.....more of John John

"Your bossman gave me your home number," the voice of Mullard says, "Hope I didn't wake you?"
"No," Barry sits down at the round table in the small living room, "I was just thinking what to cook myself for dinner. When do you sleep?"
"Whenever I get a chance. Which, these days, hasn't been often."
"So what's new?" Barry pushes books aside, reaches for a pen and pad.
"What is new is that at last I've got some sympathy for you lot. We've got a complete whiteout here. Blinder than deaf bats."
"It's in the ionosphere then?" Barry rearranges one of the tilting stacks of books on the table.
"And descending. Why I called you is... your forecast is unfavourable as well. And we've got this old Nimrod. Picked it up cheap you might say. Perfect for this kind or work. We're taking it up tonight. Over the North Sea. See what measurements we can take. Get some idea of its strength."
"Should be a pretty aurora."
"So bring your camera. Thought you might like to meet your line face to face."
"Where're you leaving from?" Barry has straightened.
"Meet us here."
Barry looks at his watch: five thirty.
"Take me at least two hours to get there. Dartford tunnel, rush hour."
"We won’t be leaving much before nine. Take your time."
"I'll be there. And," Barry takes a deep breath to tell the phone, "thank you very much."
"Can’t very well leave you out, now can we? Look forward to meeting you in the flesh."
Barry leaps from the phone up to the bedroom, ties his shoelaces, looks for his credit cards — in case he runs out of petrol — grabs up his jacket, checks for his car keys, finds his binoculars, camera, and slams the front door behind him.
His small red car is parked outside his small white terrace house. Chucking his binoculars, camera and jacket onto the passenger seat he fastens his seat belt, starts the engine and pulls out into the road.
From the opposite side of the road a white car swings out behind him. Barry sees it in his rear-view mirror.
"Hope you've got enough petrol," he says, and laughing loudly he turns left.

Voice Off. Humanity owns an inherent and acute sense of justice. Humanity also owns an innate desire to live in large groupings. The organisation and administration of such large and complex groupings leads inevitably to inequities. Those inequities affront some of its members' sense of natural justice. Human societies are therefore constantly in a state of flux; the repair of one inequity leading to the creation elsewhere of another.

Again the smoke unwinding from the visitors' cigarettes drives him from the telly room. In the ward visitors hunch around the beds. Once Mrs Rustar sees John John settled in his bed she sends her son over with a packet. The boy does not speak Urdu. He regards John John suspiciously. Folded inside the tissue paper are some small square cakes. John John thanks Mrs Rustar.
"Taste them! Taste!" she waves a be-ringed hand at John John.
With Mrs Rustar intently watching him, he nibbles at a corner of one sugary cake. The cake is excessively sweet and scented.
"Very good," he tells Mrs Rustar, thinking that is what she wants to hear.
"Any memories?" she asks him. So Mrs Rustar too is intrigued by his past. John John examines the taste, takes a bigger bite, eats the whole cake. A fiery indigestion seems to rise up his gullet to greet every mouthful. Small wonder Osman Rustar has ulcers, he thinks.
"Yes and no," he finally tells her, placing the sticky packet on his bedside locker, "The taste isn't unfamiliar. My tongue has memories of it, even if my mind hasn’t."
The children watch him talk in their parents' language. To rid himself of the cloying cakes John John offers the packet to them. Both look to their father.
"One for me too," he laughs. His wife chides him. The children politely help themselves. Osman, chuckling at Mrs Rustar’s nagging, accepts the necessity of his diet. He does, however, go on to talk of other Pakistani cakes; and, from there, smacking his lips, of other dishes. So Osman Rustar becomes nostalgic, talks of his home town Khanpur, breaking occasionally into English to explain to his children.
"Khanpur's on the railway," John John ventures.
"Yes," Mrs Rustar leaps on it, "You remember?"
"Just that it's on the railway."
"Maybe you passed through it. Coming from Lahore?"
"I don't know... Just the railway. Nothing else."
Then visiting time is over. John John watches the variously dressed visitors crowding out. He tells himself that he is disappointed because the detective didn't come with news from the odontologist and bearing like a prize his identity. His other identity. His previous identity.
Osman is still talking of food. John John smiles: Osman Rustar is a happier man in Urdu.
"Why did you come to this country?" John John asks him.
"Ah..." Osman Rustar sighs, "Because of the dust mostly. And the dirt. And the disease. In Khanpur I would not have been able to afford even this," he signifies the ward, "Nor my house. Nor my car. And here I can vote without getting shot."
"Why don't your children speak Urdu?"
"They are going to be British. Not live in a ghetto. A minority language is an intellectual ghetto."
"Yet you miss Khanpur?"
"Yes. My friends there. My past."
"Yes...." John John says; and they share an understanding greater than the language.

Voice Off. Human beings frequently show more interest in others than they do in themselves. Ignoring their own problems they diagnose the worries of others and put more effort into curing the worries of those others than they do into the solving of their own problems and worries. This is because many human beings are led, early in their lives, to believe that they themselves are not worthwhile human beings, that they do not matter, that they are expendable. To sacrifice oneself for one’s fellows is regarded as being commendable by all human societies. Such cannon fodder in the past ensured the survival of the tribe, even of the species. In post industrial societies, however, such social attitudes led to many complex neurosis, whose roots lay in the frustration of being unable to sacrifice oneself. Those neurosis made those selfless individuals harmful to those very societies that they wished to serve; and, being aware that they caused harm, made those individuals despise themselves even more and hate the societies which they were unable to serve.