The Best of Times

I grew up in what I very fondly now look back on as the golden age. To take some words from Dickens, I feel my growing years were the very best of times, an age of wisdom, in a season of light, with the spring of hope and laughter. So much fun and laughter.

I grew up in London in the 1980’s early 1990’s, the very best time and place to be. I was fortunate to go to a school where they practiced what they taught about equality and kindness and as a result we all played happily with each other with the usual skirmishes, but there was a colour blindness to the playing. 

Being in an East London school there was so much diversity that it felt normal to come in and discuss what we ate, how we balanced playing with learning Arabic which was a 3rd language at the time, being off school for Eid day without the teachers making a big thing about it but actually having Eid parties to include all the children.

There was a wonderful sense of community regardless of skin colour and while we were aware of world events, they didn’t seem to disrupt our day to day lives or social interactions.

Maybe it was due to not having access to social media, maybe because we didn’t have personal mobiles and so when we saw each other we had other things we had stored up to discuss, but looking back it really does feel like it was the very best of times.

When I would tell my dad that I planned to go to the West End with friends, he would worry and say be careful and try to explain about his experience of facing discrimination, and in my youthful naiveté I told my dad he was thinking about the olden days, that life wasn’t like that anymore.  He smiled at me, I didn’t understand the smile at the time.

Through the early 2000’s obviously due to world events my perception of my place in the world changed a bit, but I thought that mostly I still knew what and where home was. I assumed that as deeply as the UK was ingrained in my sense of belonging, so too I was a part of the UK.

When I was pregnant with my daughter in 2010, following a miscarriage, I was so excited.  I was going to be a mother! Sat in the midwife’s office I happily spouted off all the inane health information I retained about my family and even my husband’s family, feeling quite proud to be able to answer all the questions until she asked me, “and are you and your husband related to each other?” my smile dropped a bit, I was confused, I only managed to say “huh, what?” and then looked over at my husband, did he know something I didn’t?

The midwife repeated the question and I told her no, we were not related.  I did ask her why she would ask that question, and she brushed it away, oh it was one of the questions they had to ask everyone. It still sat quite weirdly with me, leaving a sense of disquiet.

When I got back to work I mentioned it to my friends and colleagues, which included other mothers one who was white and one who was of Chinese origin.  They had never been asked this they told me.  It was a male colleague, a Sikh guy who answered, he told us that historically South Asians had previously been known to marry first cousins, which could result in health issues in children.

As far as I knew of my community and family, this practice was not prevalent anymore, and upon further research I found it was mainly practiced in older days where people tried to keep their land within the family in their home lands, not usually anyone who was born and raised in 1st world countries.

With just a few words my midwife had managed to make me feel like I didn’t belong, that despite being educated that due to my brown skin she had to ask if I was related to my husband. I already knew that being born in London, I didn’t actually belong in Bangladesh, because the one time we visited the country the community people referred to us as the foreigners, and now the country I thought was mine, the country I cried with when Gareth Southgate missed the euro ‘96 penalty, suddenly made me feel like I didn’t belong here either.

I cradled my belly with my unborn child and I hoped that by the time she grew up, she would have a better world to live in, but the world seems to be going backwards.

My daughter came home from school recently, the boy she was sat next to kept saying he bet he could guess her surname.  She in her droll way pointed out it was written on her notebook so what did he think he was guessing.  It turns out the boy told her he thought her surname should be the same as another kid in the class, the kid happened to be brown.

When she came home and told me this, I asked if she told the teacher and she replied that the teacher responded she didn’t think the white boy meant anything by this. But my daughter who is very perceptive said to me she thought the boy made the comment because she was one of a handful of children of colour in the class.

Don’t worry, I called the school and kicked up a huge stink about prejudice and racism and using this as a teachable moment, the school were apologetic in the end for letting it slide like that. But it made me very sad. Because I finally understood my dad’s sad smile, he didn’t want to tell me that the world was loathe to change its prejudices.

I understand I won’t be here for the 100th year celebration of Bangladesh, but I hope my children can look back and tell me that the world has changed by then, I hope they are living in a more compassionate and inclusive world then I am living in now.