The English Beast Awakens: A Warning from The Second Coming
THE ANTI CHRIST WILLIAM BLAKE
A lot of people on the planet are praying for the Second Coming – Messianic Christians awaiting Jesus and Muslims for the Mahdi to return. Tariq Mehmood is not among that crowd. Instead he spends a lot of time imagining and discussing possible futures. Some of these fictional futures may be realised – Mehmood teaches a creating writing course, ‘After Zionism – Imagining the Rebirth of Palestine’ at the American University of Beirut – and others – like the setting for his book The Second Coming – hopefully will not be prophetic.
Mehmood’s young adult novel is set in a near future in a fragmenting Britain, with England descending into civil war as far-right militias come to power. It is a dystopian desi mash-up of The Handmaid’s Tale, Clockwork Orange, and V for Vendetta. It warns of the dangers of right-wing nationalism and white supremacy, and imagines where such racism could take England if it is not, somehow, nipped in the bud.
The idea took shape during a “thinking and drinking session” with fellow novelists Peter Kalu and Melvin Burgess, said Mehmood over the phone.
During one session they were trying to imagine a world where the dollar has collapsed and the US empire is falling to bits, and what could rise out of the ashes. “We came up with a terrifying idea and then wrote different novels whose narratives kiss each others story, but are not the same, novels in their own right, although we have the same kind of monsters – the Bloods, a Christian militia that has taken over and are re-writing minds,” said Mehmood. The trio’s output is Kalu’s One Drop, Mehmood’s The Second Coming, and Burgess’ Three Bullets. “One, Two, Three was a conscious act,” he said.
The idea was also sparked by Mehmood’s milieu in Lebanon, being on the pulse of what was happening in Western Asia and its surroundings, with conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Palestine. “I was thinking, what happens if war comes to Britain? Where would we go? Look at the rise of the so-called Islamic State, and the equivalent, the Jewish state; and the rise of the BJP, the ruling Hindutva party in India – what if all the Messianic forces came to England amid the rise of Islamophobia? How would all the simmering contradictions of Britain play out? Nothing comes out of a vacuum, all the contradictions are there in West Asia, in Europe, and the monsters come out, out of existing processes,” he said. “Racism has been around since the Crusaders, and has changed and metamorphised. Islamophobia has deep roots in these islands, and how it was used during the British empire – the ‘blood thirsty’ Afghans, the orientalised Arabs, the ‘savage’ African. That is what they said of the colonised, but who really is the monster?”
In his dystopian England ethnic minorities are being attacked, houses are daubed with paint to be targeted, upside down crosses dot the landscape, and mosques are burned to the ground.
Amid these rising tensions 19-year-old Marah Sultana is struggling to deal with the everyday life of a teenager in suburban London – family, love life, friends, studies. The opening chapter starts with racist comments directed at Marah and her friends on a public bus. Mehmood said a reader had questioned how realistic that scene was. “But that is our experience, a white man suddenly getting aggressive. In my youth [in Bradford, England], if a group of us went out in the wrong area for a drink, the chances of leaving a pub without getting into a punch up were pretty much nil. Some random man would say ‘get out of this country you black bastards’,” said Mehmood.
It is indeed a scene that has occurred innumerable times in recent history and is very much still in occurrence today. For instance in late July, far-right, anti-immigration violence flared across Britain, fuelled by disinformation. Videos of random attacks against ethnic minorities went viral. Communities united to protect themselves and their property. This story is of course playing out in many places worldwide, as people struggle for self-determination and equal rights, and against oppression and structural violence.
For Mehmood, the summer 2024 riots were like a chapter from his own history. In the 1970s, the far-right and reactionary forces were in their ascendency in the UK, while the police were unresponsive to increased calls from ethnic minorities to be protected from racist thugs. At this time, Mehmood had become increasingly active in Asian Youth Movements and anti-racist groups, calling on people to defend themselves. The situation came to a head in 1981 when Mehmood was dragged from his bed one morning and arrested for conspiracy to make explosives. Mehmood and his 11 co-defendants became known as the Bradford 12. During the trial, Mehmood represented himself and argued that they had a right to defend themselves against racists coming into their community. The Bradford 12 were looking at life behind bars if convicted. Following a mass campaign, involving thousands of people in the country and internationally, they were acquitted. The case made legal history, enshrining self-defence into English law, including the right of organised and armed community self defence.
Mehmood wrote about his experiences leading up to his arrest in his first novel, written in prison, and in an upcoming book about the whole legal case. He is currently making a feature length documentary film on the Bradford 12. All his experiences also fed into The Second Coming.
“It draws on my own social background and history of resistance, of the Bradford 12, and facing state injustice, going to prison, and being attacked on the streets, and still dreaming of a fairer world. In the North of England, where I grew up, we saw a very nice side of England, but also a nasty side as well – it is out of this English nationalism is rising,” he said.
The novel starts to heat up once ethnic cleansing begins. Marah’s father, like many others, thinks such a thing could not happen in the UK – echoing Sinclair Lewis’ great American novel It Can’t Happen Here (1935) – but it does, and Marah’s family become refugees – or to use NGO speak, internally displaced persons (IDPs) – as they flee north. Marah becomes increasingly rambunctious, starting to drink booze and smoke weed, but also quickly matures, as she has to financially support her family as her parents’ mental health deteriorates. With law and order in the hands of the militias, and women not safe on the streets, Marah and her friends form a girl gang to protect themselves, the Ginnz. They also organise a rave as a form of protest against the reactionaries. As Mehmood put it, “it is a bit of a Bombay film as well. We like melodrama.”
As in all Mehmood’s novels and children’s stories, whites are not the main characters. This is on purpose, to de-colonise the imperial narrative, but also for ethnic minorities to have characters, role-models, heroes that better reflect their background and ethnicity.
There is a long way to go, as Mehmood has noted teaching creative writing in Beirut. “It is difficult to get my students outside of the white world. It may seem ridiculous, but when they’re trying to write stories the characters would all be white, often American or French, British as well, representing the empire of today, and of the past that has impacted their lives,” he said.
Spoiler alert! As the novel progresses sci-fi comes increasingly into play. The Bloods have morphed the Church of England’s theology into an even nastier brew of religious zealotry and nationalism, and are seeking a second coming for England through the birth of a child, with the mother chosen based on unspecified blood tests. Unexpectedly, Marah is the chosen one, the Mary figure, artificially impregnated by the fruit of the King’s loins, and she becomes a propaganda celebrity.
In the hands of the Bloods, Marah is subjected to mind-altering therapy carried out by a shadowy American that is part-Evangelical, part-mad professor, part-Big Brother and part-Brave New World. And then the counter-offensive against the right-wing militias builds momentum, offering a glimmer of hope for Marah, her friends, the future and the reader.
“The Second Coming is about holding on to your mind, your loves, your dreams. And to endure the brutality knowing you must live. You have to have faith in the coming generation; my generation, we’ve done what we had to contribute. The idea is to give a warning to the youth that the beast isn’t what you think it is, and is far from dead,” warned Mehmood.
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