Our Stories – From Mother to Daughter

When I was a little girl I loved stories, I still do. Biblical stories, folk stories, fairy stories, any kind of story as long as it was a good one well told. My favourites though were the stories my mum told me about my family – both hers and my dad’s (my grandfathers were best friends).

These were usually told as she sat at her sewing machine faced with the drudgery of piece-work and most often with us sitting around her on the floor unstitching her mistakes (never one but a whole batch of fluorescent shirts or shiny pants). I always found her stories so fascinating: war, partition, murder, sacrifice, emigration, betrayal, friendship, skulduggery and mischief – it was all there. A back story to the characters that have populated my own life and childhood and also to their parents of whom there are no photo’s or records. My great-grandfather who was trained to fight with the gatka and gandasa but couldn’t speak up in front of his petite wife. My great-grandmother who lorded it over the local shrine and had a tongue like a double-edged blade but could not bear any discomfort for my mum who lost her own mother as a child. My other great-grandmother who was pretty but so fierce that her daughter-in-laws were terrified of her and would say “Bete mirchi kha ke janne hai” (“she must have ate chilli’s when she gave birth to her sons they are all as fierce as her”) and whose hair started turning black again when she turned 100. My straight-backed and severe grandfather who ruled his home with an iron-rod but melted at the sight of his grandchildren. So many more.

My sisters and brother never seemed as interested at the time and now don’t seem to know most of the stories. So it seems to have fallen to me, especially now that my gran isn’t here, to be the repository of our family’s history. It will be my job to tell my children and insh’Allah one day my grandchildren. But also my little cousins and my brother and sisters children. This is important to me. I hope then that the people who came before us are not then just names to those that follow us. They are real three-dimensional people with pain and joy in their lives that mirror our own. They provide us with continuity, acting as proof that we don’t come from a vacuum even if we don’t have a family crest or are not mentioned in the Domesday Book. That our faces, our builds, even our mannerisms mirror someone else’s.
I hope our children remember all of these people who have left us in their prayers

When I was a little girl I loved stories, I still do. And I’m pleased that so does my daughter.

"Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him maintain the bonds of kinship" (Bukhari)