32: Lost & Found 

A Jacobin ale-house in Whitehall saw Melanie, Pakistani, 50s, hour-glass figure in a white trouser suit, take the weight off her feet. 

I need a G&T… I’m Muslim, but I need a G&T. I was born in Pakistan in a very traditional family. Dad and mum married at 19 and 16. Mum’s family was very poor, while dad’s was well-off, but he refused to help her side in any way: ‘No, don’t ask’. She had six brothers and sisters, and all of them were in terrible poverty. And it hurt her so much that he wouldn’t help them; it always made me cry. Her father was a blind stonemason and his wife went without food for days to feed the children. It makes me so angry that one part of my family never helped the other. But that’s the culture there. So, when I was growing up, I hated his side of the family. Almost as much as I hated my three sisters! The eldest was one was fine with me, but the second, oh! We were always at each other’s throats. It’s only in the last few years that we’ve got on OK. I used to get really annoyed at my mother too, ’cos she was so unhappy, yet she never did anything about it or ever tried to stop dad beating her. That happened in Pakistan, then, at six, we moved to Uganda, and it carried on there. It was very hard for us moving there. We went to a Catholic Mission school, as it was the only one, so we didn’t fit in at all. But dad had a job as a mechanic, working with his brothers. We bought a house, we had servants, land – and then Idi Amin came along, and caused us so much pain. The pig. We had to flee from our estate near Lake Uganda, to Kampala. We were told by the local police that we had to leave or we’d be arrested. So we packed our car and  drove up to a checkpoint near an army barracks. I saw dogs on the side of the road feeding off dead bodies of rebel fighters. It was awful. The soldiers stood in front of our car and pointed rifles at us, then opened the doors and ordered my dad to get out. They marched him off with his hands up and we didn’t know where they were taking him. He was gone for hours, and I was so scared. I thought, ‘they’re going to kill my dad’. It was the most frightening experience of my life. My mum and my sisters were all crying and praying and, eventually, they brought him back, but they said that they wanted to question my older sister, who was 15. I saw the horror on my parents’ faces, and my sister’s. And I didn’t understand why at the time, but now I do. She was screaming, ‘no! Please, daddy, help me! Noaaaaaa!’ Mum was screaming and crying, and grabbing her arm. Dad was crying, ‘no, no, please, God, take me instead, take me!’ They threw him onto the floor and made him beg on his hands and knees, with a gun to his head.

[Tears flowed and I handed Mel a tissue.]

