Eid Day, infront of the Riyadh Water Tower - 1972.
Part one
'Out of Place,
Out of Places'
Ch. 9 - My Nanna and Nana Jan (My maternal family)
Ch. 15 - Canada, Sweden... & Now Saudi Arabia (1970's)
Ch. 23 - The Class Menagerie ( All things English! )
Ch. 24 - The Boarding Life ( Friends from all over the orb)
In the US, in front of Niagara Falls
(Chapter 1).
1- Who’s Your Mother?
Out of place.
Out of places.
For a young Muslim girl from Pakistan, it is amazing what the addition of a single letter, or its deletion, can do to the meaning of a phrase. Out of place. Yes, that was me, adrift at times as I crossed continents, cultures, religions, languages, friends here and gone. But I am also out of places. The places I have lived, sometimes in pain, sometimes in pleasure, are a part of who I am today, of what I have accomplished and still seek to accomplish.
I was not always this attuned to the subtleties of the English language.
I tell my children – a son, Humza, and a daughter, Maryam – stories of the past. Like children everywhere, they can find a parent’s history sometimes boring, something that happened in that unimaginable land of “before I was born.” But they are good kids, having grown up mostly in one place if not the same house, so there is also a curiosity about what their mother must have been like as a girl – this person who fixes breakfast every morning before going to work. “She is so stable,” I can tell they think, yet my childhood experiences were anything but stable – and so vastly different than theirs.
Unimaginable, yet imaginable.
How can they relate to this young girl, myself as a child, much younger than they are now, on my first school trip to a farm with my classmates in Toronto in 1969?
I am in pre-kindergarten, a little over four years old, and a long way from my home I left behind in Lahore. I have survived in this alien environment of English over the past few weeks by answering people in monosyllables. I have “yes” and “no” thoroughly mastered, my go-to words when all else fails. Sometimes, though, things get more complicated.
The teacher is looking down at me – she is friendly – and says something that I can’t quite understand. The intonation makes it sound like a question. Later, I piece together it must have been something like, “Honey, do you want your hot dog with or without mustard?” as she hands out our lunches.
It is a question, and I nail it!
“Yes,” I answer solemnly.
She flashes me an understanding smile, and I toddle off with my hot dog – no mustard – one more crisis mastered.
A couple of years later, when my family had settled in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where my father was beginning his 30-year-career working in the Ministry of Agriculture and Water, I was enrolled in the Pakistani International School along with all the other children of families who had immigrated to this new land of plenty. Now, I had to revert to Urdu – the native language of most Pakistanis – and I learned to write my letters in a hurry on joining lower school. I quickly became fluent in spoken Urdu as well, because it was the main medium of communication with all my new elementary school friends.
But, five years later, when I was just becoming settled, I learned that my odyssey was far from over.
My mother moved us to Gothenburg, Sweden, for a year while my father continued his work in Riyadh. Pakistanis since the 1960’s had been leaving our country by the thousands because of lack of opportunities, and my mother’s parents and many of her relatives had chosen Sweden.
Now, her aging father – my maternal grandfather – was ill, and she wanted to care for him.
But I really liked my mother’s family and the school I attended, and I remember this period as one of devouring innumerable Swedish meat balls for lunch in the school dining room, loving every mouthful.
It was there that my school principal, the interestingly named Mrs. Hartfelt, made a recommendation that would again change my life. Before we left Gothenberg on the trip back home to Riyadh in 1977 my parents decided to take her advice and enroll my younger brother Aamir and me in a boarding school in Sussex, England.
So, dressed in a prim blazer with my name tags stitched in cursive on all my uniforms, I arrived in Sussex brandishing a trunk full of clothes, a riding helmet and a requisite stiff Sunday hat. I received a welcome, but a much-cooler English version of welcome, from my home room mistress, Mrs. Graham.
My younger brother, Aamir, and I stayed in England until the opening of Minaret-al-Riyadh School in Saudi Arabia, and we then rejoined the family. All the children – there were eventually four of us, me and three younger brothers – we all would graduate, one by one, from the Minaret school.
Now, I was old enough to make my own decisions – with a little parental input, especially from my mother. But was travel by now in my blood, pulling at me like the moon that is so central to the Muslim lunar calendar?
