Fuck Me....

You know how to make a Muslim name don't you? Simply take the letters K, R, Z and F, throw them in a bowl, then add some vowels and a few random consonants, remove a handful and the result is a name.

Most of my family on my Dad's side have names that follow the methodology, including my very own one.

I've got a cousin, fifteen times removed, twice added back and then tangentially attached via a flux capacitor, which is to say that she's pretty damn close in Lankan terms, who lives in London with her relatively new husband. She's actually the generation below, so calls me "Uncle", which galls me slightly, me being the rock 'n' roll geezerish cool Dad that I like to think of myself as. For the purpose of this post we'll call her "S".

And then, on the other side, the husband, truth be told a nice enough bloke, doesn't call me "Uncle" and that slightly annoys me. He's been in England a few years and clearly doesn't deem it necessary. I even whipped his disrespectful little brown arse at Carrom some months ago, twenty nine nil no less, and despite that he continues to address me on first name terms!

So anyhow, I have to tell you his name in order to tell you the story, but I'd be eternally grateful if you'd keep it to yourself, you'll understand why by the end. Yes, his name is "Falik". It's a normal sounding Muslim name in many ways and when my family met him we just accepted it and used it accordingly.

It was only some months later that one of us (me) realised there was a large dose of humour to be gained from it, what with it actually having a decent sexual meaning and all. You can imagine the joking that went on for quite a while, all behind his back of course. In fact, it continues.

The other day I was sitting round at my parents' place, just casually shooting the breeze with them as one does. My Dad, who is getting much better at a pretty good pace, was doing his usual thing of ignoring most things and making random comments related to the conversation before the one before. My Mum was doing her usual thing; that lethal mixture of questioning blended with narrating facts about all sorts of people, the questioning carefully designed to make you listen, unless you're my Dad.

"Oh S is pregnant by the way" she said.

"Ah right" I responded. It wasn't really a surprise to anyone, except perhaps S.

"Yes" continued my maternal unit.

"Fuckme and S came round the other day"

"Ah okay" said I, your narrator.

At this point an interesting thing happened. You know about probability trees, the way that events can take an infinite amount of possible outcomes, depending on the minutest of details? Well if you're a religious person or someone who believes in fate then you may think differently, but I favour the probability tree scenario.

And, soon after my Mum had called him "Fuckme" the conversation started to proceed along one path, that of the three of us not realising that that wasn't his actual name and just carrying on with our chat. But something nagged at me (I'm razor sharp like that) and I dragged us back to the intersection on the probability tree.

"Hold on, that's not his name is it, he's not called 'Fuckme' is he?"

"No he's not" said my Dad

"No, now what is his name again?" retorted the mother.

We sat there thinking for what seemed like minutes. It was in fact, minutes. I'm certain that what was going through our three heads was the same sort of thing, an extremely rare occurrence when my Dad's around, as you know. It was something like:

"What the hell is his name? It's something crammed full of sexual innuendo, but it's not 'Fuckme'?"

Then my Mum remembered.

"Ah God, it's not Fuckme, it's Falik, yes that's it"

"Of course" we all thought and said.

And continued talking rubbish.