I mustn't forget to be systematic in my research. That's a lesson I have learnt already in the last few weeks of blogging this ghost-journal.
There are so many resources that will be useful but often, I am asking such wild questions, sometimes stupid questions (I don't mind that they seem stupid) because it means I'm not making too many assumptions - it means, I can be wide-eyed and amazed when I get a good answer.
Some of the issues that I've already raised - like the gap between flights and voucher validation - I think may have been answered by the Hansard site and it's enitrely possible to have had possession of the Ministry of Labour Voucher, entered the UK and then had the voucher stamped before the validity ran out. I think that is plausible.
The other part of being systematic - is making sure I can validate all the primary sources I have in my possession. It's all well and good having the original airline tickets with dates but don't mean a thing unless I can check them against a passenger manifesto or have some other official corroboration in writing that it actually took place. So, that's the approach...
Have a primary source, check that is genuined, validate it and then contextualise it - in terms of the historic and emotional backdrop. Let's not forget, the systematuc indexing of each source - I have created an authority file of data items to use for my catalogue and I am keeping it simple:
What is the source?
Format of source?
Individual Family member to which it relates
Date of source
Type
Primary or Secondary source
Validated
Documentation of validation.
I have another piece of Oral information from my mum. She recalls that on first arrival, dad did stay in London and then went to Birmingham after the initial six months to work in a woollen mill. There is no documented source in my files to corroborate this so, how does anyone go about looking for a place of work where someone may or may not have been employed when they don't know the name of the factory, the dates of employment or any other facts which have not been determined from someone's (not always reliable) personal memory?
A discussion also arose about immunisations of new entrants into the UK - I have not found any reliable information about health and travel for that period - specificially related to migrants from South Asia. Although, migrants would not have been able to refuse a medical examination by an immigration officer at their port of entry. This does not mean that all migrants actually received a medical exam. It would be interesting to know what the procedure involved - what was checked and what criteria was used to refuse entry.
In the last couple of days, I have had a chance to both reflect on some of the information I have found as well as to make new ties with old acquaintances and family friends and am pleased to say may have inspired similar personal investigations into their pasts. I really hope some lines of enquiry cross and that our mutual interests will lead to finding out other truths and maybe in sharing them, we will arrive, like our fathers did and just as they dreamt of a new world, our world will be changed and made concrete beneath us. Isn't that how the tarmac must have felt when they first came here?
03 February 2010
01 February 2010
Mind the London Gap
A strange gap in the dates leads me to wonder what happened between dad's flight from Bangladesh in Apr 1963 to his Minisitry of Labour Voucher's date of entry to the UK in November 1963. Would he have had a stop-over in Karachi? I don't think so as the outbound ticket lists multiple changes for the same date.
So, what happened for seven months?
Aside from this anomaly, I have found his residential address up to May 1964 based on his NHS Medical Card which was 24 Offord Road, London, N1, not very far from Camden and Kentish Towns and is 2 minutes walk from Caledonian Road Station (British Rail overground). The next question has to be, why there? What secret lair of our mythical meanderers existed here? Was there a job here? A lodging, paid for by an employer? Who else lived here? Questions, questions. His GP was a Dr K. Bhattarcharya, who is more than likely a late Bhattacharya by now.
Below, is the Google Map with satellite image overlayed of Offord Road as it is now.
From what I can tell, there were terraces with gardens - relatively long - probably about 60 feet. The street outside the terraced houses looks narrow - and is likely quite overcrowded with cars but would have been fairly empty in 1964.
What I like about this image is that from a bird's eye view it is the same as it was 46 years ago, nothing much has changed except maybe the trees will be taller and some of the roofs will have been retiles, reimagined or houses slightly renovated and extended but generally, the spirit of Offord Road is the same. Isn't it?
View Larger Map
So, what happened for seven months?
Aside from this anomaly, I have found his residential address up to May 1964 based on his NHS Medical Card which was 24 Offord Road, London, N1, not very far from Camden and Kentish Towns and is 2 minutes walk from Caledonian Road Station (British Rail overground). The next question has to be, why there? What secret lair of our mythical meanderers existed here? Was there a job here? A lodging, paid for by an employer? Who else lived here? Questions, questions. His GP was a Dr K. Bhattarcharya, who is more than likely a late Bhattacharya by now.
