There is, at first glance, very
little to distinguish Salusbury Road from any other just-off-central London
backstreet. Mile after mile of terraced housing, broken only by the occasional
shabby chemist, shabby off-licence, or shabby estate agents’ equally shabby
offices. But appearances can, from time to time, prove deceptive. Inside one of
these unremarkable flats sits a very remarkable man, and I, with curiosity overpowering
my apprehension, have been sent to meet him.
Baruch Mendelsohn is surprisingly
easy to find. In fact, he’s a well-known figure in these parts, especially amongst
the community of drug addicts and homeless people that make up society’s shadow
in the Brent Council area. One man, a cheerful old sod with a fondness for Sour
Diesel and a beard that wouldn’t look out of place in Middle Earth, sings in
praise of Baruch.
“He’s a top lad, Barry,” says the
vagrant. He can’t remember his own name, but he’s enamoured by ‘Barry’, who
gives him food and money, and occasionally steps out to share a joint on the
porch of the old, run-down police station.
This story is repeated, in one
form or another, and with varying degrees of erudition and eloquence, up and
down the road. By the well-spoken woman with the well-fed dog who begs outside
the tube station, by the singing Rasta-man, and by the odd couple who can be
found wandering drunkenly, hitting each other with half-full cans of Special
Brew and, on this occasion, kicking an unopened pack of sausages up the street.
“Top lad,” “Great guy,” “Love him to bits.”
The Sleeping Man is perhaps the only
exception. Huddled in an alcove next to the bookshop, he shouts and swears when
I mention Baruch. But then, as I soon discover, The Sleeping Man does little
else. He shouts and swears at dogs, at children, at women; at anyone who
crosses his eye line. The Sleeping Man does not discriminate.
All very well and good, but how
do I square this with the profile I’ve got?
This profile, written and sent to
me by Mr. Mendelsohn himself, paints a very different picture. Indeed, I’ve
been told that I am to address him not as Baruch Mendelsohn but as Baadir
Mohamad, he having “Renounced [his] Jewish faith and [his] kafir ways, turned
[his] back on decadence and sin, accepted the truth of the al-Quran,” and so
on. B.M. is apparently unaware that one does not need to write ‘the’ before
‘al-Quran’; it translates as ‘the the Quran’. A quibble, but possibly quite
revealing.
The mental portrait I’m trying to
create is shattered as I’m accosted outside Starbucks and whirled around to
face who I assume – who I hope – must be Baadir.
“Mr. Mercer!”
I’d been expecting to be
confronted by a cliché; by a Choudary clone or Hamza doppelganger, all wild
eyes and austere robes and liberated facial hair. But Baadir Mohamad isn’t any
of that. Or rather, he’s not quite
any of that. I seem to have caught him in the very early stages of his
metamorphosis. An almost indiscernible hint of mania in the otherwise friendly
blue eyes, something not-quite-unpleasant in the crooked-toothed, tarnished-silver
smile; traces of some artificial colourant in his thinning hair.
“Mr Mohamad, I presume.”
“Please, call me Baadir.”
These introductory niceties
having been concluded, Baadir takes me, bizarrely, by the hand, and leads me to
a door not ten yards away from the ‘coffee’ shop (I use the term in its
broadest possible sense). Two flights of stairs later, and I’m in the
unremarkable flat with the very remarkable man.
We’re sitting in his kitchen,
which doubles up as a living room. There’s a copy of the Quran next to a bottle
of fabric softener on top of the washing machine, and the surface next to that
is covered with a sea of unwashed plates. The place reeks of marijuana and
cigarette smoke, and I’m hit with a strange and sudden realisation. Sitting
here, on this disgusting sofa, it occurs to me that this is how it must feel to
be a discarded fag butt.
My first question, the one I’ve
been most looking forward to asking, concerns his Jewishness. What does he
think of it? Do Jews really control the world?
“They control the media,
certainly,” is his reply. He reaches for a pile of papers on the kitchen table
and picks one out, seemingly at random. “This,” he says, “is something I was
writing for my blog before it was taken down. This should explain it.”
And it does, after a fashion. I
can’t repeat much of what I read; it would be impossible to print. It’s called ‘Letter from The Fat Controller’, the
title taken from B.M.’s bizarre theory; that the Fat Controller of Thomas the Tank Engine is a metaphorical
depiction of our Jewish overlords.
