Transcript for: Growing up in the community

Interviewee: Mamuna Karim

Subject: Community

I was born in 1967, in December, and we lived in Crosland Moor. The school I went to was Crosland Moor and Moor End and there was always a strong Asian influence there. Because we were brought up quite close to Thornton Lodge, so there were always Asian shops, there were also people from the community there and there was also a mosque. I didn't really feel that we were isolated in any way. Actually, when I was young we used to live in Longroyd Bridge, so I used to go to the mosque as well. Asians were always there, they were always amongst us, most of our neighbours were Asians as well.

Were you quite active in the Asian community?

As a child I wasn't, but dad always was. Dad was always a strong, influential leader amongst the Asian community; but he also had quite a respectable image in his work and he was involved with the police as well in the sense of getting the communities together, he was involved with the community police. So he used to get involved with a lot of issues, and he used to help other people out if they needed any help. People used to come to him for advice, and he was always well known and highly respected, so we always had to behave very well. Everybody knew dad, so people always knew us, even if we didn't know who they were we were always know in the community. Because of dad being very religious as well they used to come and ask for religious advice, and ask him to write down what we call 'taweez', prayers to help them with their problems, and he used to just advise them. So we had constantly people coming to the house for that.

As a child it was quite strange, because a lot of these people; some of them even, I think now, looking back they probably had mental problems. So they were quite strange, but they thought that they had evil spirits following them, and we found that quite frightening. We always used to want to run away and hide from them. So it was quite strange in that way. We couldn't understand why they wanted dad to write a prayer, we thought "why don't you just go and sort your life out?" but to them that was very important because thats what they knew. That was how they obviously dealt with situations and issues in Pakistan, so that's what they expected dad to do here, but whatever advice he gave, because they thought he'd help them, obviously it helped them improve.