Kashmir United -- A Peek into a Luton Ghetto

My journey of self discovery began in England. I arrived at Heathrow at 6am and obviously my friend Turkish wasn’t there to pick me up. We named him Turkish after the Guy Ritchie movie Snatch.

Laziness is inbred in Pakistanis, I thought. A nation of lazy people. After looking around for a phone booth I ran into many tabloids on the floor promoting the Ashes series and the newly found English hero, Andrew Flintoff. The love for a game they themselves had invented had suddenly erupted in the hearts of Englishmen. In the past, Asian-English people would never had supported England but their ancestral nation, all of a sudden there was a national pride involved amongst all.

Turkish’s brother Bobby picked me up and we headed for Luton, an experience I will never forget. They were everywhere. Infesting the city. They had taken over like a virus. Pakis had conquered Luton. Downtown Luton could be easily mistaken for Kotli or Mirpur or even Muzzafarabad.

People in traditional clothes, a mosque every other block, veiled women, and throngs of boys. "Your shocked innit!" said Bobby, with a sly look on his face as if he was trying to say, "you’re in for it now mate!". Suddenly my sleepiness had gone away. "It’s way backward here mate, lemme tell ya. Pakis just came here in the 50s and kept the bloody culture of the time... and not just any Pakis... Kashmiris mate!". Kashmiris, the hillbillies of Pakistan.

I didn’t really know what he was talking about but all I could think at the time was that it was these very born and bred English boys that not too long ago decided to ride the tube and blow up people. For all they knew their relatives could have been on the damn train too.

Suddenly we pulled up to a shabby looking building with a sign saying, "Lahori Hotel", then it occurred to me that Turkish had gotten me a room for a night until his friend’s townhouse was being cleaned out. I checked in and wanted to watch the cricket but there was no TV so I asked to be taken to a room with a TV and one where the hot water was working. After shifting a couple of rooms I was taken to the top floor on an elevator old as the building itself.

I finally settled for a room where everything was working toilet and all and just crashed. Turkish woke me up, "Hahaha. You’re in it for now mate", with the similar evil look like Bobby’s. With him he brought a friend dressed in a shalwar kameez. "This your first time in Luton?""Uh... Yeh""Well then... ""Yeh I know, I’m in it for now right?""Haha... yeh proper brov, proper". Brov was a word I was going to hear a lot. His name was Chakkoo, didn’t know why but that’s the way I was introduced to him and didn’t bother asking him his real name. Chakkoo like 90% of Luton was originally from Kashmir, his family settled in Luton a few decades ago and were on welfare from the government.

It was normal for Pakis to be on welfare. He was only 25 and already had three children. Got married when he was 19 to a villager from Kashmir and brought her to England, of course everything was arranged and force was used. Chakkoo had a house that we were to stay in for the weekend provided to him by the British government. We jumped in the car and took a ride round Luton. It wasn’t a big town, probably only 400,000 people out of which 90% were Pakis. Everyone on the street was capable of speaking Pahdi (hillbilly). "We goin’ out tonight brov?" said Chakkoo. "show your mate how we do it in Luton innit?". Innit, another word that I was to hear over the course of the three days I was there. It wasn’t quite "Ain’t it" or "In it" but a mixture of the two. It could be used randomnly in any sentence like, "I’m going to the store innit" or "it’s bloody cold innit".

The English were sarcastic compared to Americans. Everything they said happened to have a hint of criticism too. The night came round and Turkish, Bobby, Chakkoo, and a couple of other of his friends who had joined us, headed out for the pubs. Everyone I had noticed was 24-25 and were married to villagers from Kashmir. They all spoke of getting wasted and having a good time.

There were no girls there, however, and I don’t recall seeing many the whole time I was there. I guess they kept them in doors with their other valuables. They were not different from any other group of friends out for a good time in town but as we sat around a table in the bar I noticed that we were secluded. There was an almost automatic ostracizing that occurred. Everyone around the table we were at left. The bartender refused to acknowledge us to the point where it was almost obnoxious. No one maintained eye contact with us or said a friendly drunk word here and there.

I felt like a black man in an all white bar in Mississippi in the 60s. Everyone had to explain to me that we were not exactly the most liked group of people especially after the bombings. Everyone had just accepted it and moved on un-phased. I was stuck in a time warp. Here I was in 2005 but somehow it could easily have been 1955. I tried passing a few comments here and there about the Ashes or what not but no one seemed to care or reply. It was different if you said something about the Yankees in a bar in the US, there would be endless conversations with random people. Here, things were different.

I reverted to the "Paki table" and joined in on conversations about trying to get good weed and how some friends they knew were in jail. A lot of young Paki boys would be involved in drugs, as was Turkish in his youth until his parents sent him off to the US to get an education. The boys were reminiscing times of youthful drug endeavors, times where some were caught and some got away. The conversation moved on to the Ashes and how they all wanted England to win as probably did everyone else in the bar. I figured out why cricket was not that popular. It was because it was a "richy’s sport". Only the rich could afford to play it whereas in India or Pakistan it was the opposite.

That night along with the other nights ended the same way. Everyone came back and talked about how difficult it is to find a nice lay these days and how their parents are always mad at them. They were like children who were thrown into a deep end and asked to swim. They had all lost their youth to marriage. They never really experienced adolescence the way people in the US had. To top it all off, they all claimed to be religious. In fact they were more religious than people in Pakistan.