That really traumatised me, to see my dad begging for his and his daughter’s lives. They hit him with their rifles and called him a ‘dog’, a ‘leech’ and a ‘cockroach’, and they beat him on the ground till he was shaking. They laughed at him, and then dad gave them his watch, all our jewellery and money, and then one of them they told us to leave Uganda and never come back. And that’s how we left Africa. With next to nothing. It was awful… It was the first time that I’d ever seen my dad cry. And I thought, what is going to happen to us?... Then, I remember driving to the airport, and there was this wave of relief that we were nearly there. But then more soldiers stopped us and ordered us to get out of the car. They made us leave our cases and marched us to the airfield, then bundled us up the steps onto an old DC3 plane. We collapsed in the seats, took off, and that was the last we saw of Uganda… When we landed here, dad claimed asylum for us, then we all flew to Pakistan so that he could see his family and sort things out. We had to stay at our aunt’s, and I hated it –they all looked down on us. The refugees, with nothing. But, after a few months, dad got things sorted out, and we flew to his brother’s in Birmingham. I remember it like it was yesterday. Landing at night - it was snowing. I couldn’t believe it! It was the first time that I’d ever seen snow. Flakes drifted down on my face and melted. I leapt for joy! And it was great living there. My dad had a job lined up at a garage and, though we got picked on at school as new kids, we didn’t care. We were safe… And Birmingham gets such a bad press. It’s a really nice place to live. Telly Savalas was right! But, of course, dad was still beating mum all the time, and she never reacted to it or did anything about it, which drove me mad. She always had this happy, smiley face, even when she was black and blue. But I thought, you know, if she’s not going to do anything about it, why the hell should I? It’s her choice. And you respect your parents’ decisions, whatever they are. So that was that… By 14, though, I’d decided that I didn’t want to be a girl. Not literally, but I hated dolls and dresses and all that crap. I was a punk. I wanted to be one of the lads. I spiked my hair, smoked, played truant, got into fights and then drink. And I wanted to be a mechanic like dad – strong - not weak like mum. It was a pretty unstable environment, because we rented a new house every year. So I never settled or kept many friends. And then, at 16, we came here. I lost all contact with everyone that I knew there, and I had to mix with a new set of people again. And this time it was posh girls, who are the worst of the lot. They just thought that they were all better than us and bullied us, especially the black girls. They hate Asians. I could never understand that. Why? I’ve never had racism from white people, ever. But they were totally racist to us the whole time. So I was really lonely and unhappy, and the bullying scarred me for life, though I did manage to stop it, amazingly… I was on the bus one day with my sister, and these four black girls got on and started having a go at us: ‘Paki bitch,’ ‘do us a curry’. All of a sudden, I snapped. I ran at them, waded in, punching, kicking and screaming like a lunatic. The driver stopped the bus and the conductor threw us all off and told us we’d be banned if it ever happened again. But after that, word got round at school, and I never got any shit from anyone again, which was great. So don’t let anyone tell you that violence never works! With bullies, it can be the only way… Anyway, I left school at 17 to study clothes design and embroidery, and I set up on my own, making fabulous, exotic stuff, mixing Eastern and Western influences. Then, just as I thought that I was getting somewhere, mum had a stroke, and she was in and out of hospital for months. I just couldn’t handle it. The stress… And then, I met Rav… I was 18, he was 46. When I saw him, I wasn’t interested, ’cos he didn’t look much. But he had this beautiful red sports cabriolet, and I thought, ‘wow, I wouldn’t mind a ride in that!’ He pulled up outside my little shop and came in and he was very charming. I agreed to go for a drive with him, and he was lovely, funny, and we ended up being together for 18 years… He was a property developer and had a magnetic personality. He made you feel special. He was the first person who ever listened to me. He took me to really expensive nightclubs, restaurants, theatres, hotels, and we always had the best food and wine. I was naïve, in a tail-spin, and ripe for exploitation, and he played on that.

Was he single?

