However, Hakeems were statistically a rare occurrence.  In practice we also had herbal and traditional food-based remedies.  My mother would cook strong curries with exotic spices to ward of colds and flu.  We knew about the benefits of turmeric before we were told it was good for us.  In addition to food-as-medicine, my father also had a prized copy of ‘Tibe-Nabvi and Jadeed Science’ – Medicine of the Prophet and Modern Science’.  We consequently ate a lot of Olive Oil, before the River-Cafe-walas made it popular.

For the sake of balance, I should make reference to another medicine man, a friend of my family.  In central Mumbai he had a very ingenious* line in wealth redistribution.  He would take free sample drugs from medical reps and crush them into powder, and mix them into a generic pink chalky base.  Wealthy clients inadvertently subsidised those unable to pay, equalized by the uniform brown bottles filled with pink medicine.  My two visits, for completely different ailments, resulted in the same tasting medicine.  The Pink-Medicine-Doctor of Mumbai was probably the most cost-effective and efficient MD in the whole of the subcontinent.  His son is now a radiologist and avoids pink at all costs.

Finally, in terms of medicine folk, there is however, one topic that I have been resisting ever since I have been blogging:  My antipathy to homeopathy, perfectly illustrated in the video below http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#Medical_and_scientific_analysis

(stethoscope wave to Dr M)

Homeopathic A&E

*or, as he would say, indi-genius

My dad, fluent in Arabic, Swahili, English, Urdu, Punjabi and Gujarati(1), could usually manage to communicate with the ‘generic non-white ruffian’ bought before the police.    I think Bengali was the only major subcontinental language he didn’t have an ear for, but that was due to accident rather than design.  He was the imam of a Bengali mosque for a while on the Staniforth road.

Anyway, one day, he is in court, interpreting for someone, and the judge calls up the lawyers to the bench

“The dress of that man is inappropriate”.

My father, was in his usual elegant shalwar kameez and topi, with long beard.  No wishy-washy liberal suit for him, he was dignified and traditional.  My father informed the judge, quite steadily, that he did not wish to insult or disrespect anybody, but these were the clothes of his faith, long robes worn in the tradition of the Prophet.

The judge instructed a memo be sent round the inns of court of South Yorkshire, that Mr Bora would be allowed to dress as he pleased as long as he was working on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government.  I have never tried to verify this, but if my dad spoke to the judge with the same tone as he related the story to us, I could see why the judge would have sent that memo round.

Symbols and dress, whether cultural, religious or both,  are important.  They are often a mark of piety, not politics.

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(1) Oh, he also had a smattering of Marathi and Pathwari.

Picture the scene, it is in the mid-eighties, in Leicester.  My father, who is usually in Sheffield, fulfiilling his duties as an Imam, takes me to his friends house.  “But why?” I ask.  “It is important”,

As we enter the friends house, we notice the big windows and curtains drawn.  It  seems to be a shop that has been turned back into residential house.  A large television sits on the floor, in the middle of one wall, and sofas arranged all around.  An even larger man is sitting on one of the sofas, remote control in hand.  The remote control is covered in plastic, but this is normal, I am merely mentioning it to give flavour to the scene.  My father instructs me to sit beside him, and we start to watch cricket.

Now it must be noted here that I was never seriously encouraged to get into team sports, and I was always more interested in reading – a rucksack of library books was adequate workout.  In addition, due to various reasons we had no television at home.  Thus, this was the  first time I had seen a cricket match on television. England were playing, and it was apparently quite an exciting match.

My father is enjoying the match, I am trying to work out what is happening, and Uncle Television (I can’t remember his name, so Uncle Television is as good as any) is talking to the television screen.  Not commenting, but seriously talking to the players and the umpire and the commentators, as if he is in the same room as them.  Anyway, suddenly, England win.  Uncle Television leaps up.

Now, this is  no ordinary feat, he is rather large, and parts of him are swaying alarmingly as he jumps up and down.  Actually, when I say jump i mean he sort of attempts to jump but his feet staying on the ground, but other parts of himdo actually go up and down.

My father and I are rather taken aback, but there is more to come.  Uncle drops to his knees in front of the TV and bellows at the TV screen.

“Botham, Gatting, Gatting Botham”

My father looks at me, I look at him.  Uncle is in some other place.

“Botham! Gatting! Gatting! Botham!  I LOVE YOU.  I LOVE YOU.  I LAAAAAAVE YOU!”

Uncle is now hugging and kissing the television screen, having quite dramatically passed the cricket test.

My father, in his dignified manner, stands up, takes my hand and makes his excuses.  On our short walk home he is quiet, then shakes his head, and looks at me.

