IF FORTUNE REALLY FAVOURS the brave, I figured aged 12, then I was never going to be one of her darlings. I was a cautious child, afraid to attempt handstands or cartwheels, fearful of rides at the funfair. When I rode my bicycle downhill I kept the brakes on. My first visit to India, all 36 hours of it, passed in a frenzy of trying not to see. In taxis, I put my head on my mother’s lap because I couldn’t cope with the traffic. The rest of the time, intimidated by the noise, bustle and smells, I observed Delhi through the slats of my fingers. During game drives while we were on safari in Kenya I would panic if we drove too close to a herd of animals. Our family history is dotted with eye-rolling stories of my crying and begging my father to back away from the elephants or rhinoceroses grazing a few yards away. What was I scared of? Pain – seeing or feeling it – and death.

     This physical prudence went hand in hand with an avid intellectual curiosity. When it came to finding out more, expressing opinions or arguing a point, especially among my peers, I was intrepid. The mental feistiness compensated somewhat for my being a wimp in so many other ways. At least it gave me confidence, perhaps even a feeling of superiority – until the day I became a Christian. The conversion lasted 11 and a half days. It was time enough for me to understand that there was yet another type of daring: if one’s thoughts are to have any value or power the intellect must be backed up by moral courage. It seemed I also fell short of this most precious kind of strength, which requires something similar to the boldness that drives reckless physical acts. That’s why making hard choices, having arguments, sets our hearts racing, sends adrenalin rushing through our veins, leaving us as breathless and exhilarated as if we’ve done a bungee jump.

     Religious conviction did not arrive in a blinding flash. Rather it crept up on me the way a benign habit, like slouching, might. Funnily enough, my sense of the Almighty, shaky since I was a child, remained uncertain even during the period when I was most persuaded by Christianity. I never quite bought into the notion of this all-seeing, all-knowing figure looking down on the world. But I went along with the idea because it was convenient, especially on nights when my parents were out late. It was oddly reassuring to beg God to ensure they came home safely. I don’t think I kept any of the promises I made to God in return. They were always vague sorts of vows anyway – to be good, to do anything He wanted. Because He usually obliged, and seemed to require no great concessions in return, I was content with the arrangement.

     So there wasn’t much in my background on which the ardent Christianity I was exposed to at school could build. My family is Sikh but my parents are not especially observant, though they claim to believe in God. My father does not wear a turban. My mother has cut her hair. They eat beef, they drink alcohol, they do not know the names of the 10 gurus. Only the gold kara on my father’s right wrist hints at his background. An observer of my parents’ lives would be hard pressed to identify anything religious. Once, my sister and I were dropped off for an afternoon of instruction on how to read Punjabi and recite a prayer from the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book. Our complaints of boredom ensured we never returned for another lesson. My parents did not teach me anything about Sikhism. The only time I had a sense of my religious heritage was on occasional trips to the gurdwara for a wedding.

     It may seem like my upbringing was quite secular and liberal. I certainly had the impression that my parents were pretty easy-going – apart from the warnings that a Muslim boyfriend or husband would be unacceptable. If this did not shock me in my youth it was because the sentiment was so widespread as to seem normal. Some of my closest friends were Muslim and they also knew that romantic liaisons outside the faith were forbidden. I should have guessed that if my parents could make such a vehement theoretical distinction they were in no way as open-minded as they purported to be. Then again, they chose to educate their daughters at avowedly Christian institutions, so maybe they were tolerant – in the contradictory and prejudiced way that many of us are.

     After kindergarten I was sent first to a Catholic school, Loreto Convent Msongari, in Nairobi. Everything there was strictly regimented, right down to the type of underwear (navy blue) you had to wear with your uniform. Religion did not tempt me in that context. It was too much about what you couldn’t do. The only times I felt envious were during chapel, when girls who had been baptised lined up to receive the Eucharist. Then I longed to be one of the chosen, with the wine goblet pressed to my lips and the delicate wafer laid upon my tongue. Really, I just wanted to know how the wafer tasted. I managed it one day when a friend brought back and shared the white disc, which had been placed in her palm for a change. Its dry, crumbly tastelessness banished any residual fantasies about the body (and the blood) of Christ.

