White Teeth: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

O’Connell’s Poolroom is an eccentric bar that is neither Irish nor a poolroom, and the kind of place that “family men come to for a different kind of family.” This is Archie and Samad’s “home from home,” and they have been meeting here every day for 10 years to discuss anything and everything. Samad has confessed to Archie that he cheated on Alsana, and Archie tells him to meet him at O’Connell’s at four o’clock, but at 4:15, Archie hasn’t showed up. Samad talks to Abdul-Mickey, the chef, waiter, and proprietor, who tells Samad that his son, Abdul-Colin (Mickey gives all of his sons the name Abdul “to teach them the vanity of assuming higher status than any other man”), has recently gotten very strict about his Muslim religion.

Archie enters, greets Mickey and the other two regular patrons, Denzel and Clarence—“rude, foul-mouthed octogenarian Jamaicans”—and finally meets Samad, who tells Archie about seeing his sons while on the date with Poppy. Samad says that he now has a “choice to make, a choice of morality”—similar to the choice Archie made during the war, with Dr. Perret. Samad believes that there is a “rebellion” in his sons, who don’t respect tradition. Archie goes to get his food from Mickey and banters with him about Samad. Archie reflects that what he loves about O’Connell’s is that “everything was remembered, nothing was lost”: “history was never revised or reinterpreted, adapted or whitewashed.”

The narrator expounds on tradition as an “even more sinister analgesic” than religion because tradition doesn’t usually look sinister: Samad believes that roots are always a good thing, but the narrator notes that “the first sign of loose teeth is something rotten, something degenerate, deep within the gums.” Samad begins to think about sending his sons back to Bangladesh, but he doesn’t have the money to send both of them there. Back in O’Connell’s, Samad tells Archie his plan: to send one son to Bangladesh, separating the twins. Yet he cannot decide which one to send. Millat is in need of more “moral direction,” while Magid is Samad’s favorite. Samad continues struggling to decide for a couple of weeks until he reads a characteristically mysterious letter from Horst Ibelgaufts to Archie, in which Horst describes chopping down an old oak tree in his garden. Archie takes this to mean that to mean that Samad has to send Millat away. Eventually, though, he settles on Magid, after consulting with Poppy and even letting Archie flip a coin.

Samad has not told Alsana about his plans, and he is nervous when he comes home and discovers her weeping at the kitchen table. Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, has been assassinated, and Alsana is crying for her friends in Bangladesh, who will be forced to endure riots and violence in response to the assassination. She says that she is relieved that her children will not have to experience such violence, and Samad, feeling guilty about his plan to send Magid to Bangladesh, disagrees; he says that their sons would have a better life back home than in England. Alsana and Samad get into a physical scuffle, which Millat and Magid watch with amusment. Afterward, Samad calls Poppy and breaks up with her.

 At work, Shiva tells Samad that he was wrong to sleep with a white woman. The restaurant, nestled in the heart of London’s theater scene, is crowded on this Saturday night; Ardashir orders the waiters to bring rice and naan bread for the white theater-goers, who are unused to spicy Indian food. Samad is requested to wait on a table, and when he walks over, he sees Poppy Burt-Jones and her sister. Poppy mocks him briefly.

At 1:00 a.m., Archie pulls up outside of the restaurant, where he meets Samad. He admits that when he tried to wake up Magid to bring him to the airport, he also woke up the other children, who were having a sleepover. Samad tells Magid that he is going to Heathrow Airport; years from now, “this will be history that Samad tries not to remember,” “false teeth floating silently to the bottom of a glass.”