Er… Well, no… And not only that, he was Sikh, which was a big potential problem. But I thought that he loved me, so none of that would matter. I was convinced that he’d give up his wife. But, year after year, whenever I asked him about it, he stone-walled me. I didn’t realise it at the time, but he was just giving me the runaround… He told me that there were legal and financial issues to take care of and that it was all a matter of timing for his business, and also to prepare his wife for the shock. But he never actually did anything… So, after years of this, I was in despair, living with my parents, keeping him a secret, even though I was his PA then. And because of that, I was with him all day, every day, for years. I was totally reliant on him for everything in my life: My income, my free time, the people I knew. He controlled every aspect of my life. And when we had rows, if I threatened to leave him, he hit me. And he did that for three years. I don’t know why the hell I put up with it, like mum had. But I just couldn’t end it. I loved him. And I didn’t have anywhere to go, you know? If I left him, what would I do? How would I start again? What would I do? He had all our money, and he told me that he’d make sure that if I left I’d be cut off from everyone we knew – all my friends, the only people that I mixed with… It got to the point where I was so low and depressed, I considered suicide. But then I realised, there had to be more to life than this. I couldn’t allow him to destroy me. There had to be another way. And, at last, I woke up and realised that Rav was not the only man in the world. There was more to life… And mum was very ill by that stage, so I focused on her instead. I told Rav that it was over between us. He’d have to find another doormat to walk on, as it was no longer going to be me... He thought that I was bluffing, of course, but I quit as his PA, broke it off, and I started working for a charity – which is where I met Gill. Suddenly, new horizons opened for me, new challenges, new people, new men. After breaking up with Rav, I didn’t date anyone for ages. But then I thought about all the suitors that I’d rejected over the years, and I really regretted it. I realised that Rav’d beaten the confidence out of me and made me forget who I was. He’d made me feel totally inadequate, and I hated myself for allowing him to destroy my self-worth. To destroy me… But, through caring for mum, and for the kids at the charity, I began to care for myself again. I started to feel like a person, alive for the first time in years. I got my sparkle back and found the me who’d been buried for so many years. And then, Rav came crawling back to me, pleading for me to give him another chance. Us another chance… He told me that he’d never be able to divorce his wife, but that he truly loved me and always wanted me in his life. He said that he was really really sorry for all his behaviour and swore that he’d never, ever hit me again. He said that he’d take me on holiday to anywhere in the world to show his love for me… So, I agreed, and we went to the Taj Mahal, Jaipur, Amritsar, and we had a fantastic time in India, travelling for two months. He was more charming, kind, considerate and passionate than he had ever been before. It was such a heady, thrilling, utterly engrossing time… We rekindled our love, and it was more intense than ever… And I don’t know if it was kismet, but, a month after we got back here, he was diagnosed with terminal kidney disease. It was such a shock, and I felt terrible… We’d only just got back together, and now I was going to lose him. The love of my life… I went to see him in intensive care each day. But whenever his family was there, he always referred to me as his PA, which really hurt. Then, after a few weeks, his family stopped me visiting him altogether. I asked a nurse why I couldn’t go, and she said that it was his request… His… God, I hated him for that. Then, a few days later, he slipped into a coma, and one of the nurses called me in the middle of the night. She said, ‘you’d better come, now’. So I got dressed and went to the ward, and she arranged for his family to leave his room while they ‘changed the bed’. In that time, I slipped in, and I sat with him, and I treasure that moment. Despite everything, I still loved him more than anything in the world… Then I went back home, cried myself to sleep, and, next morning, the nurse called and, before she said anything else, I knew. I said, ‘he’s dead, isn’t he?’ ‘Yes’. I said, ‘I know. He died at 4:17’. And she was stunned. ‘Yes! Exactly 4:17. How did you know that?’… Of course I knew… I woke at 4:17, looked at the clock, and I felt him with me... He came to me before he left… We were connected, you see?… It’s taken a long time for me to get over him, but I have, and I got through it with the help of one of my colleagues, John. He’s 30 years younger than me, but he’s been a tower of strength. We dated for five years and, during that time, I truly found out who I was. And so now I thank John for allowing me to do that. He always listened to me, whatever I had to say, and he always supported me, through thick and thin. And there were a lot of bad times. Especially over the will, because Rav left me everything. And you can imagine how that went down with his family. Of course, it all ended up with solicitors and we went to court. But I got the majority of it, as he wanted. And then my mum went and had another stroke that paralysed her... I was shattered by that, and by all the caring for her 24/7 in the eight months before she died. They were the worst months of my life. And I couldn’t have come through them without John. But I knew that the age-gap would come into play at some point. People at work and friends told me that it wouldn’t last, and I didn’t think that it would, or could. But after five years, you start to think, well, you know, maybe it will? But I knew deep down that I was just being selfish. I wanted to settle down and take things easy, while he wanted to go out all the time, clubbing or seeing our friends, experiencing life. And I couldn’t deny him that, so I decided to end it. Which was very upsetting. But it was the only sensible thing to do in the long-run. Now I’m a single woman, and I go out clubbing with mates. Recently, we got talking to four lads in their 20s in Camden, and I copped off with one. Just like that. I said to him not to expect a relationship, that it was just lust, nothing more… And he was fine with that. And now I’ve realised that I can do whatever I want to with my life, and enjoy it, with no guilt or shame, or questioning myself… I know who I am and where I’m going now… I want to open an orphanage in Pakistan, using the money that I got from Rav. And if I find a life-partner along the way, then fine. If not, that’s OK too. I see now that I’m much more like mum than I realised. Helping people is the one thing that really makes me happy. I never understood that about her before. I thought that she was just a martyr and I got really annoyed with her. But now I get it. And now I feel that I can do anything… Recently, I went to Amsterdam and, for the first time, I saw a live sex show. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I couldn’t believe it. There was a couple on stage, right in front of me, actually shagging, with all these people watching. I thought, ‘wow! How can they do that?’ Then I thought, ‘can I join in?!’ Ha! I never thought that I could be that confident. But that’s how I feel now. And if I’d had the chance, I would’ve! Really! I’m now in touch with my human, carnal side for the first time and, after all that I’ve been through in my life, I say, ‘fuck it’. I go out, I flirt, I have a good time, and I pick up a guy, get a room, shag his brains out, then say ‘goodbye’ in the morning. And it’s great! I’m living the Karma Sutra, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it. I’m enjoying my life. I think I’ve asked all the questions that I needed to ask myself, about who am I and what I want. Everything that I’ve been through has made me the person that I am now, and I’m in a happy place...