     When I moved to a new school religion came alive. Cavina’s stated aim was and remains, “to develop many qualities in the children who come through her gates – academic excellence, an inquiring mind, a sense of moral and social responsibility, and most of all a recognition of their relationship with their Creator who has revealed Himself through His son Jesus”. Suddenly, religion was not just experienced in obvious ways: the hymns sung and prayers recited each morning at assembly, the afternoon every week devoted to hymn practice, the bi-weekly scripture lessons, the carol concerts at Christmas. Faith was also evident in the tireless commitment of the teachers and in the kindness of the gardeners and caretakers. It was epitomised by the headmaster and his wife, who owned and ran the school. Mr and Mrs Massie were honourable, generous human beings and devout Christians. Their lives were dedicated to converting every child who passed through Cavina’s gates. During the course of six years, I fell, slowly and unconsciously, for the idea of their big family (of mostly Indian students) happy under the guidance of Jesus. The fragility of the whole concept became clear only when I told my parents I wanted to be a fully fledged member of Christ’s circle – and my conversion was forbidden. Looking back, I realise that Cavina’s hold on me weakened because some things grip us only as long as we conform to them entirely. Deviate even a little, step beyond the haloed perimeter, and the magic no longer works.

     Strongly held convictions have the power to seduce and repel. It all depends on how articulately they are expressed and how inflexibly they are defended. Not just in life, but in fiction, people who exude certainty can seem more interesting than others, more defined. By contrast, the softer stance of relativism appears wishy-washy, even bland. While writing my second novel, The Obscure Logic of the Heart, I was surprised to find that the staunchest characters – the pious Muslim father, the militantly atheist young man – turned out to be the most appealing and enduring figures. The other, more complex, characters seem to be weakened by their very strengths: the ability to compromise and the humanity to tolerate ways of being entirely other than their own.

     Mr Massie’s religiosity endowed him with a powerful definiteness, as if he’d been outlined precisely with a thick black pen. Tall, well built and with a mop of blond hair bordering a high forehead, he cut an impressive figure. Now I think of him as attractive, but my pre-adolescent self was struck by his authority only, the assurance exuded in his every gesture. He was a gifted speaker, his accent redolent of public school and tea at The Ritz. He had trained as an actor and been part of several productions in London’s West End. His voice could lend majesty to the conjugation of Latin verbs. Put to the scriptures, it made poetry of the psalms and thrilling legends of Old Testament stories. A sucker for things said well, I capitulated, perhaps inevitably, to his beliefs. It would never have occurred to me to doubt a word he uttered. Indeed, on the one occasion I did raise a question about what he was teaching us in scripture I was so thoroughly silenced I was put off making enquiries for a long time afterwards.

     “Mr Massie?” I anxiously raised a hand, keen to articulate the question I had tucked up inside.

     He looked at me, blue eyes alert under shaggy eyebrows.

     “If Adam and Eve were the first people created by God, when they had children where did the people that their kids married come from?”

     Blood surged to his face, scrambling across his skin like a fast-moving rash. “Someone has clearly put you up to this!” His palm slammed down on the table. He was right. My father had suggested I pose the question after I’d brought up the subject at home. Neither of my parents had been able to provide any explanation other than “it’s nonsense”.

     “It is not for us to question the mysteries of the Lord,” Mr Massie insisted. He said more, but I can’t remember any of it because I was too busy shrinking with shame, hating my father and thinking, thank goodness I’m already head girl because after this my chances of preferment would be less than nil.

     Shortly afterwards I started to attend Bible Study, the Friday lunchtime club run by Mr Massie. The decision was driven partly by a wish to ingratiate myself once more with the favourite teacher who’d experienced such obvious disgust at my impudence. The head boy, with whom I was in constant competition for attention, approval and good marks, was also a member of the club. I might as well confess that another big draw was the fact that the meetings were held in the den of the Massies’ house, which was situated in the school grounds.

     Perhaps my religious attachments have been short lived because they are driven by rather lowly motives. The sybarite in me is seduced by aesthetics, pomp and the promise of pleasure. Sikhism too won me over for brief, delicious moments. I looked forward to going to the gurdwara for a helping of prashad, the golden mound of sweet pudding given to all worshippers as a blessing. When I realised the same taste could be created at home by cooking semolina with a ton of butter and sugar the temple became redundant.

     The Massie residence had sacred status in my mind and those of many other students. Once in a while we’d have the honour of going there to watch a film about Tudor history, or an adaptation of a classic book. I would sidle through the rooms that led to the little den where the TV and video player were, taking in the dark wooden bookshelves, family photographs and silverware gleaming behind the glass of locked cabinets. The curiosity about people’s private lives that partly drives my writing today was already active. Even then I wanted to know what it was like to live differently, to be someone else. I couldn’t have articulated it, but there was this hankering for something that, if discovered, might transform my own world.