“Botham, Gatting, Gatting, Botham”, I say, and we laugh.  Cricket has never been the same for me since.

We had our own stories of my father and his uncles swimming in the village reservoir in Gujarat.  As teenagers, this was told to us whenever my cousins and I returned from swimming in the local pool in Leicester.  To be more specific, after we returned from the chip shop close to the pool.

Kids, this was in the time before chicken and chips.  Yes, such a time existed and we are veterans of that time.  So, after my cousin Z had a swim, we would go to the chip shop and replace the calories so painfully taken from us.  Z had spent much time abroad on his own, studying and was excellent at ordering food in particular ordering without stopping his eating.  Seriously, it is a skill to behold.  He casually tossed food into his mouth with his right hand, his left hand perpendicular, extended at precisely the correct angle to be most visible to the chip shop owner.  Whilst still eating, Z would then place his request for further food to be consumed.

Of course, we are older now, and have acquired greyness and wobblebottoms and children.  We do not go out to chip shops as much and we dutifully eat salads.  But, eaing a kebab at East Park Road Fish and Chips, alongside our large fish and chips, that was our ‘alternative use of cow’ after swimming.

“Aah”, I said, “Sweet. Who is the Qari?”

“Suzuki Belano”

My mind raced. Who was this new Qari? He sounded Japanese-Italian, and my Qari cousins haven’t mentioned him. His recitation was excellent

“Who?” I replied

“Suzuki Belano!”

I pointed at the stereo,
“That!? Qari Suzuki Belano?”

My colleague smiled
“Ohhhhh, that is Abdul Baset, the car, the car is a Suzuki Belano!”

Despite the clarification, I feel the world is missing out somehow…

Let us go back to the mid eighties, to Manchester, where my cousins are living in the Old Trafford area. As young boys, they fight, they play, they tease their wee ickle baby sisters, and they are good Gujarati Muslims in that the boys are all memorising the Qur’an at their fathers’ mosque.

So, we go to visit our cousins in Manchester, and oh how fun they are. We eat very spicy food, and we eat very sugary desserts and we laugh at their very funny jokes.

One day, we challenge Faisal, who is in his early teens, and his brother, a couple of years older, to an eating competition. What is the biggest mouthful of food you can eat?

Imran starts, he is elder after all. He puts in a quarter of a chapatti, doused in curry, and chews, swallows, result! Faisal, takes a third of a chapatti, rolls it up, dips it in the sauce, puts in his mouth, chews, and swallows. Hurrah!
Imran takes half a roti. We cannot believe it. Half a roti. These are Aunty Hajrah rotis, proper thick and full of ghee, not for shirkers. Imran manages it. How is Faisal going to beat this?

Faisal takes an entire roti and stuffs it in his mouth, without method. His cheeks puff out, he can’t even close his mouth and we have the unenviable sight of roti, hanging out. He can’t chew he cant swallow, his entire jaw is in fact wedged open with roti.

We are laughing so hard tears are falling, and Faisal starts to laugh to, except he can’t because he is full of roti. We just hear a ‘huurgh huurgh’ which makes us laugh even harder.

Ten minutes later, somehow, he has managed to swallow a bit of the roti, and he can now close his mouth, he slowly starts chewing. This has ceased to be a brotherly competition and is now about basic survival – if Faisal was to choke, he would be an ex-Faisal. We are laughing, and pointing and screaming and laughing at his bulging cheeks. Soon, he is eroding this poor roti, and after a good few minutes, he has swallowed more of it. His chewing gets exponentially faster and we get more excited, he could actually do it.

Finally, his frenzied chewing demolishes the chapatti, and he swallows the last bite! We cheer! Mashallah! Faisal has eaten the roti! Faisal has eaten the roti!

Of course, every so often I put half a roti in my mouth and get strange looks from my fellow diners, but they don’t know why. Some things need regular rituals to pay homage to their greatness.

My most memorable Eid-ul-Adha was when I was around nine, and the younger children and my mother were on our legendary Grand Tour of The East Coast of the USA.

In the middle of our tour, it happened to be Eid-ul-Adha, but this had already been factored in.  We were staying at a large house in the outskirts of a small town in Maryland.  The end of the garden had many trees, and we could not see the next house.  When living in an inner-city redbrick terrace in Leicester, this was a new experience for us.

Our uncles had arranged for two goats to be tethered at the end of the garden, and had dug a deep hole near them.  We were encouraged in the weeks preceding Eid to feed these two little cute goats.  We named them Ateeq and Irfan, the masculine versions of Aatika and Erfana, my younger sisters.  We all loved little Ateeq and Irfan, the cutey little goats at the end of the big garden.