So I moved back to my native Pakistan. From age 18 to my mid-20s, I lived in Karachi, to pursue – and fulfill – my passion for medicine. I discovered the neighborhoods of Karachi driving my first car. I brushed off my rusty Urdu for the second time in my still young life and learned a lot about Pakistani culture in the eight years I spent in that city. In fact, I had become even more Pakistani than my parents, who, on eating food from street vendors in Karachi when they visited me from what had become their permanent home in Saudi Arabia, became ill while I remained immune to it all. I was sympathetic, of course, but also a bit amused, and, as a budding physician, I knew they would quickly recover.
And then we are at the year 1991. With my husband of two weeks and our medical books, I leave for another journey, this one to America.
Yes, I have married a man who is also a young doctor and have taken on the two titles that will define my adult life – Dr. and Mrs. I find it all still very new and exciting and a tad bit stressful.
I am 26 years old, but a very tired and well-traveled 26.
This, I decide, will be my final move.
Vacationing in Karachi - Picnic in Clifton with Nanna, Nana Jan and Dadi (grandparents)
(Chapter 9).
9 - My Nanna & Nana Jan
My Nanna – the Pakistani name for maternal grandmother – and I were very close. She was a simple and a gentle woman who had many unresolved challenges in life, not the least of which were relationships -- whether it was with her siblings or with her much-older spouse. She was the eldest of four sisters and a brother, and tragically her father suffered a nervous breakdown triggered by a fire in his large warehouse which demolished his business. As a result things were much harder in the family from then on.
I have a vague memory of him, my great grandfather, as a slightly built man with sparse white hair and stubbly countenance who seem to appear out of nowhere, full of kind smiles for me.
Life was not any easier for Nanna after she was married. At the tender age of 15, she had her first child, Saeed Mamoo. The family lived in a household where her stern mother-in-law ruled the roost. My Nanna told me – after I was grown – that her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother, exercised total control over everyone and everything in her house, including Nana’s children! She dictated how my mother and uncle were raised, and my Nanna had no choice but to follow her commands precisely. It probably didn’t make it any easier for Nana that my mother got along very well with her grandmother, and almost always got what she wanted.
My Nanna’s younger sister, Chohti Nanna, was married to my grandfather Nana Jan’s younger brother who died in his 30s from a sudden illness. When Nanna’s younger sister became a widow, Nana Jan took her sister and her three young kids into his home and under his wing without question for the next 30 years.
My Nanna made a striking figure in her starched cotton Indian saris and salt-and-pepper hair, which she usually gathered in a neat bun behind her neck. She was of wheat complexion with bright grayish-black eyes, a high forehead and a beauty mole on her right cheek. The most enchanting attribute was her manner, which was very temperate and sweet. Even if she was upset at someone, her digs were so padded that often people missed them completely.
Nanna had seen turmoil usurp lives, and she witnessed riches vanish overnight during the independence movement leading to the birth of Pakistan. As a result, she emigrated from India to Pakistan with Nana Jan and all their children in the late 1950’s much after the partition of the subcontinent, which itself, in her opinion, was a travesty that had led to bloodshed and loss of millions of lives.
Then she was forced to live through a second agony some decades later when her children left Pakistan for the promise of a better future in far-away Scandinavia. I know this was the toughest hurdle for her – the loss of a closely knit, large clan and a way of life she had grown up with in pre-partition India. Things had been easier for the family in India, in spite of her mother-in-law. Her family inhabited a big hawaili (family mansion) with fruit orchards. Innumerable relatives lived close by or actually in the same hawaili. In spite of the partition and her exodus to Pakistan, she never forgot her Hindu and Muslim neighbors, nor her friends and servants back in India.
Whenever given the opportunity, she loved to reminisce about her extended family in Ranchi with whom she had lived a simple and care- free life. She sang songs she had learned as a young girl in school in India decades earlier. The quality of the vegetables she cooked or the fruits she ate anywhere for the rest of her life were always compared to those from her days in India while growing up – and they were always found to be wanting!
There is a picture of me as a toddler with my parents visiting my maternal grandparents which I love looking at. In it we are all seated on a lawn, and my parents look young, lovely and happy. My Nana Jan in this photo looks like the witty and vibrant man I have heard about from my mother, not the wasted and forever short-winded man I remember from Sweden during his last days. My grandmother appears matriarchal and distinguished, though she wasn’t even 40!