     Throughout my childhood I suffered from I-want-to-be-in-that-family syndrome. That family could have belonged to a friend, or it could have been a random, contented-looking group spotted at a restaurant. It’s not that I was especially dissatisfied with my parents and younger sister. Whenever I spent time away from them I missed them and looked forward to going back home. But children can sense the undercurrents of discontent in adults and my parents, for all their efforts at making ours a happy family, couldn’t fully disguise their disappointments with each other. The Massies, parents and three children, represented a sort of family ideal. It wasn’t enough just to be part of their extended Cavina School family, I wanted to be right at the core. Bible Study seemed like a good way to take a step closer.

     The sessions were intense and intimate. Half a dozen of us, including Mr Massie, sat in a circle. We read a passage from the Bible, discussed it and then prayed together. I had done each of these things before, at school and at home, but the experience had a different charge in the Massies’ den. I can honestly say that my delight did not come solely from the Nice biscuits we were given to dunk into the tea, which was served in lovely porcelain cups. It had more to do with the thrill of being talked to as an adult and feeling like part of a select group.

     So much of what I did, and loved, at school every day was steeped in faith; by the second Friday of Bible Study I’d decided that my willing and joyous participation must have meant that I too was a Christian. There was excitement in the recognition. I hugged it to myself all weekend. My prayers, normally infrequent and desperate little bursts of wishing, in the dark of bedtime, for something to happen or not happen, became self-conscious sweet little chats with Jesus.

     On a Sunday evening, unable to contain myself any longer, I told my mother I had decided to be a Christian. She was bending over the washbasin brushing her teeth as I made the announcement. She rinsed her mouth, straightened up and said, “There’s just one God, and it doesn’t matter how you choose to serve Him.” I’m not sure how seriously she took my admission, but I was content with her response. Still, something must have niggled in me because I said, “Okay, but please don’t tell Pa.” I went to bed happy and passed the next day at school fired up by a renewed sense of belonging and self-importance, unaware of what would await me on my return home – because Mum had decided to tell Pa.

     F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested, with more than a touch of irony, that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”. Could this explain the masses of moderates in the world who make a claim to faith while regularly breaking religious rules? We all have some sense of what it is to indulge in this sort of “doublethink”, as George Orwell called it. It is not so much a sign of any first-rate intelligence as of human fallibility. At its mildest, it is a form of hypocrisy – like being a committed recycler and owning a sports car. In its more serious forms this kind of thinking is sinister: we have affairs and tell ourselves nothing is more important than our family. We waste food, time and money, then dream of leaving plenty for future generations. If you’re my father, you can be the most secular of Sikhs and most protean of men, a master of reinvention in its most glorious and dubious senses – and still be outraged by your 12-year-old daughter’s swing towards Christianity.

     My father stood by the polished wooden counter of the bar built along one wall of our living room. Behind him, spirits, liqueurs and wines were lined up in neat rows, the bottles sparkling in the bright glare of the ceiling lights. I trembled on the other side of the bar while he shouted.

     “You were born Sikh and you will remain a Sikh! Do you hear me?” Pa poured himself a whisky. The ice cubes hissed and snapped as the amber alcohol spilled over them into a crystal glass. “We sent you to that school to get an education, not to lose your identity! Do you really believe all that Jesus crap? Walking on water and whatnot?” He kept picking up the glass and then setting it down again with a loud rap, too angry to pause long enough for a sip. “That Massie has brainwashed you! I won’t have it! If you want to stay under this roof you’ll forget this Christian rubbish. Is that clear?” He went on in the same vein for a bit longer, then informed me that I had 24 hours in which to make it clear to him that I was not a Christian, otherwise I would have to leave the house. “I don’t care where you end up if you insist on following such nonsense. Go ask that Massie to keep you. Let’s see if his godliness extends that far.”

     I didn’t doubt my father’s threat. Unquestioning acceptance of authority was still second nature to me then. It had been fostered first by my parents, then enforced at Cavina, which continues to maintain to this day that “character is strengthened through discipline, not reason”. The school is one of few to endorse corporal punishment, “because the Lord disciplines those He loves”. I was never subjected to “the whip”, as the riding cane used to smack girls was known (boys were given “the tackie”, an old sports shoe that delivered a wallop) because I strove too hard to follow the rules. But no doubt some subliminal fear of being hit also made me toe the line.

