What I do know is that within a relatively short space of time, the four of us were back in the north-west of England. Mum and Dad rented a house in Bury, picking up jobs in what remained of the rapidly declining textile industry. Dad seemed pleased to be closer to his family again, but his happiness wasn’t shared by Mum. Fatima was now openly hostile towards her, shunning her when we went to visit and speaking in Pashto to confuse her.
Dad was the source of more grief. He’d stopped drinking, but was now disappearing from the house for days and even weeks on end. ‘Family business at home,’ Mum was told. In this case, ‘home’ meant Pakistan. Without explanation or apology, Dad would just pack a suitcase and go. Mum would be left with two children in a damp, rented terrace house, with no idea when he would come back.
One morning in desperation she put us in the pram, got the bus to Hawesmill and walked up the steep street to Fatima’s house, determined to find out what her husband was up to.
‘Is he here?’ she demanded, as Fatima opened the door. ‘Or is he back in Pakistan? I’ve got two little kids here who miss their dad. I know you don’t like me. But I’ve a right to know what’s going on.’
Fatima paused. She had no time for this kuffar, this unbeliever, who had brought shame on her. But she felt that she was entitled to an explanation. Maybe if she heard the truth, she would disappear very quickly. She invited Mum to come in and sit down.
‘You should hear this from Ahmed, not me,’ said Fatima. ‘But since he’s not here I may as well tell you – the reason he goes to Pakistan all the time is because of his family.’
‘I know that,’ said Mum. ‘But if he’s so desperate to see his mum and dad, or his brothers, sisters, aunties, cousins, whoever, then why doesn’t he just bring them over here for a visit?’
Fatima smiled. The poor woman was clueless.
‘Not that sort of family,’ she said. ‘Ahmed has a wife in Tajak. He married her before he married you. Oh, they’ve got a few children too.’
I wonder what Mum thought as she wandered in a daze back to the bus station that day, the hems of her badly fitting salwar kameez trousers trailing through puddle-strewn cobbled streets, with two scruffy mixed-race kids crying in the pram. Meanwhile, somewhere hot, somewhere she’d never been invited for now obvious reasons, Dad was enjoying the fruits of his labours with the family he’d kept secret from her.
I was too young to remember the row that took place when Dad finally got home. It must have been one hell of a ding-dong. I imagine Mum screwing her Asian clothes up into a ball and throwing them at him, then telling him to cook his own bloody lentil dhal. It sounds almost comic, like a scene from East Is East, but it must have been awful. However it was conducted and whatever was said, the upshot was that Dad moved out of our house and into Fatima’s, leaving Mum with custody of the pair of us.
Now I believe Fatima acted maliciously by telling Mum the truth about Dad. She wanted to split them up. But in a way Mum had what she wanted – two beautiful children to care for and love as she had never been loved. She didn’t have to fit in with foreign customs anymore or cook funny food. She had a roof over her head and a job. There were people saying, ‘Told you so,’ but she didn’t care. I’d like to think that my first memory of her happened around this point: her smiling face turned towards me and the sun coming out.
‘Mohammed, oh my Mohammed …’ Do I remember her whispering that as she cuddled me protectively to her? Perhaps she did. At any rate, I’d like to think she was happy.
Dad still wanted to see us and would call round at weekends. Mum was still angry with him, but didn’t stop him from visiting. I guess he wouldn’t have taken us much further than the local park or the ice-cream parlour, and up to Hawesmill to see the family. Whether they wanted to see us would have been another matter, but knowing Dad he would’ve made sure that the family connections so important to Muslims were maintained, even if they included the children of an unbeliever.
One Saturday in the early part of 1978, just a few months after Dad and Mum had split up, he called for us as usual. He made sure we were dressed in our best clothes and also had a change of outfit. He explained to Mum that there was a family gathering in Hawesmill because a relative had flown in from Pakistan. We needed a change of clothes, he said, because we’d end up playing in the backyard and would get filthy. Mum packed us a little bag each, kissed us both on the head and saw us to the door. I guess we turned and waved to her as we climbed into the back of the battered old Datsun Dad always borrowed to pick us up. She shut the door, happy that she had a few hours to herself before we returned, tired out, after a long afternoon’s playing with the local kids in Hawesmill.
In the 1970s only lucky little English kids travelled on aeroplanes. Normally a family like ours would’ve been completely out of the international air travel league, but strong ties to Pakistan meant that money was somehow found to make the trip ‘back home’ and see relatives longing to hear stories about the land of opportunity that was giving such a warm welcome to its former ‘colonials’. I expect there was a whip-round in the streets of Hawesmill in the weeks before Dad came to pick us up from Mum’s. Whatever work Dad was doing at the time – shifts in the mill, plus a bit of labouring on the side – wouldn’t have paid for three airline tickets to Islamabad. That said, two of those tickets were one-way only, so maybe there was a discount. I don’t know – I’d just turned three and Jasmine was almost two. Babies, really – and far too young to be removed from their mother without explanation.
From what I can gather, the police were involved. I’d like to think that Mum banged on every door in Hawesmill for answers. She certainly did later on, until it became clear that she wasn’t going to get a straight answer out of anyone up there. But what were the police’s chances of making an arrest? An Asian man takes his mixed-race kids to Pakistan for a holiday and forgets to tell his estranged wife, a white woman who tried to fit in with the funny foreigners but wasn’t welcome – sounds like an open-and-shut case. Perhaps the police thought she had it coming to her, or maybe they did try hard to find us. But the trail would’ve gone cold as soon as we arrived in Islamabad, and I don’t think the law could’ve expected much help in Hawesmill.
We were taken to Tajak for a ‘holiday’ and put in the care of various ‘aunties’, some related, some not. Dad stayed for a while, a week or two perhaps, then went back to England. The need to earn money must have been overwhelming, because of course he had two families to support, so staying in Pakistan for any length of time wasn’t an option.
Meanwhile Mum made repeated attempts to track us down, without success. She must have been heartbroken, trailing those windswept terrace streets for her two missing children and begging Fatima for news of our whereabouts. What did they tell her – if anything? Many years later, I was told she had been informed by Dad’s family that we’d been killed in a car crash while on holiday in Pakistan, and that we’d been buried there. What a terrible thing to say to a mother, especially when it was a barefaced lie. Mum, poor and isolated from her own friends and family, could do nothing to disprove it. Luckily, she never believed it.
I can’t recall if I met my step-family at this time. It’s probable, given that Tajak is a small place, but being so young, I don’t have any memory of them. What I do remember is the day I was circumcised. Although it isn’t mentioned in the Qu’ran, circumcision (tahara) is a long-established ritual in Islam. It is to do with cleanliness and purification, particularly before prayer, and there was no reason why I would be exempted. Unfortunately for me, Mum had opposed this after my birth and Dad had no choice but to postpone it. Now she wasn’t around he could do what he liked, and one of his first jobs in Tajak was to find somebody suitably qualified to do it.
It goes without saying there was no anaesthetic. Dad would’ve rounded up the village imam, who also served as the village doctor, and a few of the elders, to oversee proceedings. I don’t recall their solemn bearded faces leaning over me as I lay on a scruffy bit of carpet in the village mosque,