Token Muslim at Table Six: Seven Rounds of Pub Quiz and What They Actually Taught Me

The invitation came by text at 7pm on a Tuesday, which is the exact hour when a person is most likely to agree to anything. We're a man down for the quiz Thursday. You in? I read it four times. I had been Muslim for eleven weeks and had not yet been in a pub since, and I had a vague idea that this was the sort of thing that would be judged. It wasn't. Nobody in that building cared about my religion; they cared about the picture round.

I said yes. I have been going back ever since.

Round One: The Lime and Soda Years

The first night, I panicked properly about ordering. I stood at the bar for what felt like a decade before asking for a lime and soda, half expecting a lecture on pub etiquette. The barmaid pulled it in nine seconds flat and charged me eighty pence. It remains the cheapest thing I have ever done in a social setting.

That was the first lesson, and it was embarrassingly small: the fear was mine, not theirs. I sat down with my ridiculous green drink, and the team — a retired teacher called Maggie, her son, and a man everyone only knows as Daz — explained the rules as if I were joining an institution rather than a table.

Round Three: Learning Where You Fit

The quizmaster has a habit of running an Islam round in round three. Four questions, always about the same five topics. I worked out that if I answered modestly, somebody would ask me more afterwards, and if I answered joyfully, somebody would ask me everything afterwards.

So I learned to answer joyfully. It has been one of the better decisions of my year.

Round Four: On Being the Expert in the Room

Here is the uncomfortable bit. For about four months, I was less a member of the team and more the team's Islam correspondent. Somebody would lean over and say, 'Quick — you'll know this one,' and I would feel a rush of warmth and a small prickle of dread at the same time, because knowing you are valued for a factoid is not the same as knowing you are valued for you.

It changed slowly, and it changed on ordinary nights. The week I was useless in every round, including the Islam one, and they still laughed at my answers. The night Daz explained his landscaping job to me for forty minutes while I ate crisps. The evening Maggie asked about my mum and did not mention religion at all.

Round Five: Boundaries Nobody Hands You a Leaflet For

Things I worked out by trial, error and one genuinely kind conversation:

• You can be in a pub without drinking. Nobody worth knowing will push it. If you want a line, 'I don't drink, but I'm not here to spoil your night' works about as well as anything.
• The quiz is the social glue, not the alcohol. I thought I would be excluded by not drinking. The truth is the exclusion was entirely hypothetical. The team mostly talks about the picture round.
• You do not have to shake hands, but you may have to explain it once. I gave one short, gracious explanation to Maggie, and she remembered it forever and defended it to a stranger on my behalf. Nobody else needed to know.
• Food is a faff, not a wall. Chips are usually fine. Ask. Every pub kitchen I have asked has been far more helpful than the menu suggests.
• Know where the dawah line is. People ask questions because they are curious, not because they are seeking. Answer honestly, keep it short, and let a good friendship do more work than a lecture would.

Round Six: The Token Thing

There is a version of this story where I am the beloved mascot of a pub quiz team, and everybody learns a lesson, and there is a warm montage at the end. Real life is messier and better than that.

I was a token, for a while. I was the team's handy Muslim, and some weeks that was all I was. What changed it was not confrontation. It was consistency. I kept turning up in November when it was dark and raining and everyone was tired. I learned their grandkids' names. I remembered Daz's annual argument with the quizmaster about the sports round. When you stay long enough, you stop being a category and start being a person who is expected on Thursdays.

Round Seven: What Seven Rounds Actually Taught Me

That ordinary British rituals — a sticky table, a pen that doesn't work, a slightly wrong answer about the 1996 Eurovision winner — are not the opposite of a life of faith. They are just the place where a life of faith meets other lives.

I still get the Islam questions. I still answer them, mostly with a smile, occasionally with a disclaimer about how nobody elected me spokesperson. But the question I get asked most, week after week, is not about God or halal or the news. It is: 'Another lime and soda?'

Yes please. Same round, same table, same people. That, I have found, is what most of belonging turns out to be.