Despite Mohammed's occasional visits to Pakistan, he and Rasool Bibi can't have been much more than strangers to each other. I never once saw them hold hands or each other; even on the day my mother first arrived in Britain, my father acknowledged her with only a nod. They did not use each other's first names when speaking to each other, and if my mother wanted to refer to my father when speaking to someone else she would call him "the father of Sarfraz".
In other couples this might have been explained away as the inevitable evolution of a relationship, the lack of demonstrative affection merely the result of overfamiliarity. But my parents never had the opportunity or, perhaps, the inclination to become physically comfortable around each other. When I was growing up I assumed that was what all marriages were like: arrangements, businesslike affairs.
Love had very little to do with any of it. When I was 11 I began to get interested in girls, but my traditional Muslim upbringing meant such curiosity had to be explored in secret. At school, my white friends, Scott, Craig and the others, would be talking about having seen the films Porky's and Risky Business.
Someone would claim they saw their dad's blue movie and I would laugh along, while secretly wondering whether a blue movie was a film that made you cry and, if so, why my friend William was so pleased to have seen it. During the early 80s, before my family had its own video recorder, my father would rent a machine from the ABC store. At weekends when we had the player in our home my father would bring home three or four Bollywood films, which we would watch over the course of the weekend.
Sometimes we would visit a man called Munir, who worked with my father at Vauxhall, while his wife assembled circuit boards at home. He was a small, very dark man with a pockmarked face and greasy hair, whom we always enjoyed visiting as he had his own video player. One Sunday afternoon we had taken a taxi to Munir's and were sitting on his chocolate-brown, fake-velvet sofa drinking tea, into which was stirred two teaspoons of ghee.
Nearby was a table with a mosaic of the Taj Mahal. On one of the walls in the living room hung a large prayer mat; on another were two plaques on which were written in ornate Arabic some quotations from the Koran. The third wall had a large photograph of a scene from the hajj.
Most times we visited Munir there would be some conversation and then he would put on an Amitabh Bachchan film and everyone would be happy. This particular afternoon, however, he decided to play an old black-and-white film from the 50s or 60s that my parents appreciated but that bored me senseless. I slipped out of the living room and wandered into another room.
Here was a large wooden table on which were soldering irons, screwdrivers and electrical wires. In one corner were two large cardboard boxes. Inside each box was a stack of old issues of the Sun.
I pulled out the top one and studied the headlines before turning the page. Staring back at me was a young woman with long curly dark hair, wearing a dazzling smile and almost nothing else. I stared intently at the photograph, trying to soak up its potency as speedily as I could in case anyone stumbled in and caught me.
No one came. Another newspaper, and another girl with another smile and another pair of breasts. Two boxes filled with newspapers.
My mind could not calculate how many naked girls the boxes contained, but I had to see every single one. I knew this was risky - any second now someone could walk through the door and catch me - but something inside me compelled me to methodically and systematically go through every single issue. By the time I had almost finished with the second box, my heart was beating so fast I thought it would punch its way out of my chest.
"Where did you go?" "What are you doing?" I could feel the blood rushing to my face.
"Nothing, nothing," I stammered. "Just been reading the newspaper." My sister looked puzzled.
"Reading the newspaper? Let me see." She lifted the flaps of the cardboard box and peered inside.
"But these are old! What are you reading them for?" I offered no explanation.
"Look, the others were asking about you. That film is almost over and Munir says he has an Amitabh film you've not seen." Heart pumping, I hurried back into the other room.
My parents never learned the truth of what I was doing while they were watching their classic movie, just as they did not know why I was so pleased when the Freemans catalogue arrived. As soon as it came through the letterbox I would dash upstairs into my bedroom, close the door and sit tightly on the other side so I would know instantly if anyone tried to come into my room. The two sections I studied most intently were the underwear pages and the shower sections.
I would study the photographs forensically, trying to discern the merest hint of a nipple behind the soapy suds. Sometimes I used a magnifying glass. Later, when I saw Tarzan, the Ape Man, I became convinced Bo Derek was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
Her eyes, smile, delicate bone structure - not to mention her body - all seemed to my 14-year-old eyes the epitome of perfection. Why I thought Bo Derek would in any way be interested in hearing from a skinny teenage Pakistani boy from Luton I'm not certain, but I wrote her a letter outlining just how much I liked her. She didn't write back.
While I was writing to American film stars and poring over the Freemans catalogue, my friends at school had real girlfriends. This was never a realistic option for me. I knew my parents expected me to have an arranged marriage - and anyway, none of the girls at school fancied me.
This was one of the cruellest consequences of being an Asian at a predominantly white school. When I was at high school, a fanciable Asian was an oxymoron. I had to make do with unrequited crushes on girls.