Below, is the Google Map with satellite image overlayed of Offord Road as it is now.
From what I can tell, there were terraces with gardens - relatively long - probably about 60 feet. The street outside the terraced houses looks narrow - and is likely quite overcrowded with cars but would have been fairly empty in 1964.
What I like about this image is that from a bird's eye view it is the same as it was 46 years ago, nothing much has changed except maybe the trees will be taller and some of the roofs will have been retiles, reimagined or houses slightly renovated and extended but generally, the spirit of Offord Road is the same. Isn't it?
View Larger Map
27 January 2010
And What About 1963?
Other than the death of my grandfather, I ask why 1963 is the year of choice for coming to the UK? Why then and why not 5 years later (and how long is a piece of string, etc) or 5 years earlier? What was the imperative? No earlier than 1963 may be due to an external limitation such as how and when the UK was actually allowing migrants from that region to apply for entry. The only imperative I can think of for not waiting any longer is the obvious economic one. But were they really that poor? From listening to my mother and her peers, I wouldn't have thought so. They had their own land, and subsisted comfortably on that.
My father was the 2nd eldest sibling out of 3 girls and 4 boys. Another child, I believe died before any of them were born (this needs verification). His older sister, I've never met - she died in the early 1980s. The number of siblings is not very unusual and just one infant death is almost a miracle compared to the mortality rates for the period. He was born in some year between the late 1920s and the early 1930s and although his passport indicates January 1932, this is just a date of convenience for official purposes.
But I keep asking myself why would a man of my father's age, with a young family and a comfortable subsistence - and all those siblings - want to migrate to the UK?
The answer is simple. Freedom. I hadn't thought about it because my worldview is so Europeanised and is cemented in only really knowing about what happened after 1971, that I forget that from 1947 onwards, the moment of East Pakistan's inception, the people of Bangladesh were subject to great political and military upheaval. In fact, my mother recalls how her father's village was under Marshall Law by the Pakistani Army for a period in her teens.
Looking into the documented history, you would understand very well why many men decided that life might just be better under the British than under the rule of Pakistan. For example, no sooner had Pakistan become independent of India, did it decide the Urdu would be the de facto language of people in East Pakistan (what is now Bangladesh). Bangla as a language was no longer to be used in officialdom, taught in schools, spoken in offices. This explains my parent's ability to speak relatively fluently to our Urdu neighbours and my friend's as I was growing up.
Bangla did not become a state language of what was termed the state of Pakistan until 1956 after much protests and a highly provocative Language Movement in 1952 which is still commemmorated today.
In 1958 however East Pakistan came under Marshall Law. This was the catalyst for many men of my father's generation. They were not fighters, they were farmers and fisherman and all they wanted to do was continue living a normal life. So, it seems to me that they weren't all just economic migrants, they were slowly fleeing a country they didn't see as their own any more. It turns out that Ministry of Labour Vouchers were issued under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 and 1969, so there would not have been an opportunity to migrate any earlier than 1963 considering the application process.
It will be interesting to see exactly how many East Pakistani men, in particular, were among that first wave in 1962 and 1963 and whether the numbers grew in subsequent years. Were they clambouring for vouchers like they were precious morsels of rice? Were they so hungry for a new life away from the occupiers that they would have gone to the other side of the world, to a cold, wet, colourless place where they would have to toil in manual jobs just to send back two or three pounds once in a while? Was it really going to be that much better?
My father was the 2nd eldest sibling out of 3 girls and 4 boys. Another child, I believe died before any of them were born (this needs verification). His older sister, I've never met - she died in the early 1980s. The number of siblings is not very unusual and just one infant death is almost a miracle compared to the mortality rates for the period. He was born in some year between the late 1920s and the early 1930s and although his passport indicates January 1932, this is just a date of convenience for official purposes.
But I keep asking myself why would a man of my father's age, with a young family and a comfortable subsistence - and all those siblings - want to migrate to the UK?
