The Black Madonna by Peter Millar Page B

possible nothing at all, least of all our history, our decency or our self-respect! Do you think they want Gaza to become a shrine?’
    ‘Wait a minute,’ said Marcus, trying to calm her down and at the same time taking in the implication. ‘You think this really could be a picture of the Virgin Mary done from life?’ He found it hard to keep the incredulity out of his voice. Most Madonna figures were mediaeval, although he vaguely thought he had heard of one or two dating from the dark ages.
    The waiter appeared to clear the pickles and bring the main courses. He looked disappointedly at Nazreem’s half-nibbled pappadum but set out a tempting array of dishes on the plate warmers in front of them. Marcus helped himself though he could not help being annoyed that the arrival of the food had disrupted Nazreem’s chain of thought. She had sunk back into herself, taken just a small portion of chicken and rice and was pushing it around on her plate. Then, just as he was trying to think of a way to bring her out of it again, she leaned forward and looked him straight in the eyes, asking in a quiet voice:
    ‘Marcus, would you call yourself a religious person?’
    He was taken aback. Religion was a topic they had never discussed , not on a personal level at least, only insofar as the subject permeated the politics of the Middle East, as a denominator of race and politics rather than a matter of conscience.
    ‘No. Not really.’
    ‘But you are Christian.’ It wasn’t a question.
    ‘I suppose so, culturally at least.’
    ‘And a Roman Catholic?’
    ‘No, not at all, more a sort of lapsed Calvinist, really.’
    ‘That is a schism, a sect, like the Shi’ites? You must forgive me, I am not very aware of these things. It is why I need advice. That means Protestant?’
    ‘Yes, absolutely. Sort of the original Protestants, you might say: after John Calvin. In my case, it’s a South African thing. A lot of the Boer settlers who went out there were Dutch Calvinists. Bigoted bastards, most of them.’
    ‘These are your own people you are talking about.’
    He gave a little laugh: ‘In a way. Ancestors maybe, but things change – we evolve, you know, even white men. That’s what I write about. Remember?’
    ‘I’m sorry, I know. It’s just that, out there – at home – things are different. It is not so easy sometimes, to criticise your own people, even when they do terrible things.’
    She looked around her, but no one was paying them any attention . Marcus picked up her meaning. Britain’s Muslim community had been shocked and damaged by the discovery that the four young men who had carried out the July 2005 suicide bombings that killed fifty-two Londoners were from second-generation immigrant families. But Nazreem knew only too well what it was like to have people you knew to be serious, kind, sensible human beings turn themselves into suicide bombers on the promise of martyrdom.
    ‘Do Protestants believe in the Virgin Mary? The way the Catholics do, who call her the Mother of God?’
    Marcus took a forkful of curry and a swig of cold lager to chase the heat: ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is, I mean, yes, sort of. We – they – believe she existed all right and was the mother of Jesus.’
    ‘But for you Jesus was not just a prophet, as the Muslims believe, he was also a god, I thought.’
    ‘Well, yes, the son of God, anyway, although it’s sort of supposed to be the same thing. Somehow.’
    Nazreem looked at him questioningly:
    ‘So Mary is the wife of God? Or the mother?’
    Marcus took another sip of cold Cobra. He hadn’t been expecting a theological debate: ‘It’s not quite like that. Well, I suppose it is and it isn’t. It’s all to do with the Holy Trinity, the three-in-one. God the Father and God the Son are the same. Only different. And then there’s the Holy Ghost.’
    ‘A ghost? Like a dead person?’
    ‘No, quite the contrary, or sort of. It’s also called the Holy Spirit, the third part of