My Nanna came to live with me in Karachi when I began my medical studies there in 1982. We lived together for two years in North Nazimabad, in my parent’s house which they had been renting out to tenants. She was my companion, chaperon and advisor all rolled into one because Pakistan was a new country to me. She loved to cook, gardening was her passion and making friends came to her naturally; everyone who knew her loved her. She always had kind words and good counsel for those who wanted her company.
I later on moved into the hostel accommodations attached to the medical school, and my Nanna bought a small apartment in town. I visited her often there, but when I got married and moved to the United States, I only intermittently spoke with her on the phone. Unfortunately, my work schedule did not allow me to visit her again, and my Nanna passed away a few years ago in her mid-80s.
I remember my Nana Jan from the last year I spent with him in Gothenburg, Sweden. He was a man of average height, light complexioned and had striking features even in his seventies. But he was overweight and refused to forfeit his love of food by eating healthy this late in the game. Though battling end-stage chronic obstructive lung disease, he generally stayed in good spirits encircled by his loving daughters.
The love my mother and aunts showered on this aging giant was deeply moving. They washed for him, cooked for him and helped him bathe. Knowing these women as I do, he must have cherished them well as children to have earned this degree of affection.
My grandfather was a merchant by trade, and his family had a secure life in India before 1947. Originally from Kashmir, the disputed province between present-day India and Pakistan, his parents had traveled around the turn of the 20th Century and settled in eastern India in Ranchi, Bihar. Ranchi was chosen because it was a green hilly area and reminded them of the panorama back in Kashmir but offered much better business opportunities than did the more-rural region.
As was the widespread custom in those days, my grandfather married a 2nd cousin, my Nanna, and the whole clan lived in an extended joint family home. My mother was born and raised in Ranchi until her teen years. She grew up among cousins and loving elders. My mother and her siblings as kids played with Kohl children – the native tribal people – but, as they grew older and more involved with school and studies, the children parted ways with the Kohls.
My mother attended a Hindu school and learned to read and write in Sanskrit. Her uniform was a light blue sari, six yards of fabric swathed around the body, but it didn’t stop her or other girls from climbing trees in school to eat sour green mangoes. The atmosphere in school, my mother recalls, was one of mutual respect which promoted learning.
My grandmother had fond memories of the Kohl women, who were employed at menial jobs around the house, and Nanna often told stories of the Kohl’s impressive knowledge of medicinal powers of herbs and foliage found around Ranchi. I was reminded of the aborigines of Australia whenever my Nanna described the Kohl natives of Ranchi, especially in their appearance and relationship with the wilderness.
My grandfather and Saeed Mamoo went hunting often in Ranchi. Deer meat, pheasant and duck were frequently brought back home, and these delicacies were much enjoyed among the extended family. But much of the time Nana Jan traveled, making trips to different cities for trading and business. While Nana Jan was away, other clan male members took charge of household responsibilities.
But soon politics intruded on Nana Jan’s prosperous life and that of his family.
The British Raj who ruled India during those colonial days had begun to encounter some turmoil and demonstrations for an independent rule in the early 1910’s. The political power struggle that continued over the next 35 years saw change of leadership. The fight began with Mahatma Gandhi who was originally from Gujrat, India, but had worked as a barrister for many years in South Africa, demanding independence from British rule. Then the struggle was taken up by Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who negotiated with the British for separate Hindu and Muslim states free of foreign rule.
But while the leaders brainstormed and deliberated in drawing rooms behind closed doors, bloodshed in the streets only intensified. Finally, in August 1947, the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan. The resulting relocation along mainly religious lines remains the largest migration of refugees displaced from one country to another.
My Nana Jan was involved in the turmoil almost from the beginning, and a few times he was jailed while demonstrating support with Muslim congress against the British. But his fight for political freedom did not bode well for him or the family.
With the partition, fate uprooted my grandparents from a life in India they loved and left them living hand-to-mouth in Pakistan and eventually catapulted them to Sweden with their son, where they felt like fish out of water. They didn’t speak the language or identify with the customs. They had serious reservations regarding their grandchildren’s future in this land on the fringe of northern Europe. But, as people do, they learned to make the most out of their new existence.