     My father’s ultimatum scared me, especially because my mother was unable to calm him down. That evening I wrote a letter to him saying I had reconsidered my decision to be a Christian. I told him it had been a stupid mistake, one that I would never make again. I had no idea then how prescient my words would be. I told myself that in my heart I would still be a Christian and my parents would not need to know, but the gulf between religion and me only widened ever after.

     The next morning I left my letter on the bar where the altercation with my father had taken place. That evening he told me he accepted my apology, but was disappointed that I had written instead of speaking to him directly. The shame I felt at his remark was nothing compared to what I would experience soon afterwards, when I was summoned unexpectedly to Mr Massie’s office one day at break time.

     The Massies had an uncanny way of finding out everything about their students. A year after I left the school a transgression of mine came to light (plagiarism, would you believe? I’d ripped off Thomas Mann for a story contributed to the school magazine. All I can say in my defence is that my aspirations were always high.) Mr Massie sent a letter to the school I was attending in Britain asking me to go to see him next time I was in Nairobi! I dutifully did and received a deserved earful. I wouldn’t be surprised if this article comes to his attention and one of his letters appears in my Berlin mailbox. At least if we spoke now we would do so on more equal terms and I would be more courageous than I was during that break time 20 years ago. As Michel de Montaigne said, “I [still] speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.”

     Somehow, news of the confrontation with my father had reached Mr Massie. For a long time I thought it was a deeply religious friend of my mother, to whom she had related the incident, who had told him. But recently I found out it was one of my school friends. Mr Massie was pacing the room when I stepped through the door of his office. The floorboards creaked under each step. His chin was dipped towards his chest, his brow creased with concern. “I’ve heard something very disturbing,” he started. He made me tell him what had happened and I obliged with a version in which I appeared marginally less cowardly than I’d acted. I think he was genuinely upset and may even have felt some sympathy for me. Nevertheless, his stance was clear: “A true soldier of Christ will never deny Him. Fortes Fortuna Juvat,” he reminded me of the school motto, Fortune Favours the Brave. It didn’t matter that Jesus was in my heart, I was clearly not a worthy member of His military academy. I was told there was no point in my continuing to go to Bible Study until I had the courage to stand up for my convictions.

     The conversation with Mr Massie left me more dejected than that with my father. It catalysed the moral struggle my father’s ultimatum perhaps ought to have done, but didn’t. I felt weak and cowardly – something the hymns we sang in school in the following weeks seemed to reinforce. Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war … I couldn’t help thinking Mr Massie had selected the songs especially to make a point to me. Of course, it was probably all in my head. That’s why what stood out to me were the calls to rise forth in the name of God. The lyrics about his mercy – Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee – offered no solace.

     Then it began to occur to me that maybe I wasn’t able to assert my allegiance to Christ because I didn’t actually believe in Him. And that too was the reason I could find no comfort in words that promised His endless love. So came one of those tricky and uncomfortable realisations that mark the way to adulthood and beyond: just because you like being a part of something doesn’t mean you really belong to it. And then, another realisation that one butts up against throughout life: just because you like something doesn’t mean it’s right, or true, or good for you.

     Still, I wondered if not having faith was a failing in itself. Perhaps, as my headmaster had implied, I really wasn’t strong enough to assume the mantle of religious belief. It was a long time before I was able to see that whatever my shortcomings may have been there were more serious flaws in the school – as there are in any system that insists there is only one way of being and thinking. It now shocks me that my parents could send me to be educated in such a way. They, like many, were attracted by the school’s impressive academic record and wide range of extra-curricular activities. But I have come to feel that none of that is worth the straitjacketing of the mind that can be the result of an education cloaked in religiosity.

     Even though I have many fond memories of Cavina, and much of the way I am is a result of my experience at the school, I continue to struggle against the tendencies I adopted then: to believe those in authority and not to ask questions. Writing fiction has liberated me from this somewhat. Funnily enough, it is often the past that feeds one’s writing, and then writing frees one from that past.

     I have always wanted to know more than I’m told. Where more information could be gleaned from books I searched for it without hesitation. But usually, when clarification has required more than a gentle face-to-face encounter I have shied away from it. I think most of us are curious about what else lurks behind the things others choose to reveal, but few dare to query further to find out more. Often we refrain out of a protective instinct – for the other person or even for ourselves. But it is difficult to squeeze more from an individual than they are prepared to give.