So on the day of Eid, we dressed up, went to the local mosque to pray, then came home and did general Eid stuff, which, when one is aged nine, involves mainly eating and accepting gifts of one sort or another.  During the morning, we went to the garden, where we saw the uncles quite happily putting rubber aprons on and sharpening knives.  We were fed, and full of money, so we didn’t care: everything was fun.

The uncles went about the business of slaughtering the goats, and the blood, hygienically, went into the pit (ohhhh that’s what it was for!) whilst another uncle quite happily used his new-fangled video camera (VHS not betamax).

The afternoon was spent with the Aunties cooking, and us children playing.  We didn’t notice Irfan and Ateeq were not about, as our pockets were still heavy with money. * It was only until the evening time that we were told that Ateeq and Irfan had been killed.  We were told this just before the food – goat curry.

While we were eating, one of the uncles put the video on of the actual slaughter.  It was quite graphic, but we thought it was normal.

Me: “Oh who is being slaughtered”
Uncle: Ateeq,
Me: …Who are we eating?
Auntie (from the kitchen) – Irfan – Ateeq we have packed in the fridge**

The moral – if you are going to slaughter a goat and record the process on video, make sure children, haven’t bonded with the goats first.

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*(note to self, when giving money to baby-moo, I must start off with lots of heavy change as at that age, money is judged by weight)

** Its uncanny how Aunties can have superhuman hearing when it counts and be stone-deaf when they feel like it.  All the Aunties I know still have this skill.

Wikileaks link: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/British_National_Party_membership_and_contacts_list,_2007-2008

These links have the full list.  There isn’t a single Muslim name on there. Further evidence of their Islamophobia.

For those who are unaware, these chaps are a far-right racist pary.  The BNP have run a vicious anti-Muslim campaign over the last 10 years or so, and continue to do so.

Hitler’s BNP membership gets leaked: (Warning, non-shariah compliant subtitles)

There needs to be a word for the slight feeling of dread, and then subsequent guilt that accompanies the realisation that, for the next decade or so, the fasts will be getting longer.  At least now we start off with the longer days and each fasting day is a few minutes shorter – soon that will no longer be the case.

There needs to be a word that captures the happy staminah/energy that drives children to wake up at 3am, eat food, have a nap, go to the mosque at 6.30am, come home at 8am, go to school at 8.40am, have an active day including running around, leave school at 3.30pm, go to the mosque for 5pm till 7.30pm and then after mosque play in the park till half an hour before iftar when the neighbourhood foodplate exchange starts.  (We did that as we were kids, growing up in Leicester, and I can’t imagine us having that energy now.)

There needs to be a word that captures the combination of guilt and embarrassment and greed realising that although your mum and sisters have spent hours slaving, it is the kebabs from next door that you really want a piece of, but as a teenager and only one of seven participants in the meal, the odds are stacked against you getting a decent chunk of shredded, spiced, coagulated fried halalimal.

There needs to a be a word that perfectly describes the amalgam of greed, triumph, sweat and  indigestion that accompanies the gluttony of eating Eid biryani, knowing all along that there is nothing on the planet like eating Eid biryani as a child cooked by the hands of one’s Mum.

Sometimes there are not enough words.

The first imam was a very well-spoken chap who talked about hypocrisy, and I felt a wee bit guilty listening to him, so I guess it had a positive effect.  However, the next chap starting talking about the etiquettes of knocking.

Yes, that is right the etiquettes of knocking on a door. ‘Oy Oy’, I thought, ‘this should be interesting.’

‘Knock once knock twice, knock three times but no more’.

Fair enough.  Thats knocking covered, we began wonder what the next point coming up would be.  But no, Radio Imam was not finished

Please, don’t knock on the window, or bang on the door, or keep pressing the bell.  Do not look through the letterbox, privacy is very important.

Yikes.

Do not go around the back and jump the garden wall and look to see if they are in the house.

Now I am alarmed, seriously alarmed.  What kind of Muslims live in Leicester that they have to be given this advice?  Do they regularly go around busting down front doors, an army of peeping toms brusquely keeping tabs on their Muslim neighbours?  I can’t remember the last time I jumped over any wall, let alone the garden wall of someone I wanted to visit. Suffice to say, the people of Leicester, it seems really really important to know whether someone is in or not.

So, to conclude, I now have a very skewed view of neighbourly relations in Leicester, and part of me thinks… surely a simple SMS message ahead of time would save the aggravation.  We have the technology….