The only relationships I had back then were in my head; I would fantasise about Colette, a pint-sized Bardot with dirty-blond hair and bee-stung lips. I would construct elaborate fantasies in which we would be thrown together by fate. I imagined our next-door neighbours selling their house and Colette's parents buying it.
Every morning we would walk to school together and we would get closer and closer until she would finally realise just how deep my feelings were for her. Naturally, the next-door neighbours remained resolutely where they were, and I remained invisible and asexual to Colette and all the other girls in my school. I was the funny one who did well in tests; I wasn't someone who was allowed to have sexual desires.
If any such feelings were revealed, it was bound to cause mirth and mayhem in school, with jokes about kisses smelling of curry. Some girls enjoyed teasing me in class by calling my name; when I turned to face them they would smile seductively at me. It only took a few seconds before I would divert my eyes, my head hot with embarrassment.
Once one of the girls knew she could produce such a delicious display of humiliation, she would pass this knowledge to the others, and soon enough half a dozen girls would be calling my name. As frustrating as it was to be ignored by girls at my high school, it was also something of a relief, because if a girl had fancied me I would have been unable to do anything about it. Falling in love would have been deeply inconvenient, as it would have involved my parents disowning me and throwing me out of their home.
My father treated the concept of love with a withering mixture of contempt and pity. "What is love, anyway?" he would ask.
"Love is childish. Anyone can fall in love - a 10-year-old can say they are in love - but can you trust a 10-year-old to stay with the same person for 40 years? That is what is wrong with the white people: they put their faith in the heart rather than the head.
" There was an uncomfortable disparity between the world view of my parents and the universe of my friends. The films I watched and the music I listened to were filled with the magic and wonder of romantic love, and yet at home it was continually being made clear to me that I would never know what love was. Love was futile and foolish; marriage was sensible, solid and stable.
Naive individuals fell in love; good sons got married. Pakistani social life revolved around attending weddings, and in Luton in the 80s these were held in a recreation centre that was hired for the day. My family would hire a taxi to drive us to the venue, making sure we had not eaten beforehand.
We would all have dressed specially for the occasion, my mother wearing a dozen gold bangles on each wrist, my sisters in new outfits and me in my imitation Farah trousers and shoes with tiny tassles. In the main hall, traditional Pakistani wedding songs would blast from speakers. There would be rows of tables and chairs, and, on the tables, gigantic pots with steaming hot pilau rice, chicken curry, tandoori, chapatis and other dishes that we would scoop on to paper plates and eat with plastic cutlery.
Seated together at the front of the hall would be the new husband and wife, the man wearing an elaborate golden turban and ornate kurta pyjama, while his bride would be obscured under layers of garish makeup and mountains of gold jewellery. What I remember most vividly was the looks on the faces of the bride and groom. They always looked miserable.
I later learned that it was the custom that the girl should not appear to be enjoying herself. At the time, however, I would feel a stabbing fear: was this to be my fate too? Everyone stuffing their faces with free food while two strangers looked into each other's eyes and wondered what on earth they had agreed to?
It was inevitable that some time during the afternoon someone would nudge my father or mother and say, "And when will it be time for your younger one?" It was a joke, and my parents would treat it as such, but it turned my blood cold. It reminded me that some day I would be expected to marry a stranger.
My father began openly discussing my marriage when I was 15. He would be reading the newspaper or watching television, and all it took was a reference to divorce for him to start on me. On Christmas Day 1986, the whole family were watching EastEnders.
Den had just presented Angie with divorce papers. "You know why she is getting divorced?" Dad asked me.
"It is because these whites don't believe in marriage - for them it is just a game. There is no commitment any more. Get bored of one person, just find another.
That's their style. Have you seen the figures? One marriage in three ends in divorce.
" "Maybe it's a good thing?" I said suddenly. "Maybe their relationship is over, and being married does not make them happy .
.." "Being happy?
" retorted my father. "You think that's what marriage is about? Marriage is about commitment and family and having someone to look after you when you get old.
Being happy! Look at me and your mum. If it was about 'being happy', do you think I would have worked like a donkey to bring your mother and you children to England when I could have married someone from here?
" In the same way that I was brought up to believe love and marriage were entirely distinct, I was also raised to understand that parental approval was conditional. When he talked about marriage, my father framed it as a choice. "It's up to you,"he would say.
"You can marry anyone you like; do what your friends will do and have girlfriends and live with them. This is England - I cannot make you do anything you do not want to do. But I can tell you what I want you to do: find some respectable girl from back home, someone who is a good Muslim, who will look after you and your mother and who you know will be there for you in good times and bad.
"If you want to do your own thing, that is fine, but you cannot expect to live under this roof. You will be like your English friends: on your own." "I never said I wanted to be like them," I would mumble, the prospect of being booted out of my bedroom filling me with alarm.
"How old are you now? Fifteen? You need to start thinking about the future and what you want to do.