Religion was forced upon them like a spoonful of horrible medicine. They swallowed it and were now intoxicated with it. The thought of going against the will of their parents never occurred to them because it was a forbidden thought. Almost like a thought crime, almost... Orwellesque. They all thought that a wife’s job was only to bear children and clean the house. Many probably never had a proper conversation with their wives. The wife was almost like a domesticated animal. The thought of love was rubbish to them

They did not believe in love or so they were told. “I’ve been in love once", said Chakkoo with an almost disgusting look, "it’s all rubbish mate. Love don’t’ exist brov. It’s all understanding innit. She should be traditional, take care of the Fam, raise the kids, and clean the house and all innit". And that was that. With one phrase he summed up love for us all. The others nodded in acknowledgment while I stood astonished. It was the norm I guess. The girls had to be from the villages back home. The girls too married illiterate men from the village. "Mangetars, they’re called. Those guys are proper Yardies".

Yardies was a word used to describe fresh-off-the-boaters from villages married to Paki-Brits. I queried as to why people didn’t get married to local Pakistani girls who’ve grown up here. “They’re all whores mate. The lot of ’em. They wear their hijaabs and take ’em off when they go out partying. We call em Convertibles hahah".

There was no use arguing. They all had the same belief. All girls born and raised there were whores. I dared not to mention their sisters and cousins and ask if they were all whores. I just let the subject go. I went to London to be showed around but Luton was far more intriguing. I studied their lives and their thoughts and how they had begun to think the way they had. I could almost see their thoughts transforming in their heads before they could think. It made perfect sense to me why young people like them would be frustrated to the point where they would attach a bomb to themselves.

I made it my duty to try and teach them otherwise. I felt like a revolutionary trying to free an indigenous tribe trapped by an evil Pharaoh. I tried to convince Turkish not to succumb to the norm. I told him to marry an educated woman, one that he can talk to and one who can be a wife not a child-bearer. Although he joked around and contradicted me. He knew I was right and I knew that the four years of education from one of the top Universities in the US did enlighten his mind. He would become the first in his family that didn’t marry from the village. He would come to the city and look for a wife there. This was the first step.

My last night there I was to be introduced to the most colorful of all characters. Zeeshaan or "Shaun" walked into the house we were crashing at. He was fairly tall and well built with a goatee and his long hair tied back in a pony tail. His shirt was well tucked into his tight jeans and was tied down with a huge Texan belt. To go with his huge belt he had cowboy boots with only the spurs missing. Shaun could have walked straight into a busy street in Rawalpindi and would fit right in.

After a small introduction he started rolling a joint in his hands while trying to dodge an imaginary mosquito. Turkish signaled to me that he’s a bit crazy. Shaun seemed normal for 5 minutes and then would go off in his own world dodging flies and mumbling. I guess drugs and alcohol had destroyed one brain cell too many. We got in the car with him and drove about the whole time he was chugging vodka from a bottle. He was out to look for a massage parlor. His mother just had heart surgery and he’d been tense all week. The massage was to soothe him and relieve the tensions. He stopped the car on the sidewalk, where everyone seemed to park in Luton since there are no proper parking spots, and rolled down the window.

A young boy, not older than 17 ran up and dropped a bag of grass. "That’ll be 20 quid Shaun. All good innit?""All good brov. Seeya tomorrow”. Turkish told me that In England, if one wanted drugs, women, or anything illicit they would come to towns like Luton and look for Pakis. Young Pakis are bound to know where to find drugs. It was almost like the scene from Traffic where the young black boy in the hood was "bound" to know where to find heroine. Almost all young "lads" were into it and if they weren’t they were into religion hardcore and would spend their free time in the mosques.

Almost everyone scammed the government though. They would walk into a welfare office and claim to be kicked out their house and would in turn receive a stipend weekly along with a house to live in. Of course they wouldn’t really live in the house but would keep it for drug use or rent it out. Shaun drove us back to the house after which we told him to go home. He tried to leapfrog over the gate and fell flat on his face. "I’m all right brov. I’ll be all right". He spun around and walked back to his car and sped away into the night."No one really lkes Shaun.

In fact, no one knows where he is most of the time. He’s been hiding for years" Tukish began to tell me his story. Apparently when Tukish went off to the US three of his friends decided that drugs weren’t bringing enough cash in so they needed to rob a gas station. Shaun and two others got caught and Shaun ratted them out. He only got 6 months while the rest got two years. The other two swore to kill Shaun when they came out so Shaun went into hiding for a few years. He surfaced here and there and was constantly on some sort of drug or the other. The other two forgave him but drugs and alcohol has made him paranoid.

He believed that something is always after him, explaining the imaginary mosquito he was trying to fend off. His family had made some money with cocaine. Shaun never did cocaine as he believed that "one shouldn’t do their own product". As I walked with Turkish to the bus to take us to Heathrow towards the end of my stay, I realized after I leave things are going to be the same for the people of Luton.

I experienced life in the ghetto. I might as well have been in South Central. Situations were extremely similar. I realized how hard it is for people to escape such lives of oppression. They didn’t know freedom because they never experienced it themselves. Turkish knew though. He knew what was right and what was wrong. Somehow, he was trapped in the chains of religion and culture. He was way better off than his friends. He had a good job in a bank and didn’t need to scam the government for housing. Somehow he had accepted the truth of his beloved town Luton and decided to live with it rather than try and change it.

As we were getting on the bus Turkish shouted, "Yo! Look it’s a Paki girl... them all whores here you know right?" he gave me a sly look and winked.