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?
27 January 2010
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.
21 January 2010
Possible Titles
1) Chronicle of My Wayfaring Father
2) Treading on Tarmac
3) Long walk to London - A Chronicle of an emigre's inaugural journey to the UK.
I like (1) and (3) but maybe combined better? Maybe something like this:
"Long Walk to London - A Chronicle of My Father's Maiden Voyage"
2) Treading on Tarmac
3) Long walk to London - A Chronicle of an emigre's inaugural journey to the UK.
I like (1) and (3) but maybe combined better? Maybe something like this:
"Long Walk to London - A Chronicle of My Father's Maiden Voyage"
Why I have the desire to do this...
I said months ago that I would write an introduction to what draws me to want to chart my dad's journey to the UK in all its documentary minutiae.
Firstly, I think I want to add to the knowledge base of the South Asian diaspora. My friend Usma would like that - she's hoping to do a Masters with SAOS looking at this topic with anthropology.
Secondly; now, I am not an academic, I'm not a sociologist or have any distinguishing qualification to do with studies of this realm of history, ethnicity or economics. What I am, is a daughter who has always heard about the stories, the wistful memories, the hardships, the changes and adaptations that her parents punctuated their family gatherings with. My mother's many sorrowful but spirited personal histories of her kin or the wealth of the land they lost, or the punishing monsoon rain, or being the eldest son's wife in a large brood for whom she was responsible from about the age of 12 or 13, are the stories that I am desperate to identify with.
Thirdly, this was my father's journey - his soul aim to get away from being a farmer's son, the implications of which have probably been an unforeseen factor in the loss of personal wealth and aspiration for many Bengali families of Sylheti origin. This is purely anecdotal and this work does not intend to set out numerical or statistical proof for personal observations. I'll try to use already gathered data to address certain areas but this book is not aiming to be a text book. I will at least try to discuss some of these implications and the evidence in a later chapter - just to reconcile whether the anecdotal bears any relation to the reality. I suppose, I would consider this my father's diary - had he thought to write one - and just to lay out the facts of what happened from A to B. It may serve as some kind of legacy to me, a new set of myths and heroic journeys to re-tell my children and my children's children. Maybe I'd like to embrace all those men and women who came to the UK (and elsewhere) with new respect for their odyssey, to say "Yes, it was worth it. You made the sacrifices and the next generation recognises wholeheartedly your effort, your need to find a better life. And you gave us a better life and so in turn, we will work hard and flourish and preserve your memory."
Who knows, in 30 or 40 years time, they will be considered as legends?
Finally, and this is the most obvious and cliched of the reasons for turning my attention to this work - my identity. I'm not so sure I know exactly what or who I am and what or who is meant to be the person my children will perceive. I've lived in the UK since I was a toddler, little more than perhaps 18 month's old. I've been to Bangladesh just once, when I was nine from November 1984 to August 1985. I have to say, the experience didn't do me much good - both physically or psychologically. I lost weight, I got ill, my education fell back at least a year and I didn't quite understand the point of it all. I wish the experience had been different and that I had come away with a wonderful, romantic, rose-tinted view of the country, my extended family and everything in between. But, I didn't.
All I know is that I spent a great deal of my formative years moulding a "third" culture for myself. I've borrowed this term from someone, I'll fill in the references later...but what I mean by that is I knew I wasn't a white, English person but I knew I didn't really understand or care enough about being a Bengali person. I kind of grew my own culture - it's not even half way between the two - I sort of rejected both - but it gave me a chameleon like ability to shift into mimicking one or the other depending on my personal goals at the time.
What's most imperative for me, now I've had a daughter, is to make sure I know exactly how to deal with her questions about her personal culture - not the one that society foists on her or the one her grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles will inevitably want to infuse into her but the one she will build for herself. And she is bound to because her father, my husband, is white, English.
I might get to the end of this work and consider myself completely and utterly Bengali - for which there are implications or I might consider myself British Asian - now, I'm sure I'll have to build a personal definition of what I think that even means. Or I might decide, I'm just British or that I'm just a writer or a poet or a photographer or a communist. It's whether we want to all consider a different way of indexing "identity". Maybe it's nothing to do with Race or culture at all.
Firstly, I think I want to add to the knowledge base of the South Asian diaspora. My friend Usma would like that - she's hoping to do a Masters with SAOS looking at this topic with anthropology.