The answer is simple. Freedom. I hadn't thought about it because my worldview is so Europeanised and is cemented in only really knowing about what happened after 1971, that I forget that from 1947 onwards, the moment of East Pakistan's inception, the people of Bangladesh were subject to great political and military upheaval. In fact, my mother recalls how her father's village was under Marshall Law by the Pakistani Army for a period in her teens.
Looking into the documented history, you would understand very well why many men decided that life might just be better under the British than under the rule of Pakistan. For example, no sooner had Pakistan become independent of India, did it decide the Urdu would be the de facto language of people in East Pakistan (what is now Bangladesh). Bangla as a language was no longer to be used in officialdom, taught in schools, spoken in offices. This explains my parent's ability to speak relatively fluently to our Urdu neighbours and my friend's as I was growing up.
Bangla did not become a state language of what was termed the state of Pakistan until 1956 after much protests and a highly provocative Language Movement in 1952 which is still commemmorated today.
In 1958 however East Pakistan came under Marshall Law. This was the catalyst for many men of my father's generation. They were not fighters, they were farmers and fisherman and all they wanted to do was continue living a normal life. So, it seems to me that they weren't all just economic migrants, they were slowly fleeing a country they didn't see as their own any more. It turns out that Ministry of Labour Vouchers were issued under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 and 1969, so there would not have been an opportunity to migrate any earlier than 1963 considering the application process.
It will be interesting to see exactly how many East Pakistani men, in particular, were among that first wave in 1962 and 1963 and whether the numbers grew in subsequent years. Were they clambouring for vouchers like they were precious morsels of rice? Were they so hungry for a new life away from the occupiers that they would have gone to the other side of the world, to a cold, wet, colourless place where they would have to toil in manual jobs just to send back two or three pounds once in a while? Was it really going to be that much better?
25 January 2010
Elevation
The images below are different views of the airline ticket for my dad's first journey - they show the front page, the flight details and then the flight details zoomed in so the dates are more visible. They are 9th April 1963. It details the connecting flights from Sylhet to Dacca to Karachi to London.
This was a journey being undertaken by a 32 year old (roughly) farm hand who had no real grasp of English at the time, no certainly about what job he would fall into, no experience of modern travel other than perhaps trains or buses from major cities (if at all) and for whom, this was worth leaving a young wife and two young children for in order to entertain the idea of a better life.
He had no concept of what England would be like - he'd never seen the pictures or watched television. His world view would have been created from newspapers, letters from individuals who had already braved this "odyssey". I say odyssey, because after all, this was an unknown land where streets may have been paved with gold and stars and creatures both beautiful and abominable may have lain waiting in their paths. I can only imagine the parting that would have taken place - it would have been at the village, as the expense of having a wife and children or other family entourage to be taken to the local airport would have cost a farming family a fortune. They weren't poor, but they weren't too comfortable either. There was no concept about whether he would ever be able to afford the trip back - it was just a dream he would. So, that goodbye, that was really goodbye for my mum and my elder brother and my sister. My brother would have been 8 years old and my sister would have been 11 months. Which leads me to an interesting, and amusing realisation about my sister' age. My mother insists that dad left for the UK when my sister was just under a year old (roughly 11 months), which would place her birth month at some point in May 1962. But documents place her as having been born September 1963. I suspect my dad wasn't the first and he certainly wasn't the last to contrive birth dates of their children to fit an agenda to be employed at some point in the future.
So, this ticket is telling me about how my father was setting out on his own, not just on one flight but three connecting flights to places he'd never been before, with the thought that he might never see his wife, his children or his mother and siblings ever again.
My esteem for him, from this point has elevated in recognition that he did this alone, for them, for me.
This was a journey being undertaken by a 32 year old (roughly) farm hand who had no real grasp of English at the time, no certainly about what job he would fall into, no experience of modern travel other than perhaps trains or buses from major cities (if at all) and for whom, this was worth leaving a young wife and two young children for in order to entertain the idea of a better life.