My Nana Jan passed away in Gothenburg in 1978 when I was 13 years old. His last request to his son, my Saeed Mamoo, was to have him buried in Pakistan. To his credit, his son kept his word and flew with his father’s coffin from Sweden to Karachi and buried him in a cemetery where my grandfather’s other deceased relatives were buried.
It was befitting that Pakistan was my grandfather’s last resting place. This was a country he had fought for so long to see realized. In India he had served repeated jail time and forfeited his business and left behind childhood friends and family property in India to begin existence from scratch in Pakistan in mid-life.
Today, when I enjoy my life in the United States, I know I owe it to people like my grandparents and parents who before me made huge, selfless sacrifices for the betterment of their posterity.
But none more than Nanna and Nana Jan, and often I silently say to them, “Thank you.”
Skating 101 - with Ami, Abu and baby Aamir, in Toronto, Canada
1st Grade class picture (front row, 4th from the left) -Toronto, 1970
Riyadh - Aamir, infront of Ami, in Thawb and Ghattra, 1972, while I'm all smiles!
(Chapter 15).
15 – Canada, Sweden – and Now Saudi Arabia
Whether or not you were around in North America during the turbulent 1960s, you can understand the impression they must have had on a young couple like my parents, from Pakistan with a growing family in tow.
The war in Vietnam was on television every evening. On the one side you could see dead and wounded American soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam, and on the other you could see American airplanes dropping napalm bombs on villages with the resultant civilian casualties. At the same time, there were also signs of riots in the American streets as protesters attacked, and were attacked by, civilian and military households.
Draft cards were burned. Flag-draped caskets flew daily into Dover Air Base less than an hour where I now live. The Canadian people have always been welcoming to outsiders, my own family included, and hundreds perhaps thousands of war protesters were given shelter when they crossed the border, especially in the major cities such as Toronto and Montreal. No doubt my parents saw them on the streets, foreigners like us in a foreign land.
I’m not sure how heavily the turbulence weighed on my parents decision to move to Saudi Arabia and not Pennsylvania. But there was no doubt that my parents were happy with their decision from Day 1 to move to Saudi Arabia in 1972. To traditional Muslims from a traditional society, they felt lucky to leave behind an ever more-permissive, liberal society in North America.
And it was not all about the war issues. Open public display of coarse physical closeness, marijuana smoking youth with long hair and even longer beards who were focused on breaking any existing social norms – these were all images that repelled my parents.
Then there was the weather. Freezing temperatures and blankets of snow were hard on my father, a geologist in Toronto, who had to go on frequent field trips into the Canadian back country. It was hard on my mother, too, who was shy because of the language barrier and was not eager to assimilate into such a culture. And in Saudi Arabia, closer to Mecca, she knew there would be other families from India and Pakistan to get to know.
To me, we were moving once again, so I was swept up with the excitement of my parents and not yet of an age to play the “what if” game.
When we touched down on Saudi soil, I remember looking out of the airplane and wondering to myself – Where is the airport? Did I miss it? This tiny blur in the desert can’t be an airport. But it was. And the thrill of meeting my father again after four months of separation was quickly lessened by the under- development, the plainness and the drabness of the surroundings.
My impressions of the early days in Riyadh were divided into two distinct parts – time spent with family and time spent in school. My dad had rented a two-bedroom apartment in a nice neighbor hood just across from Qasr-al-Ahmar, or the red palace, which occupied almost four blocks. King Faisal’s favorite sister, Princess Sara, resided in the palace buildings surrounded on all four sides by high walls for safety and privacy.
My new home was a four-story stucco structure with balconies wrapped around all four sides. The entrance of the building was bright, marbled and open. Our apartment was on the 2nd floor which housed 10 other condominiums. While growing up in Riyadh, we children spent a large portion of our evenings playing on the marbled landings. One of the kids’ favorite past-times was ringing door bells and hiding to see if someone answered the door. I guess there must be a universality in kids that bridges place and culture, as I’m told this is a favorite misdemeanor of kids who live in flats everywhere.
