jones in July of 1984, he begins to believe that “temptation ha[s] been deliberately and maliciously thrown in his path.” He begins to masturbate again, and he also fasts, hoping to “purge himself of the sights and smells of Poppy Burt-Jones.”

Though Samad might be a bad Muslim, he is a great waiter: back in the present of 1984, he excels at the restaurant, and he now orders Shiva (who has grown older and is less attractive) around. Shiva asks Samad if something is wrong with him, and Samad says that he is troubled by a woman who isn’t his wife; he rants about the immorality and debauchery of London culture, and Shiva tries to talk him down. Shiva tells Samad that men like them should never fall for an English woman, since their countries have “too much bloody history.”

Samad takes his son Millat to school one morning in order to run into Poppy Burt-Jones, and he becomes frustrated with his misbehaving children. They pick up Millat’s twin Magid and Irie Jones, who is “not a pretty child”: she has her “genes mixed up, Archie’s nose with Clara’s awful buckteeth.” Irie and Magid are wearing black with white armbands painted with vegetable baskets, and they both refuse to speak out of protest: Irie writes on a notepad that they are protesting about the Harvest Festival. Samad recalls that Magid told his friends that his name was “Mark Smith”: Magid desperately wants to be in another family, and he wants to fit in with his peers, which disappoints Samad, who wants him to be religious.

 At school, Samad watches Poppy Burt-Jones conducting the children’s orchestra, and Poppy introduces him as a visitor; she says that the orchestra will be experimenting with Indian music in his honor. In response, the children mock Indian music. Poppy reprimands her class for being culturally insensitive, and she asks Millat what sort of music he listens to at home: Millat tells her that he listens to Springsteen and Michael Jackson.

Samad follows Poppy into her office after the music lesson. He realizes that she is acting nervously around him; he feels aroused, but unable to leave. Poppy tells Samad that she has “so much admiration for the sense your people have of abstinence, of self-restraint.” Suddenly, Samad kisses her.