He had no concept of what England would be like - he'd never seen the pictures or watched television. His world view would have been created from newspapers, letters from individuals who had already braved this "odyssey". I say odyssey, because after all, this was an unknown land where streets may have been paved with gold and stars and creatures both beautiful and abominable may have lain waiting in their paths. I can only imagine the parting that would have taken place - it would have been at the village, as the expense of having a wife and children or other family entourage to be taken to the local airport would have cost a farming family a fortune. They weren't poor, but they weren't too comfortable either. There was no concept about whether he would ever be able to afford the trip back - it was just a dream he would. So, that goodbye, that was really goodbye for my mum and my elder brother and my sister. My brother would have been 8 years old and my sister would have been 11 months. Which leads me to an interesting, and amusing realisation about my sister' age. My mother insists that dad left for the UK when my sister was just under a year old (roughly 11 months), which would place her birth month at some point in May 1962. But documents place her as having been born September 1963. I suspect my dad wasn't the first and he certainly wasn't the last to contrive birth dates of their children to fit an agenda to be employed at some point in the future.
So, this ticket is telling me about how my father was setting out on his own, not just on one flight but three connecting flights to places he'd never been before, with the thought that he might never see his wife, his children or his mother and siblings ever again.
My esteem for him, from this point has elevated in recognition that he did this alone, for them, for me.
24 January 2010
The Origin Story
This is the key artefact of my Origin Story. This is the slip of paper that made my life and everything that has happened since May 1963 possible.Just as Superman or Spiderman had an origin story, this gives me that vital "truth", the historic context, of how my parents came to settle in the UK.
The Voucher is one of the many filed old papers from my parent's precious holdall. It had been there untouched since 1963. It is a very important document and without it, my dad would not have been able to enter the country to work. It was issued to migrant workers. There is more information about it here: http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/asian/settling/settling.htm
What it tells me is that this was issued about 6 months after my grandfather died. (He died circa November 1962). It tells me my dad, named in the voucher as Miahdan Ullah, had this voucher validated on 27th November 1963 (he entered the UK much earlier, in April but I'll talk about that when I scan in the airline ticket). It tells me that at the time of issue, my father was East Pakistani. (Bangladesh did not form until 1971). Already, this has given me a backdrop, a time, a place and maybe even an insight into the personal thoughts he might have struggled with. Perhaps there was a hidden relief in my father knowing that HIS father did not have to deal with his eldest son leaving their land and his rightful place running the family. I might speculate that there was a disagreement between them, that my father rebelled and did the application without my grandfather's knowledge. Maybe my mother might agree with my speculation but we will never really know.
The voucher also tells me his occupation was "Cultivator". The address line is significant, not only because the country is Pakistan but that this is the same address for my parent's village even today. It's difficult to describe how the postal sysyem works but "V" or "Villa" is for Village (Mukimpur), "P.O." is for Post Office (Lamja), "Dist" refers to District (Sylhet). There should be a further division between post office and District for the Town which is Habiganj. It's very close to Sylhet in the North Eastern part of Bangladesh, close to the border with Assam.
The physical location of this address covers a fairly wide area. Village is more akin to a hamlet and not strictly speaking a specific house with a door number, especially in a rural area.
Google Maps shows it here:
View Larger Map
23 January 2010
I Can't Time Travel
I won't know all the specifics, all the actual living details of how my father travelled, what he was feeling. I can't time travel and sit on his shoulders so there will be moments when I have to imagine how the facts played out. My husband advised me that this should not just be an almanack of data and documents. It's not just a dossier of a journey.
My dad died in September 1992 of complications from tuberculosis. At the time of writing this, I will be twice the age I was when he passed away and isn't that already an extra life for me? My memory of him is already half fact, half fantasy. He is both a dead, lost archaism as well as a chiseled in stone mythical being. He always had that quality when I was a child because he was either at work or somewhere else - visiting the homeland - or dividing his time between his migrant peers and helping people write letters to their loved ones in Bengali. And when he remarried, I did not see or hear from him for nearly three years. So, once quantified, I only really knew him for twelve or so years. I suppose, I feel cheated.
This, then, is my desire to spend a bit more time in his company. To understand him and to mark him as a legend, a heroic wayfarer whose story will tell all the migrants' stories. It might charm the generations who followed, be they the descendants of those first settlers or those embarking on their own today to other places, to have a figurehead, a god-like superhero about whom they can tell their children as bedtime stories, just as they do with Zeus or Jesus.
