Oct 3rd and Oct 4th: Kilburn, London Borough of Brent and Camden.

I had heard of Kilburn years ago, before I was married. I had had a lover who was from there. She was of mixed race—father Jamaican, mother English—and she had a distinctive accent, regional but lucid, and unique in some ways to people of mixed-heritage from north London, particularly from these boroughs.

Then, Kilburn did not mean much to me without any idea of its landscape and history—it was just a name. Years later I read White Teeth by Zadie Smith—and when BBC serialized the book into episodes on channel 4, through Archie, one of Zadie’s protagonists, Stella came back to life: her voice and mannerisms. A little over a year ago, at a reading in San Francisco of her Man Booker Prize Award winning novel, On Beauty, I saw Zadie Smith, and, like a revelation, a character unfolded before me for my next novel.

Now, over the course of two days, I have discovered Kilburn intimately through my character. By far it is the most demographically diverse borough in London. Its history of Irish immigrants dates back hundreds of years—and that history is pervasive on Kilburn High Road, the main street, and on many side streets off it, in red and creamy Victorian brick houses, in taverns and pubs inside old brick buildings with intricate facades, and in hardened Irish faces, which Marrian Cromwell vividly portrays in her pictorial chronicles of Kilburn and Cricklewood neighborhoods.

Over the years immigrants—first West Indians; then Asians; followed by Arabs and Africans; and recently east Europeans—have transformed the borough into a coexisting habitat of multiculturalism. Shop signs read in Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, and English. Irish butcher shop, Mullin’s, only sells halal meat, and Irish fast food, McGovern’s, only cooks Halal meat dishes, one sign loudly announces. Inside a Pakistani Kebab shop where I had a late snack—delicious kebab and naan—the Asian radio ceases its regular program and plays the Azan, the Muslim prayer to break the fast on this Ramadan month. Right next to it is the North London Tavern where under its black awnings outside patrons drink their afternoon lager and bitter.

At the end of the Kilburn Road towards Westhamstead, nestled behind three large Chestnut trees, is the Shia Islamic Center of England. And directly across from it is an old Irish Pub, Queen Arms. Off the side street, is an old Jewish Center.

Jerry, the Irish owner, told me, “It is a traditional English pub with touch of Irish charm.” And what of the mosque across, I inquired.

“Oh, they draw more crowd then we do,” he chuckled.