     Even so, most of us would rather be cautious than venture onto territory that might cause embarrassment or pain. We turn to art partly because it gives us the chance to know more about that which we might not ordinarily confront. No art form manages this as powerfully as literature. When we read great fiction we are as close as we can be to knowing another individual from within. In books we can follow not only a character’s speech and actions, but also his thoughts, silences and torpor. All those “gaps”, to which we cannot, for whatever reason, gain access in real life, are plugged in fiction. Through reading we can feel what it means to be another person and, in the process, we may confront different aspects of ourselves.

     The possibility of asking questions endlessly is one of the most attractive things about writing fiction. I may be nosy in life but I am even more inquisitive when writing. All the things I might hesitate to enquire about in my daily reality I can freely follow up in fiction. That’s not to say that writing provides me with unlimited, unbridled glee at imagining the innermost workings of another. Delving deeper into anything always has consequences, and not necessarily pleasant ones. It is sometimes uncomfortable to put yourself in the mind and heart of someone completely “other”, someone you probably wouldn’t choose to spend time with in reality. Writers don’t create characters they only like and agree with. The greatest challenge of writing is to express, credibly and sympathetically, views, motives and feelings that one does not share. When the writer succeeds then the reader too is able to make the leap into understanding, and even feeling close to, a character that is completely other.

      I felt this most strongly while writing my second novel. The story is partly about the conflict experienced by two lovers who come from different religious backgrounds. As an atheist, and given my bittersweet early experiences with faith, I was anxious about how I might write about religion without mocking or demeaning the characters. Of course, sometimes there is absolutely a place for satire or condemnation, but this tone did not fit the thrust of my story. I wanted to explore two different types of religious belief: the kind that is steadfast and inflexible and the kind that is able to compromise and contradict itself.

     Lina Merali, one of the main characters, falls into the latter category. Despite being a committed Muslim she does not pray regularly or follow Islamic dietary restrictions. She also wants to marry an agnostic man who comes from a Sikh family. In her mind, all this is justified by one aphorism from the Koran: Allah will not call you to account for thoughtlessness in your oaths, but for the intention in your hearts.

     For Lina’s father, Shareef, a figure similar in some respects to Mr Massie, this conveniently flawed rationale does not work. A man of integrity and conviction, he lives by the rules and won’t budge for anyone, not even the daughter he loves most dearly. He is clear that “God has made laws for us to follow. You can’t say: ‘I believe but I’m not going to do this or that.’ God and the laws are one.” I started off feeling I could never accommodate this kind of thinking. It exasperated me. How does a person arrive at such a stark position? How do they stick by it even when doing so threatens to destroy the very things they hold most dear? What are the compensations of faith that make the hardest sacrifices worthwhile?

     It took a lot of thought, research and care to build Shareef’s character and life up to a point where his choices and actions began to appear logical, necessary and, above all, moving to me. I managed it partly by listening to and reading the words of different religious leaders. There were a few, like philosophy professor Tariq Ramadan and Archbishop Rowan Williams, whose views were expressed with such gentleness and humility that they touched me, even though I disagreed with a lot of what they said. I used their tone and vocabulary as a starting point for the creation of Shareef.
It was through finding the right language that I was able to appreciate Shareef’s commitment to his faith, which is the commitment of a decent man to an ideal.

     When you read, you enter into a ready-made world, the words arranged to propel you directly into certain thoughts and feelings. To write, you have to search for the words that form a character and then weave the web of a story. And the words cannot be found unless you let down your guard, step beyond what you know and open your heart to the vast spectrum of emotions that makes us human. The task of the writer is to negotiate the unmapped territory between us and the other: to conquer, word by word, the distances that seem too vast, too daunting, too unknowable.

     The fact that they can sometimes achieve this doesn’t necessarily make writers better people, or indeed better than other people. As Proust says in his essay Against Sainte-Beuve, “a book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices”. He is suggesting that the writing self is the superior self – because one has the possibility to question, re-think, revise and refine one’s thoughts before setting them into sentences – a privilege that the pace of reality denies people in everyday life. Despite the dedication to reflection implicit in the writing life, it is also the case that understanding rarely arrives for any writer in flashes. Mostly it accumulates in tiny increments, which occasionally gather enough weight to give one’s thoughts the substance of truth. The arduous nature of the work forces writers to confront continually their limitations and helplessness, their failings as human beings and artists.

     The glory of language and literature is that it enriches and uplifts us even as it exposes weakness – because exposure comes through asking hard questions. And as long as we keep asking questions we have the hope of arriving at answers.