Not everyone lived in apartments and condos. Other homes in nearby neighborhoods were brown flat villas with high walls and iron gates. Women were never seen around these villas, but on occasion boys could be seen playing outside the gates. Large American cars or Japanese pickup trucks were parked in front of each house. Every evening, people left in these vehicles for evening drives or shopping trips out onto the streets of Riyadh.
I still remember many occasions when sirens in our neighborhood street dispersed cars to the sides to allow King Faisal’s car and his security detail to drive to Qasr-al -Ahmar. We would often wave and try to catch a glimpse of King Faisal behind tinted windows of his car, but I never in reality saw the aging but handsome monarch.
Saudi Arabia in the 70’s and 80’s was powered by expatriates, and families such as our own were the backbone of development, as the private, government and military sectors all relied heavily on foreigners. They trained the Saudis for the future while running the country for the present, although the top posts were never given to ex-pats. These lucrative positions were filled by Saudi nationals, whether or not they were eligible or unqualified. In many ways, it was like walking a tight rope for the Saudis. They desired and needed development and technology to bring them out of their past poverty and under- development, yet they hated their dependence on foreigners who brought the skills to bring about the modernization. I suppose it would be like having a domestic servant around the house who had more education and experience than you did and whom you suspected was always silently judging – harshly, most likely – everything you do.
There were many Pakistanis in Riyadh, and that effectively narrowed our window of opportunity for mingling and befriending the Saudis – probably more our own fault than the Saudis, as it is a sad fact that most strangers in a foreign country befriend each other. Our school connections, social circles and people we met through my dad’s place of work were all from Pakistan. But the Saudis also did not much believe in socializing with outsiders, strictly adhering to family and then tribal relations.
My father was proud of his job, and he sometimes would let the family accompany him on hydrogeology field trips. It was during these trips that I made my few encounters with Saudis. The Saudi government was on a mission to make the country more independent in agriculture, and so employees of the ministry of agriculture like my father toured these farms all over the country to find underground water and build wells for the farmers at a charge. The deal was that, once their crops were ready, the government would then buy their produce. Saudi farmers who agreed to this plan had little to lose.
The Saudi farmers’ families opened their women’s quarters for my mother and me, while my father and brothers went with the men. They were hospitable, and, on a few occasions, we ate dinner with the families, usually well-cooked lamb on rice served on a large communal tray. All the women sat all around, sharing the food directly from the tray.
The Saudi women wore dark red henna on their hands and toes, and kohl, a ground black pigment, filled their dark eyes. They smelled of cardamoms, an ingredient liberally used in qahwa, a strong Arabian coffee. Most unveiled their faces during these periods, but some of the very conservative women wore a veil that showed only the eyes in the presence of women who were outsiders. Though always enthusiastic about meeting the true natives of Saudi Arabia in far flung villages and towns, I always felt relieved when we returned to the familiarity of our small apartment in center city Riyadh.
I had my limits for inter-cultural contacts, and, I’m told it’s a phenomenon similar to couples who don’t have children visiting couples who do. The different culture may be intriguing, and the children may be adorable, but it’s always good to be back to your own quarters and your own routines.
Transiting through London - with Par Nanna (great grand mother) & her son's family
(Chapter 23)
23 - The Class Menagerie
A new school and a new roster of teachers – Who do we have here?
Our cooking teacher was a flustered redhead – new to the school and newly married. (Have I permanently forgotten her name, or will it come back to me? And why do I put my cooking teacher first? Perhaps because she was young and untainted)
I remember us waiting outside the class kitchen every week for her to appear – late again! She was always apologetic for her tardiness, and the scrumptious dishes we prepared under her direction soon made us forget all the waiting. She taught us to make cheese scones which were simple but satisfying. She told us the secret of making chocolate log cake was in carefully rolling layers of cake wrapped in wax paper into the shape of a log. Apple crumble desert made everyone feel like a chef because it was simple to prepare. She was forgiving when bowls toppled, dishes broke or small explosions were heard in the ovens.
On the lower floor just under the kitchen was our science class and Mrs. Boyd, our teacher who always wore a white lab coat which completely hid her thin frame and who hung a very large “Elements” chart, our temporal scientific prayer book, above the black board. Mrs. Boyd, with her black framed spectacles and brown curly hair in a bob, had a nervous temperament, and a few trouble makers in our class often kept her on edge until, on some days, she would give up and send them off to see the principal.
