RSS

Contact us

Tuesday 2 December 2008

The Making of Mr Hai’s Daughter: Becoming British

Growing up in no man’s land

Zenga Longmore on Yasmin Hai's new book

As a teenager at the trendy Camden School for Girls, Yasmin felt more estranged than ever from her Pakistani relations. What would her father make of the middle classes? How could she introduce her drug-taking, badge-wearing and sexually permissive schoolmates to her pious parents? Her way of managing her teenage years was to divide her time between marching on demos with her Camden School friends, and chatting up boys on Wembley High Street with her Asian girl-gang, known as the Wembley Bhajis. Escapades with the Bhajis entailed sneakily avoiding the eagle eyes of the Aunty Mafia, the older Asian women whose job it was to spy on the young girls to make sure they remained chaste. Any Bhaji spotted making eye contact with young men would mysteriously be whisked off to Pakistan, to return six months later having undergone a demure personality change and an arranged marriage.

English people began to lose interest in militant politics just as the British Muslims become increasingly radical. Gradually, more and more of Yasmin’s Asian friends who had once bleached their hair blonde and clattered around Wembley in ‘modon’ white stilettos began wearing modest shawls and hijabs.

Yasmin’s new job as a journalist for Newsnight enabled her to interview old acquaintances about their new-found brand of Islam. To her dismay, she found herself being frequently scolded by ex- Bhajis for not being a proper Muslim. Her television producers, meawhile, were delighted to have a ‘genuine Muslim’ as a colleague and frequently yelled at her to locate ‘mad mullahs’ to titillate their audiences. ‘Find Muslim women to defend the line in the Koran about wife beating,’ was another urgent request.

Yasmin felt bemused. What had happened to her late father’s ideas of assimilation? A wider gulf than ever was being formed, not between the English and Asians, but between Muslims and everyone else.

Had Mr Hai succeeded in turning his daughter into an Englishwoman? I’m not sure it really matters any more, but his kindly influence obviously enabled his little Yasmin to write this unbelievably funny, passionate autobiography.

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comments (1)   |  Apollo Art Books

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved