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> A Sanctuary on Mill Road
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> The Akashi Project
> Open All Hours
> Mesmerised by Meze
> Come Together
> The Girl from Arapau
> Still Sweet and Spicy
> A Real Neighourhood
> Lei Si Fan Mei?
> Flight from Baghdad
> Streets of Revolution
> Stepping up the Ladder
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OPEN ALL HOURS
Abubakar Siddiq and Arafat Siddiq are two young brothers who run Yasrab Newsagents in Romsey Town. They came from Bangladesh in 1999 to join their parents who had settled in Cambridge. They spoke to Untold Stories in the shop’s tiny back storeroom during a break in the World Cup Cricket from Jamaica where the West Indies were playing Ireland. |
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Cambridge Untold:Tell me about where you’re both from in Bangladesh.
Arafat: We come from Sylhet province, a place of some 8 million in North-East Bangladesh. We were born in Mathiura, a very big village. The best thing about life in the village is everyone knows everyone. There’s always someone to say hello to in the street or market, and people drop in freely to each other’s houses. That’s one of the things I miss. Here you might not see your next door neighbour more than once a week or once a month.
Abu: It’s true, but a lot of people from Sylhet are actually here in Britain and in Cambridge. Each household in our district has at least one person who is now in the UK and more than half the Bengalis in Britain come from Sylhet. A lot of funds get sent back, so it’s quite a well to do place compared to the rest of Bangladesh. We’re known as the tea capital. There are about 120 tea gardens in Sylhet alone which provide a lot of jobs for tea pickers, women mainly. You don’t hear so much about our tea, because India buys it and exports it. But it’s Bangladesh tea!
Arafat: It’s the largest tea production area in the world. It was actually started by the British in the 18th century. The terraced tea gardens and green and very beautiful.
Cambridge Untold: What do you remember of your childhood in Bangladesh? What was a typical day like?
Arafat: Well we’re cricket fans so there was always a match going on in the field behind our house! It’s very popular in Bangladesh. On a typical school day, breakfast was just tea and biscuits. We’d get to school for 10, quite a late start. We studied English and Bengali language, Maths, Science, History, Social Studies and Religion. It was a government assisted school so our parents paid something toward our schooling. The classrooms had 60–70 pupils. Here, our younger sister has about 30 pupils in her secondary school class and people say it’s too many. After four o’clock, we went home and had lunch, rather late compared to kids in Britain. Homework was very important and there was lots of it. After that we’d play cricket again. We lived next door to a mosque so we’d attend prayers every evening.
Cambridge Untold: What did your father do for a living?
Abu: He used to run a computer shop but he was one of the many who left Sylhet to come to Britain with our mother when we were young. We stayed with our grandmother who sadly died only amonth after my parents left. Arafat and I were raised by a widowed auntie who had lost her husband in the 1971 War of Independence. After the Partition of India in 1947, one Muslim state consisting of West Pakistan and East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh) was formed. Thousands of miles separated the two parts of the new state, with India in between! In 1952 West Pakistan started to impose Urdu as the official language on East Pakistan where we spoke Bengali. This ‘Urdu only’ policy was very unpopular. Can you imagine your government forbidding you speaking English? A lot of our Bengali-speaking students protested, and many were killed defending the right to use their language. Our auntie’s husband, Komor Uddin, had been a very well known Sylhet singer who used to perform for the troops. His songs encouraged thousands to sign up for the army to fight the war against Pakistan.
Arafat: After the War of Independence, Pakistan and Bangladesh became two separate nations. But our uncle was targeted for singing songs to the troops and, sadly, he was tracked down by agents and killed. Our auntie lost her only daughter a few months later. So we two brothers were taken in by her when our parents left for the UK.
| "We have very loyal customers... One elderly man, who comes in for his daily paper, told me he was a paper boy here 75 years ago!" |
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Cambridge Untold: Why were so many Bangladeshis coming to Britain at that time?
Abu: For jobs and to join family members. My father worked as a chef in an Indian restaurant.
Arafat: We say ‘Indian’ restaurant because that’s what they’re called here, but really about 90% of all ‘Indian’ restaurants in Britain are run by Bangladeshis.
In Mill Road they all are. In fact they’re all from Sylhet!
Abu: In Bangladesh our big thing is fish. People have ponds in their back yards where they raise carp and other fresh water fish. You find it in a lot of Bangladeshi restaurants in Brick Lane in East London. There are so many, we call it Banglatown!
Cambridge Untold: You’ve opened a newsagents, did you ever think of opening a restaurant?
Arafat: I’ve worked as a waiter in two here in Cambridge for three years and I can see it would be very hard work running one. You have to work very late in the restaurant business.
Cambridge Untold: You both seem to work very hard here running Yasrab news.
Abu: It’s only the two of us, seven days a week. It makes it difficult to follow the cricket World Cup! Sometimes our father relieves us behind the counter. It’s our first business, we took the shop over from a Pakistani owner only two years ago. But we have very loyal customers; some of them had already been coming to this shop for years. One elderly man, who comes in for his daily paper, told me he was a paper boy here 75 years ago!
Arafat: Yes, some families have been coming here for three generations. That’s why we kept the old name Yasrab News. The locals see it as their shop. It’s only thanks to them that we’re still in business.
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| "We say ‘Indian’ restaurant because that’s what they’re called here, but really about 90% of all ‘Indian’ restaurants in Britain are run by Bangladeshis." |
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Cambridge Untold: You’re obviously facing competition from the Co-op supermarket just opposite and the giant Coldhams Lane Sainsbury’s. Is the local corner shop threatened?
Abu: There are advantages to the corner shop. We know exactly what some of our regular customers want when they come in, who’ll want ten Embassy Lights, who reads the Saturday Guardian or the Cambridge Evening News. In big chain stores the staff changes from month to month. They can’t give personal treatment.
Arafat: It’s true. Many customers come in just for a chat and may stay talking maybe half an hour.
Cambridge Untold: What do customers talk about?
Abu: Everything under the sun! Often it starts with the weather. The older ones particularly. And then maybe we’ll move on to global warming and pollution.
Or people buy their newspaper and see the headlines, and we talk about the state of the world, how it’s all messed up! A big topic is the A14. It’s a dangerous road. Accidents are always in the local news. I think people really go out of their way to support their local shop. One woman told me her husband asked her not to buy his newspaper at the supermarket when she did the shopping, but always to come to us for it!
Cambridge Untold: So, you’ve never met any prejudice?
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Abu: No, customers seem to choose us. Narrowminded ones are the exception. They probably assume we’re Pakistani because the previous owner was. I don’t think they’re bothered about the differences between Pakistani or Bangladeshi or Indian. Generally we find people here very friendly and accepting. I’ll give you an example. Last month I shaved my hair off. Lots of customers complained! Why did you go and do that? I don’t like it! I preferred it how it was… I was amazed. You know, your wife and children or close friends may say this sort of thing, but your customers? I think if they can complain to my face about my haircut, it means I’m in there! |
Cambridge Untold: You have a personal relationship with your regular customers. How else do you compete with the giant stores?
Abu: By stocking a bit of everything! Take a look in our shop window… people get curious and come in just to have a look and end up finding something they need.}
Cambridge Untold: I can see candles, DIY tools, an ice tray, an electric fan, and lots of toys. Earlier a customer came in on the off chance and asked if you stocked pot-pourri…
| Arafat: Often they come in for one thing, and leave with something else entirely! And it’s not true the small shop is more expensive. Sainsburys’ can buy massive amounts of products, say crisps, where we will buy maybe just one box. But we still sell our crisps at 40p against their 47p. |
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Abu: And we price our toys so a parent with two or three children can buy them all something with £10 or so. We sell a lot in summer and at Christmas. Most of our transactions are very small, kids buying sweets on their way home from school, a newspaper, a can of soup. We make ends meet but it’s not easy.
Cambridge Untold: The shop is obviously a focal point in the community. What would you like for Mill Road?
Arafat: If we could stop large chain stores opening it will help! If just one of them opens it will close us down overnight…
Abu: We have to attract more people to this side of Mill Road. Numbers this side seem to have dropped since we opened. It’s because there’s nowhere to park. If someone wants to pop in for a photocopy, where can he park his car without getting a ticket?
Cambridge Untold: And do you ever envisage going back to Bangladesh to live?
Arafat: To be honest, we are stuck here! All the family is here now, our parents, our wives and children… But it’s a nice place to be stuck.
Abu: I’d say the standard of living is higher here. But maybe some quality of life is missing. In our country the air you breathe is fresher, the wild flowers grow wilder and you can see the stars clearly in a black sky! After eight years we do miss things in Bangladesh. The beautiful tea gardens of Sylhet, oranges growing on the tree... but the way I see it, if we manage to make a living here we can visit Bangladesh regularly. Then we can have the best of both worlds.
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