Does he really think Islamic
State will accept him? He doesn’t look
particularly Jewish, but he doesn’t look much like a Salafist, either. Wahhabi
doctrine forbids you from shaving, and Baadir clearly has, and recently. His
appearance is somewhat transigent; as though he dresses with one inept eye on
fashion whilst the other looks toward the future he claims he desires.
“They will, when I get there. I
can’t look the part now; I’m too easily noticed, and they’re watching me.”
This is undoubtedly true. When I
ask him how he plans to get to Syria, he explains that he’s already tried, and
been prevented. He also tried to move to Birmingham, believing that there might
be some truth to the Fox News claim that the city is all but ready to declare
itself an Islamic state, but was prevented again. He’s set his sights on a move
to Tower Hamlets, from where he intends to plot his escape. Either he’s being
coy, or he really has no idea how he’s going to go about it.
When I ask him about his family
his expression becomes dark. Born and raised somewhere near Luton, he left home
when he was fourteen, arrived in London when he was nineteen, and claims to
have never been back. Having been born and raised somewhere near Luton myself,
I can attest to the fact that the closer you are to it, the more it f*cks you
up.
“My mother,” he says, “is a
decadent western whore.”
“How so?”
“She can’t cook. She doesn’t
cook. She doesn’t tend the house. She goes out to work and leaves the place to
fester. She’s not married; wears makeup and no veil. She made me a bastard. She
made me the way I am, or rather, the way I was.”
“Do you still speak to her?”
“Every Tuesday.”
Curious. “You said she made you
the way you were. What were you?”
He pauses. “You know the story of
Lut?”
I do. Lut, or Lot, is amongst a
handful of figures from scripture who have survived plagiarism twice, appearing
first in the Torah, then in the Bible and finally in the Quran. His story is
contains that of Sodom and Gomorrah. “Ah,”
I say, “so you are-“
“I was,” he interrupts, “but I am
cured.”
“But you blame your mother?”
He shrugs, non-committally. “One
way or another it’s her fault. And I won’t stop until the black flag of jihad
flies above her house. Maybe it’s her nature. Maybe it’s because she had me
vaccinated. You know about vaccines? You know the Jews in the CIA invented them
for their war on Muslims? They sterilise us, they infect us, they make us mentally
ill.”
“Are you mentally ill?”
“Again, I was cured.” The source
of these ‘cures’ is to be found in the Finsbury Park mosque, Abu Hamza’s alma
mater. Baadir’s conversion owes itself, at least in part, to the toxic blend of
Saudi Wahhabism, oil wealth, and Prince Charles, that royal speaker to
vegetables. “Allah is the cure,” Baadir continues.
When I ask him about his other
diagnosis he waves me away, claiming he can’t remember. Schizophrenia or MPD;
one of those. So, as he begins to roll a joint, I ask him… why. Why Islamic
State? Conversion is one thing, terrorism is surely quite another.
“You mean you can’t see it?!” he
exclaims, gesticulating toward the window. “Look at it. It’s filthy. It’s
corrupt. The women are all prostitutes, the men are all beggars and sinners.
The scriptures are clear; we do this, and we win. We have to win. There is no
way we won’t win. The people who accept that might be saved, but the rest can
burn.”
“And you’d be prepared to behead
people?”
“Sure, why not.” He shrugs again.
“I’ve seen the videos. I could do it. And it’s not as though I’d be beheading
real Muslims.”
Alas, our time together is almost
over. We both have places to be. Baadir is heading out to the Two Brewers in
Clapham, which means I have to change my plans and head elsewhere. The Two
Brewers describes itself as being ‘gay friendly’, and it’s full of friendly
gays. It serves as a useful staging ground for trips into other worlds. Perhaps
Baruch isn’t as dead as Baadir likes to pretend. Perhaps Baruch is still in him,
somewhere. Perhaps someone else will be, later.
-----
“One for the road?”
He’s offering me a joint. I hate
the stuff, but how often does one get the chance to take a spliff from a
wannabe jihadi?
“Sure,” I say.
I’m still wondering, as I make my
way back up Salusbury Road, what it is that separates us. We are the same age,
we have similar backgrounds, we share many interests. And yet, he fantasizes
about joining Islamic State, about beheading infidels and blowing up history,
whilst I do not. Quite the opposite. Let the infidels keep their heads, I say,
and history has a lot going for it.
The nameless old sod from earlier
is sitting on the porch of the old, run-down police station. He eyes me up,
meaningfully, as I stride toward him, and beckons with his gnarled old claw.
Well, why not?
“Alright, Barry?” he asks, as I
squat down beside him.
“Barry?”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Never mind, old sod. Got a
light?”