Secondly; now, I am not an academic, I'm not a sociologist or have any distinguishing qualification to do with studies of this realm of history, ethnicity or economics. What I am, is a daughter who has always heard about the stories, the wistful memories, the hardships, the changes and adaptations that her parents punctuated their family gatherings with. My mother's many sorrowful but spirited personal histories of her kin or the wealth of the land they lost, or the punishing monsoon rain, or being the eldest son's wife in a large brood for whom she was responsible from about the age of 12 or 13, are the stories that I am desperate to identify with.
Thirdly, this was my father's journey - his soul aim to get away from being a farmer's son, the implications of which have probably been an unforeseen factor in the loss of personal wealth and aspiration for many Bengali families of Sylheti origin. This is purely anecdotal and this work does not intend to set out numerical or statistical proof for personal observations. I'll try to use already gathered data to address certain areas but this book is not aiming to be a text book. I will at least try to discuss some of these implications and the evidence in a later chapter - just to reconcile whether the anecdotal bears any relation to the reality. I suppose, I would consider this my father's diary - had he thought to write one - and just to lay out the facts of what happened from A to B. It may serve as some kind of legacy to me, a new set of myths and heroic journeys to re-tell my children and my children's children. Maybe I'd like to embrace all those men and women who came to the UK (and elsewhere) with new respect for their odyssey, to say "Yes, it was worth it. You made the sacrifices and the next generation recognises wholeheartedly your effort, your need to find a better life. And you gave us a better life and so in turn, we will work hard and flourish and preserve your memory."
Who knows, in 30 or 40 years time, they will be considered as legends?
Finally, and this is the most obvious and cliched of the reasons for turning my attention to this work - my identity. I'm not so sure I know exactly what or who I am and what or who is meant to be the person my children will perceive. I've lived in the UK since I was a toddler, little more than perhaps 18 month's old. I've been to Bangladesh just once, when I was nine from November 1984 to August 1985. I have to say, the experience didn't do me much good - both physically or psychologically. I lost weight, I got ill, my education fell back at least a year and I didn't quite understand the point of it all. I wish the experience had been different and that I had come away with a wonderful, romantic, rose-tinted view of the country, my extended family and everything in between. But, I didn't.
All I know is that I spent a great deal of my formative years moulding a "third" culture for myself. I've borrowed this term from someone, I'll fill in the references later...but what I mean by that is I knew I wasn't a white, English person but I knew I didn't really understand or care enough about being a Bengali person. I kind of grew my own culture - it's not even half way between the two - I sort of rejected both - but it gave me a chameleon like ability to shift into mimicking one or the other depending on my personal goals at the time.
What's most imperative for me, now I've had a daughter, is to make sure I know exactly how to deal with her questions about her personal culture - not the one that society foists on her or the one her grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles will inevitably want to infuse into her but the one she will build for herself. And she is bound to because her father, my husband, is white, English.
I might get to the end of this work and consider myself completely and utterly Bengali - for which there are implications or I might consider myself British Asian - now, I'm sure I'll have to build a personal definition of what I think that even means. Or I might decide, I'm just British or that I'm just a writer or a poet or a photographer or a communist. It's whether we want to all consider a different way of indexing "identity". Maybe it's nothing to do with Race or culture at all.
20 January 2010
Back from the brink of motherhood
Well, it's been nearly 18 months since my last post and my writing mojo has returned since having successfully made a baby girl! The timing of the return of my mojo is a little bit awkward in that I go back to work in a couple of weeks but no matter. The point is, I am back to writing and blogging.
Not much progress has been made on the outline of the documentary book I had in mind, purely because my study space is still in some disarray but I am going back to Boot Camp under the hawk eye of Alex Keegan and I want to make sure I write at least 500 words a day. To be honest, I am on Facebook so much that I might has well redirect all that frivolity, naval-gazing and mild attacks of innuendo and ranting about whatever the latest thing is to offend me, that I'm sure on most occasions, I have written a short story at least twice over.
Not much progress has been made on the outline of the documentary book I had in mind, purely because my study space is still in some disarray but I am going back to Boot Camp under the hawk eye of Alex Keegan and I want to make sure I write at least 500 words a day. To be honest, I am on Facebook so much that I might has well redirect all that frivolity, naval-gazing and mild attacks of innuendo and ranting about whatever the latest thing is to offend me, that I'm sure on most occasions, I have written a short story at least twice over.
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