My first form teacher was Mrs. Brown – in her early sixties and what we in those days still called a “spinster.” True to typecast, she wore her long hair up in a bun, had thick spectacles and sported nylon stockings over her unshaved legs. Mrs. Brown taught us English and introduced us to the works of Ernest Hemingway. We read The Old Man and the Sea as a group in class, and Mrs. Brown made certain we didn’t miss any nuances of the story by repeating the highlights and then wordlessly staring through her thick spectacles at us for emphasis.
Mrs. Brown considered Nicola, an English day student in our form, superior and ready for a promotion. Nicola wore her hair in pigtails with bangs and had a dusting of freckles on her cheeks. She had a hard time getting along with her classmates, given that Mrs. Brown put her on a pedestal so often.
At the end of one semester, Mrs. Brown announced that Nicola had scored first place, and I had scored a distant second. She went on to tell the class that Nicola’s grades were far better than the next closest and that the class as a whole would have to do much better to close the gap. Nicola, much to our relief, was promoted to the 3rd form when the rest of us started 2nd form after the summer break.
Our Latin teacher was a silver-haired, stooped, English gentleman who was tremendously sweet. He put me to sleep. He had a tough job, and his low-pitched enunciation of Latin grammar killed any fun we could have had from his class.
Our young English teacher was very attractive and loved to wear her long black tresses loose and line her big eyes with a lot of kohl. She read Homer’s Iliad with us with the assistance of many footnotes. Of course, there were rumors circulating that she was involved in a romantic relationship with a handsome male teacher on the faculty. Whether true or not, my classmates, liked practiced ornithologists, often reported spying the two lovebirds sitting together.
Mrs. Evergreen – how some people fit their name! – was the most- admired teacher in school. She was middle-aged and sported a shorter version of the Farrah Fawcett hairdo. Mrs. Evergreen taught geography, and her descriptions and images would transport us to whichever country we were studying that day. She seem to have that ability good teachers have in bringing out the best in every student and refusing to settle for less than the best.
Of course, we also had courses that were not strictly of an academic nature.
Next door to the geography room was the pottery room. Twice a month we worked the wheel, shaped and glazed our masterpieces and, at the end of each trimester, we proudly presented them to our parents. Our pottery teacher was a smiley-faced young man who sported a trim beard. It never upset him if our vases sunk like fallen soufflés on the pottery wheel or if our animal shapes were unrecognizable – he wanted us to have fun during class time and learn the basics about working with clay and the ends and outs of the pottery wheel.
I loved riding horses, though I still had a secret terror of animals. That made Baby Sham, the gentlest horse in the stable, my perfect companion. A white animal, Baby Sham was a little on the wide side with a long white mane. He was keen on trotting, but, like me, did not care for galloping or cantering. We both enjoyed following our group on trails, taking in the picturesque English countryside, but we both steered clear of jumping hurdles and preferred to walk around fences rather than jump over them. The one time he did jump a fence, I fell on my backside as he lifted his body to clear the fence.
In stitching class, I made my baby brother, Kamran, a stuffed cat from scratch. It took a whole trimester to progress from tracing out the pattern to sewing the nylon whiskers on the final product. I remember my mother was really proud of me and showed that cat to many of her friends. But I must not have stitched the seams too well because soon after Kamran began playing with it, the stuffing started to fall out.
My art teacher, Mrs. Hutchison, stood at 4 ½ feet tall, was extremely strict and had a laser-sharp tongue. She had curly white hair matched by bright blue, shifty eyes and a Parkinson-like frozen expression and always wore the same paint- smattered green smock in art class. One session, as I worked in front of a canvas painting a still life of a bowl of fruits, she suddenly came up behind me, snatched the brush out of my hand and, with convulsive strokes, began painting in yellow to show light falling on the pieces of fruits. I stood motionless, waiting for a scolding, but I think she disliked me less than my other classmates because she didn’t holler at me. She was a well-known artist but regrettably did not have the finest teaching skills – to reverse the old phrase, perhaps the people who do can’t teach.
