Daily Times

Enid Blyton was responsible for much mayhem during my childhood trips to Pakistan, which took place every winter. In fact, this was where my head first got turned by Fatty and the Five-Finder Outers — including, of course, Buster the dog.

On the rare occasions when I was home alone with no cousins of my own age to play with — I would borrow one of these precious books and sit on my older cousins’ exercise bicycle and pedal away. Imagining that I was one of the famous characters embarking upon a most excellent and perilous adventure. When in need of a break — off would I slip in search of my cousins, hoping one of them would be in the bathroom so that I could quietly creep towards the door and bolt it from the outside. And then run off. Making my getaway, I would invariably come across my uncle sitting in his study. He would call me in and pat my head for being a good girl, all the while oblivious to the shouts and bangs coming from the room next door. I still have no idea what came over me at those moments. But I am prone to blame Ms Blyton and her unwritten message that a life void of pro-active adventure is a life not worth reading about.

My dad received lots of female attention in Pakistan. With the women always using my appearance as a conversation opener. Utterly disappointed is how I liked to imagine them once he told them that my hair came from my mother

My cousins, for their part, were good enough to never snitch on me. Even so, my mother wasn’t happy about my Blyton habit. While I failed to grasp how she could see in these thoroughly engaging tales so much racial slurring. Especially given that my Pakistani cousins had no complaints on this front, at least back then. But then Lahore was not “Little India” — the pejorative name for London during my early childhood. Nevertheless, the bookworm ultimately triumphed. And so it was that the battle over Enid Blyton was fought and won in Pakistan.

Away from these pages, Pakistan was a different world. One into which I had assumed I would seamlessly fit. Yet on the rare occasions when it was just my dad and I hanging out — I noticed something. He received lots of female attention. And these women would always use my appearance as a conversation opener. When I was little, my colouring was considered unusual. I used to have bright chestnut ringlets. My skin was lighter than my dad’s but my brown eyes much darker. Thus even though my father and I looked far more alike than my mother and I — and even though in Pakistan I assumed I looked like everyone else — my perceived distinctness was still there. Utterly disappointed is how I liked to imagine them once they found out that my hair came from my mother. Though mine was not golden like hers.

This ‘otherness’ tended to be worse when my dad was not around.

Then something happened when I was around 10-years-old. An afternoon at one of those clubs that had once been the preserve of Mad Dogs and Englishmen. We were there because swimming was one of two things I missed when we left London behind. The other was our dog, who happily filled in for Buster on those long and winding bicycle rides of my mind’s eye. My mother was poolside, keeping an eye on me as I was splashing around practising surface dives. Instead of having bricks to retrieve underwater I had to suffer the indignity of a small plastic jiffy lemon container filled with sand. The humiliation. My mother at one point approached the ‘lifeguard’ to ask something.

Two other people were in the outdoor pool. A couple. They had moved nearer to observe this interaction. Even when my mother had returned to her recliner they stayed put, making sure I knew they were watching me. She was European, maybe Dutch. He was Pakistani and had his arms around her. She looked at me pointedly, declaring that this was the problem with the English: all were all snobs. The gentleman added, for apparent good measure, that everyone knew this.

He then repeated this quip, as much for his paramour’s benefit as mine. Yet her silence prompted him to recklessly overplay his hand. Pakistanis, he assured her, were simply the best. And thus came a salvation of sorts. In a clear and deliberate tone she dealt him an unexpected blow: she was happy not to be Pakistani.  Faltering slightly, he demanded an explanation. And just like that, an argument erupted. And it became my turn to play voyeur before paddling off, feeling somewhat vindicated. Secretly, though, I wanted to know what was wrong with being Pakistani.

I never did disclose any of this to either of my parents — then or later. Maybe I thought it would hurt them. Naturally, I was relieved my mother had escaped the drama. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder:  why they had spoken to me and not her? I recognised myself in them. While they took exception to someone like me. And without fully understanding how I knew this — I concluded that they would have behaved differently had my dad been there. Especially him.

And just like that. The overt prejudice of Ms Blyton suddenly seemed far more appealing. At least she liked dogs.

The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at mirandahusain@me.com and tweets @humeiwei

Published in Daily Times, July 14^th , 2017.