Greetings from Bury Park by Sarfraz Manzoor

Author:Sarfraz Manzoor
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

Factory

Some folks are born into a good life, other folks get it anyway anyhow

‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’, Bruce Springsteen

My father began on the Vauxhall car production line in January 1971 – five months before I was born – and remained at the factory for fifteen years. I remember him leaving for work in the mornings, my mother filling his blue tiffin can with spicy dahl, folded chapattis and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. We would not see him again until the evening when he would return home, tired and irritable. He’d eat in silence with the rest of the family with the black-and-white television on in the background. None of us knew exactly what he did at the factory, it didn’t matter. He worked for the money, there was no satisfaction or pleasure in it; it was the price to be paid to ensure the family were clothed and fed. We did not know anyone who enjoyed their work and so it followed that I was raised to expect my eventual destiny to be a job I hated but which paid reasonably well.

The best way to ensure a well-paid job was to study hard and excel in education. The Pakistani parents who toiled in factories, drove taxis, assembled circuit boards and made dresses were solidly working class, but they had great ambitions for their children. When I was seven my mother would take me to Maidenhall Junior School, a few minutes’ walk from my home. Maidenhall was in the heart of Bury Park and the children at my school were, like me, the sons and daughters of working-class immigrants. At the time, my mother had only two sets of clothes and the other Pakistani mothers would make barbed comments, saying: ‘Sister, you must like that top a lot, don’t you?’ As they walked along Newark Road towards their terraced homes the conversations between the mothers would be full of confident predictions about the glittering careers their little boys would be following.

My best friend was Tanveer. Tanveer’s father was so keen that his son have the best start in life that he insisted on speaking to him – and me – in English. This always made me feel uncomfortable as I had been taught to speak to my elders in Urdu, so when his father spoke to me in English I would nevertheless respond in Urdu.

Tanveer’s mother was younger than her husband and also younger than my mother. She was a short, plump woman who favoured red lipstick and green eyeshadow, and her conversation would be an endless stream of praise for the wonder that was her darling son and the incredible success for which he was destined. Tanveer knew he was going to grow up to be a doctor, everyone in Bury Park knew: his mother told anyone who would listen that her little boy was going to be studying medicine.

Although they pretended to be friends my parents and Tanveer’s parents were engaged in a lengthy war as to whose child was going to be more successful.

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