(Chapter 24)
24 – The Boarding Life
The school ran a tuck shop once a week, a “tuck shop” being one of those unusual English terms that made it to all corners of the empire but America. It was our small food concession. Cadbury’s malt balls, Cadbury’s flakes and chocolate-coated wheat biscuits were just a few of my favorite purchases. We kept our candies locked in our own private tuck shelves. On weekends the boarders were chaperoned into town for shopping. Once there, my friends and I visited the fish and chips store, Marks and Spencer, a candy store and, on occasion, the card store, especially if a friend’s birthday was near.
My two best friends were two other boarders, Abiola – “Abby” – and Marjan. Abby was from Barbados. She had dark velvety skin to which she applied lotion day and night. She had mischievous dancing eyes and sported a constant smile from sharing jokes. Marjan was from Iran and excelled at everything she applied her mind to. She wore her dark hair very short and had sharp Persian features with almond-shaped eyes. Both Abby and Marjan were in my form and we shared the same dormitory houses.
Katherine was a day scholar whose parents lived in Seaford. She was a tall girl with chestnut-colored hair falling to her shoulders and a strikingly lovely face. She was a gentle person with a passion for horses. The girls who lived in dormitories naturally grew closer to each other than we did to the day scholars who left for their homes around Seaford after school was dismissed. I sensed that many of these day scholars felt left out of close friendships that developed amongst boarders. Katherine, though on friendly terms with everyone in the form, found more in common with the English day scholars.
On the walk back to our dorms, we often went by a rugby field and saw grown men slipping and sliding in the mud trying to throw and catch a muddy ball. I was shocked that, with all the body slams and constant tackling, I never witnessed a serious injury. We always acknowledged the neighbors we met with a jovial “good afternoon.” Often it was an elderly lady in her Sunday best, walking her dog, or perhaps a middle-aged couple arm in arm on their way to visit friends for a cup of tea.
Once I met my younger brother Aamir with his school mates and chaperone going into town from the Newfoundland School for Boys. It was an amazing coincidence since, even though his school was nearby, we only met once or twice a trimester at preset appointments.
Newfoundland School for Boys was an excellent institute of learning which is still standing today. Aamir was eight when he started at the boarding house and still has very fond memories of the kindness of his homeroom mistress and the orderly Englishness of everything. He recently re-visited Newfoundland some 30 years later and actually met a few teachers from the 1970’s.
A few times during four-day breaks, when the boarders would often disburse if they had relatives or family friends in England, I remained at school and had wonderful times visiting Croydon, a nearby city, with school chaperones and friends. Once we attended a touching ballet performance of The Black Swan, and another time we were treated to an orchestra production of Peter and the Wolf, which we were all prepared to detest but surprisingly enjoyed.
Brighton city was another nearby attraction with prominent restaurants, shops and boardwalk. I recall it was cold both times I visited Brighton, yet I liked standing on the pier, surveying the waves which dissipated rapidly into the sandy beaches below.
I also experienced my first official high tea at a restaurant in Brighton – tiny cucumber sandwiches, petit forts, whipped butter and scones served on fine china – and guzzled down by us ravenous girls within minutes. Our chaperone, Mrs. Graham, a stickler for good table manners, was disenchanted by our lack of self-control, but we were still girls and had not morphed into ladies quite yet.
But, on most of these short breaks during school, I visited family in London.
My Hussein Taya, my father’s older brother, lived with his family in a middle-class area near the city. Both he and SabraTai Ami, his wife, both worked, and Ruby Baji, their only child, was five years older than me but immediately and without hesitation took Amir and me under her wing. She was full of fun ideas, and I loved her company, not having an older sister of my own. She enjoyed singing Hindi songs, even though I was the only audience listening to her lovely voice.
We went into London on a double decker to watch the science fiction movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when it was first released in 1977. I used to share Ruby’s bed on the nights I was in her home and loved hearing about her life as much as she loved telling it. Many a night I could barely keep my eyes open, but her stories would go on and on.
It was sad to say goodbye to Ruby after the long weekends, and she took the parting even harder than I, but my aunt and uncle were extremely responsible and punctual and always made it to the coach station with Aamir and me in tow, always on time for drop off.
Another group of relatives, Riyaz Nana, my mother’s uncle and his family, were settled in Slough which was known as “Desi central” in London, referring to the enclave of people from the Indian subcontinent. They had four children, two boys and two girls, who were a bit shy but kindhearted once they became better acquainted with us. My maternal great-grand mother lived with them, and I got to know her a lot better during those visits. I shared her room during my stays in Slough.
