All memories are like infatuations, placed in the past but remembered in the future. I too remember, in order to try to understand the present, the summer of 1994 in Birmingham. I was in sixth grade at George Dixon Juniors and Infants, a neighbourhood government school, a five-minute hike from 45 Ridgeway Road, which was home. Not keen to lead a solitary student life, my father had brought his family over to live with him while he completed his M Phil at Birmingham University. For that one year, I tasted Britain's magic potion of multiculturalism, the ideology of fixing difference – the same potion that is now under severe scrutiny. The London bombings and the questions they raise create the opportunity for Britons to ask themselves the question – "How does it feel to not be British in Britain?"
My school was a microcosm of the street on which I lived, a multitude of colours packed into a single class: hefty Sikh boys with anglicised Punjabi names like Gurdy; the rude rich white boy Sam; the athletic and irreverent black boys like Dwain, twice my height but impressed with my high scores in English; and a tomboyish Indian girl who played the violin and stood first in class. Yet there was only one Paki – not even a stable word but a sound, a phoneme so deeply coded it can't be inscribed. To understand the slangish twang and the racist sneer with which it's spat out, one must hear it.