My dad died in September 1992 of complications from tuberculosis. At the time of writing this, I will be twice the age I was when he passed away and isn't that already an extra life for me? My memory of him is already half fact, half fantasy. He is both a dead, lost archaism as well as a chiseled in stone mythical being. He always had that quality when I was a child because he was either at work or somewhere else - visiting the homeland - or dividing his time between his migrant peers and helping people write letters to their loved ones in Bengali. And when he remarried, I did not see or hear from him for nearly three years. So, once quantified, I only really knew him for twelve or so years. I suppose, I feel cheated.
This, then, is my desire to spend a bit more time in his company. To understand him and to mark him as a legend, a heroic wayfarer whose story will tell all the migrants' stories. It might charm the generations who followed, be they the descendants of those first settlers or those embarking on their own today to other places, to have a figurehead, a god-like superhero about whom they can tell their children as bedtime stories, just as they do with Zeus or Jesus.
22 January 2010
I am the next generation
At first I thought I shouldn't say much about myself and who I am before embarking on putting all the context together of how I came to be here. I learnt from someone that sometimes, you have to put the ending first and that gives your story - whether fiction or faction - a direction, a gravity.
I am Hazera. I don't know who named me but my mother will once say my dad and thrice say my brother. I was born in Bangladesh on a date that eludes me. It's definitely 1975 and my passport says July but we celebrate in June. It's beautifully ambiguous, just like my identity. And Hazera is my "official" name. Not the one my siblings, parents, neighbours and myriad other distant relations and adoptive aunts and uncles called me.
I am Zoba. It means Hibiscus. Friends of my parents suffixed it with Rani. Zoba Rani.
I have three living siblings; a brother, 18 years my senior; a sister 12 years my senior and a half brother about 13 years my junior. My father remarried when I was 12 and he never met his son.
When I was much younger, my parents had a lovely clipped holdall which held all their filing of important papers and old passports. It had the airline tickets, port documents, international money order receipts , trade union memberships, gas bills, letters to the solicitors about our naturalisation, addresses of forgotten places on slips of old notebook paper, thin blue envelopes which had writing on the inside and the words Par Avion on the front and stamps with tigers on them. To avoid them being lost or filed by my mother, I took them and started going through them. When I lay them out, in date order, I suddenly saw a whole history. I could map out the very moment my father left his village in Mukimpur, Habiganj, Sylhet and follow him to the plane, imagining what window seat he took and him leaving the chaos of the primitive airport. I could then board with him on a flight from Sylhet to Dhaka and connect to Karachi and then onward to London. I started to be in his shoes, taking his first steps on his maiden voyage to a country that he did not yet know would be cold, damp, dark.
I am Hazera. I don't know who named me but my mother will once say my dad and thrice say my brother. I was born in Bangladesh on a date that eludes me. It's definitely 1975 and my passport says July but we celebrate in June. It's beautifully ambiguous, just like my identity. And Hazera is my "official" name. Not the one my siblings, parents, neighbours and myriad other distant relations and adoptive aunts and uncles called me.
I am Zoba. It means Hibiscus. Friends of my parents suffixed it with Rani. Zoba Rani.
I have three living siblings; a brother, 18 years my senior; a sister 12 years my senior and a half brother about 13 years my junior. My father remarried when I was 12 and he never met his son.
When I was much younger, my parents had a lovely clipped holdall which held all their filing of important papers and old passports. It had the airline tickets, port documents, international money order receipts , trade union memberships, gas bills, letters to the solicitors about our naturalisation, addresses of forgotten places on slips of old notebook paper, thin blue envelopes which had writing on the inside and the words Par Avion on the front and stamps with tigers on them. To avoid them being lost or filed by my mother, I took them and started going through them. When I lay them out, in date order, I suddenly saw a whole history. I could map out the very moment my father left his village in Mukimpur, Habiganj, Sylhet and follow him to the plane, imagining what window seat he took and him leaving the chaos of the primitive airport. I could then board with him on a flight from Sylhet to Dhaka and connect to Karachi and then onward to London. I started to be in his shoes, taking his first steps on his maiden voyage to a country that he did not yet know would be cold, damp, dark.
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