Their tales of dalliances and sneaking off to parties scandalised me. They expected me to wear skirts but having grown up with the mantra, “We don’t show our legs”, I’d apologetically pull out a suitcase full of old fashioned shalwar kameez and mismatched dupattas. They mocked my Urdu because I used words they considered obsolete and which only our elderly great aunts uttered. Cousins imagined my British upbringing would have made me much more “westernised” than they were. Thanks to jars like that, women like me grew up with values that were so out-dated that they didn’t even have much currency back in Pakistan’s cosmopolitan centres. I imagine every Pakistani family had a jar like that – the saving grace of every working class immigrant parent a device to inculcate roots and scruples, and to guard their susceptible Bradford born offspring from the intoxicating fumes of unsuitable British values which lurked beyond the threshold. In reality, that jar offered nothing more than a moment in time, a moment from 1964, three years before I was even born. Although the label had faded and the contents had curdled by the 1980s, my well-meaning parents continued to regard it as a current record of morality in their motherland. My parents had carefully filled it to the brim with religious values and cultural traditions before leaving Pakistan to start a new life in Keighley. Above the flickering gas fire on the mantelpiece, a precious jar labelled 1964 took pride of place.
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