If you want to go down the honourable route, these things take time. The best girls are snapped up quickly. I need to know that you are serious.
" After these conversations I would not be able to sleep. I would toss and turn in my bed, plotting ways that I could avoid further discussions. Sometimes Navela would come to my room when she saw my bedroom light was still on.
"What's the matter?" she would ask. At 25, she was much closer to being married than I was; my father had even visited Pakistan seeking potential husbands for her.
Yet she did not seem panic-stricken at the prospect. "I know it's a bit strange but you're not the only one who it's going to happen to," she would tell me. "It's just the way it is.
" It was not until the summer of 1987 that all my suppressed yearnings found their focus. I had got a holiday job making sandwiches, and Laila and I began work on the same day. There were other Asian girls in our group but I could not stop looking at Laila - at her huge eyes, her long, straight black hair streaked with red highlights, her floaty black gypsy skirt.
When she told me later that she wrote short stories and poems and wanted to be a writer, I asked her, "Is there any point in you even going to college when you're going to have to marry someone from a village in Pakistan?" "Like hell I am!" she shot back.
"I'm getting the fuck out of this shithole town first chance I get. You think I'm sticking around to study in Luton with its bloody college of higher bloody education? God almighty!
" She laughed. Laila had the filthiest laugh I had ever heard. It was a laugh you would expect to come from a saucy barmaid, a big, bold, bawdy laugh that was all the more shocking coming from a 16-year-old Pakistani girl.
Laila became the reason I came to work. In my evenings, those hours when I was not speaking to her, I would hold imaginary conversations with her. Nothing in my life so far had prepared me for the churning stomach, the leaping bounds of my heart when I knew I would see her soon at work - nor the gloom that filled me at the weekends.
One weekend my family were due to go to Nottingham to see my brother. There were few times in my life when my home was mine alone, and so I made my excuses. I began hatching a plan: why not take advantage of my family's absence and invite Laila home?
We could maybe watch a video of one of those films that she had been telling me I needed to watch - Billy Liar or A Matter of Life and Death. "Go on," I told her. "It'll be really fun.
Just for a few hours." "But we talk all the time anyway." "I know we do, but I want you to see my house.
" It felt like I was asking her out - which, of course, I was. "Yeah, OK," she said finally. "I'll give you my phone number at lunchtime.
" I wanted to offer her mine, but there was no way a girl could call me. The subsequent questions and shouting from my parents would make that a non-starter. But Laila's parents were, I assumed, far more liberal and understanding.
When Saturday came I finally summoned the courage to call her number. "Hello, is Laila there?" "Who is speaking, please?
" The man had a rough ac I had imagined her father to be an educated, soft-spoken man. "I'm a friend of Laila's. She is meant to be coming to my house.
" "Who is speaking? Laila coming to your house?" "Yes.
My name is Sarfraz. I work with Laila. She was meant to be coming round to see me today.
" I was repeating myself because I did not know what else to say. This was not what I had been expecting. "Your name Sarfraz?
Laila not here. Goodbye." I saw Laila the following week.
"What the hell happened to you? I thought we were meant to be meeting up," I said. "Yeah, and that's what would have happened if you hadn't blathered on to my dad!
" Laila snapped. "What were you thinking, telling my dad I was going to see you?" "I thought he would have known," I said weakly.
"Think about it, Sherlock. Me telling Dad that I was going to see a boy at his house would have gone down like a bucket of cold sick. Honestly!
" "Yeah, well, kiss goodbye to me ever coming to your house. Kiss goodbye to me being allowed out of the fucking front door this decade! You know what?
In a way you did me a favour. Because you reminded me just how much I hate my stinking life and this stinking town and my stinking family! I wish I could just tell them all to leave me the fuck alone so I could just vanish out on my own.
That's what I want." That was the last time I ever saw Laila. I found out later that her father had demanded she leave the job in the sandwich factory.
I had known her for only three weeks, but Laila changed what I expected from my life. I had always suspected there was more to life than the kind of marriage my parents' generation expected for their children. When I started listening to the music of Bruce Springsteen, his songs had given me dangerous ideas about the possibilities of love.
Born to Run seemed the most romantic song I had ever heard. The girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with was someone to whom I could say the lines that Bruce sings to Wendy in that song: "We'll live with the sadness and I will love you with all the madness in my soul." She would be someone with whom I could be both British and Pakistani; who knew about both Bruce Springsteen and Amitabh Bachchan.
Having met Laila, I knew such a girl must exist; and knowing that she was out there made it seem insane to accept my parents' demands that I have an arranged marriage. I did not know what the future might bring but the possibility of love promised better days. Sarfraz Manzoor 2007.
Extracted from Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion, Rock'n'Roll, by Sarfraz Manzoor, to be published by Bloomsbury on June 4, priced 12.99. To order a copy for 11.
99 with free p p, go to or call 0870 836 0875.
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