Samina Aunty, Riyaz Nana’s wife, worked at a doctor’s office and took her job very seriously and was employed at the same office for decades. Riyaz Nana was funny and kind, but timekeeping was not his strong suit. He was always delayed for our arrivals and departures. This created a lot of unnecessary hassle for us, missing a coach connection here or waiting an extra hour for pick up there, but things always seemed to work out in the end.
Having relatives in London was a blessing during our stay in Seaford, as we were thousands of miles away from our parents. I am grateful to them for sharing time with us and putting their precious weekend plans on hold a few times a year.
I had occasion to attend Easter mass one year when we stayed at Seaford during the holiday break. We all wore our green Sunday uniforms, a checkered green skirt with a green turtleneck, and, on this occasion, we placed very rigid and uncomfortable green hats on our heads. The church was quite a long walk, and I remember the hat made my scalp terribly itchy. My feet were also in agony in my new church shoes, and, to top it all off, Muslims quite naturally do not celebrate Easter. If I had been less physically uncomfortable I might have gotten more of an intellectual stimulus from the cultural diversity, but the ordeal was tolerable, made easier by the fact that most of my friends were going through the same discomfort.
The Seaford Downs are undulating fields that stretch for miles ending in sharp cliffs. One trimester, while raising money for a charitable cause, we secured sponsors and walked the seven miles across the green wilderness of the Downs. It was a typical English day with sunshine one minute and overcast skies with drizzle the next. I hark back to opening and closing gates innumerous times to prevent the sheep from straying from one area to another as we went from one farmer’s fields to another while walking in the Downs. It was a great opportunity for camaraderie and developing close friendships.
Eventually, it poured cats and dogs during our bagged-lunch break, but we dried out pretty quickly in the bright sunshine that burst through the heavy clouds every 5-10 minutes.
At the end of the day I barely made it to my dorm with feet that felt broken. Most of us were sore and achy for a few days, but we all shared a strong sense of accomplishment. We received a big round of applause from the whole school, led by Mrs. Patton, our head mistress, at the next assembly for raising money for a worthy charity.
As the British might say, I was fitting in rather well.
I was mediocre in sports – fortunately, not embarrassing bad, but not good enough that my own kids should get their hopes for winning athletic scholarships based on the genes I passed along to them.
We played team sports with other schools in the region, and I made it to the under-13 lacrosse team as a first reserve. I had impressed the coaches by my close, aggressive tackling of opponents, but that constant running up and down the outsized field sucked all the air out of my lungs and gave me a stitch on my side. So I didn’t want to let anyone run unimpeded – myself included – anymore than necessary.
I also played on the under-14 rounders team. Rounders is kind of like baseball, except for the number of bases – four – and the method of keeping score. My phys ed teacher was excited that I had a very strong left arm, and I repeatedly hit the pitched balls to the outfield. But my prowess was all in practice, and I failed to produce during actual games, probably because I got pretty nervous when I competed.
Gymnastics were new to me, but, being young, I quickly conquered the simpler skills like somersaults, head stands and getting on and off the stationary horse. I never learnt the more involved routines on the mats, though. A British girl in my class, Andrea, a passionate defender of everything Arab and whose family had settled in Dubai, was mind-boggling at gymnastics. She was tall for her age and very slim. To watch her perform in gymnastics competition was like watching the Olympics live. She was incredible on the trampoline, and her splits, flips and twirls were captivating and effortless.
I began piano lessons at Micklefield School, my teacher being an accomplished pianist who trained me to do finger and wrist relaxing exercises. We had music practice rooms in a quiet area of the school where we went to rehearse on our particular instrument. A violin child prodigy who heralded from China attended our school, and, when Lin performed, we all forgot about our own rehearsals and listened to her phenomenal music.
Twice a year, for summer and Christmas breaks, we returned home to Saudi Arabia. A car would come for Aamir and me at Seaford, and we would coast by gated English estates and green rolling country side for miles on end. On reaching Heathrow airport we were handed over to the British Airline chaperones and placed in their care until we met our parents on arrival at Riyadh Airport.
Another transport in time and place complete.
