Ghetto:
(ge?t´®≠) , originally, a section of a city in which Jews lived; it has come to mean a section of a city where members of any racial group are segregated.

The streets flash by, a kaleidoscope of colour blurring through the night. The car shakes, snaking in and out of the traffic, before heading at speed down the centre of the highway. The driver is hard-faced, his control expert, eyes hooded, expression fixed as he flexes his hands on the wheel. A walkie-talkie sits in his lap; on it is stuck a Cross of St George. His partner has softer features, more rounded, but he too just stares straight ahead. The siren blots out all but snatches of sound: the muffled thump of hip-hop, swearing, tooting of horns, the catcalls and jeers as we pass, a patois of noise and languages, the call to Ramadan prayer fading into the distance.

Thursday night and the city is just warming up. The nightclubs in Shoreditch are opening their doors. Exotic smells drift from the curry houses and beigel shops at the top of Brick Lane. Crowds flood out of the local mosque – once synagogue, and before that Methodist chapel and Huguenot church – flocking to their iftar (fast-breaking) meals.

On Whitechapel Road, Amharic, Arabic and Bangla jostle for attention with English, Russian and a dozen other tongues. Altab Ali park passes with its ghosts of murder. Bouncers shift nervously outside a lapdancing club. Shredded stickers around the Royal London Hospital exhort Muslims not to vote, or burn as kufr. The traditional sweet shops are busy, too, young men crowding to buy ladoo from the famous Ambala bakery, jellaby or perhaps dates imported from the Gulf. 'Toms' -- prostitutes -- ply their trade in the back alleys around Brick Lane or behind the trendy cafes and restaurants which have sprung up in Banglatown. Tourists on their Ripper tours and bohemian young whites rub shoulders with restaurant touts: “Come sir, come! Two pint of lager free: come!” oblivious to the white and brown being ‘shot’ up and down the length of the curry mile tonight.

As we head ever east, past cafés once used to recruit for the Spanish Civil War, now laden with heavy-lidded Somalis chewing 'khat', the cry for the dead rings out. It is a haunting, lonely sound. The Kaddish rasps from the throats of the shuffling, elderly men inside the fabled Congregation of Jacob: perhaps the last time that Rosh Hashanah, and ceremonies handed down for over 3000 years, will be celebrated here. The last time, too, that long-dead relatives, their names inscribed in fading gold leaf, will be remembered in the ghetto they made so famous.

As if in answer, as dusk draws down, the streets and alleyways around the massive East London Mosque swarm with the faithful. Arab, Bangladeshi and African flow like a river into the great building, ready to break the fast with water and dates like their Prophet before them. And for i'tikaf, the 10-day show of penitence and prayer undertaken by the most pious. The masjid (mosque) is now the centre of life, not the shul (synagogue); tawhid (oneness with God) and the Umma, the worldwide Islamic brotherhood, the lifeblood of the community.

Further to the east is Essex. The forgotten Britain some joke. Home, too, to flights of those same immigrants – Cockneys, Irish and Jews – that once dominated East End life. Sprawling interwar suburbs then the sea, and the age-old escape from the ghetto. Over the last two generations, it has become a haven to those whites who venerated the traditions of the East End: pie and mash, the Blitz spirit, and an England that once was.

Looming above all, Canary Wharf shines. The chrome of the City is barely a mile away. We are in the heart of Europe's most powerful metropolis. We are in the Abyss.

***

Nick Ryan ©2009 extracted from forthcoming book

Photo ©Simon Wheatley