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> A Sanctuary on Mill Road
> Boat People
> Going Green with Al-Amin
> 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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Still Sweet and Spicy
Zarrar Arshad came to Britain from Fazalabad, Pakistan in 1976. He owns Sweet n’ Spicy restaurant opposite Ditchburn Place. Below he talks about how Islam informs his life and work and shares his views for a better Mill Road.
Cambridge Untold: You came to Britain in 1976. Have you been back since?
Zarrar Arshad: Yes, I go back quite often. My mother’s living in Lahore, but a lot of my friends and family have left Pakistan. I have two brothers and a sister in Cambridge and lots of my friends are living in Saudi Arabia. My three children go back to Pakistan every summer. It’s a way of keeping in contact with their culture and with the Urdu language. My youngest son is eleven, and of course, his main interest in Pakistan is cricket. He wants me to send him to cricket camp so he can learn more about the game. He says he wants to play for his country. I think he means Britain. Last year our family went to Mecca in Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage or haj. Unfortunately, my youngest son didn’t manage to get a place. There are millions of applicants and you have to get permission from the haj authorities. |
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Cambridge Untold: What does going on the haj in Mecca mean to you?
Zarrar Arshad: All Muslims are encouraged to make the pilgrimage once in their lifetime. But you should never get into financial difficulties to do it, and only go if it’s something you can afford. People are discouraged from taking out a bank loan or borrowing money to visit Mecca. And the money you raise to go on the haj must be morally earned, it can’t be dodgy money. To finance your trip with money from amoral sources, like theft or gambling, would be a waste of time because you wouldn’t be pleasing God. Generally, Islam discourages loans. People ring you up out of the blue and ask you if you want a loan, or letters come through the letterbox constantly urging you to borrow, or buy now and pay nothing. People run up massive debts. It causes a lot of unhappiness. Strict Muslims even consider interest earned on one’s savings to be immoral.
Cambridge Untold: As someone who runs a business, do you use the banking system?
Zarrar Arshad: I do, but I’ve never taken out a loan. And I don’t serve alcohol, although that is where a lot of the income in a restaurant comes from. I used to sell it when I had a grocery store and we had fights in the shop or on the pavement every night! I stopped the day I read in the Cambridge Evening News that a young girl, a student, had died as a result of alcohol. That article and the photograph of the young girl who had all her life before her, deeply affected me. I thought about it all day and in the end I said to myself, ‘That’s it, I’m part of this, I’m responsible too.’ So I stopped selling beer and wine, though financially it was a huge setback.
Cambridge Untold: Islam is seen as a strict religion which might be difficult to follow. Is it?
Zarrar Arshad: I’d say Islam is easy if you follow it, but if you don’t follow it properly, it’s very hard! Take praying five times a day, for example, which is what the Koran says we should do. Those five prayer sessions actually only take about 20 minutes in an entire day. It’s something God asks you to do and once you make it a part of your life it becomes very easy. When I was younger I prayed maybe three times and skipped the other two sessions, but now if I don’t pray I really feel I’m missing something. There is a logical reason for the five prayer sessions. When you stop what you’re doing and take time to wash your face, hands and feet in order to pray, you feel so refreshed after! Stopping to pray makes you take a physical break in your busy day; it becomes a special time, a personal connection between you and God.
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| "I’ve been here over 30 years and I think I know all the Mill Road business owners. It’s become a real community and many of us are working to build that further." |
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Cambridge Untold: You have three children, two boys at Impington Village College and a daughter at Anglia Ruskin University. How much of a challenge is it to bring them up as Muslims in Britain?
Zarrar Arshad: Well, they’ve been regularly to Pakistan and witnessed a Muslim society functioning successfully. But we’ve never forced them. Our youngest is still a child and has no pressure on him, but he gets up at five most mornings to pray with the rest of us. He loves to memorise whole sections of the Koran and he attends the mosque in Mawson Road regularly. He’s a young boy and he’s interested in learning about Islam along with cricket, computers and everything else! I think all religions give young people a moral framework to grow up in. Ours is a Muslim framework, but I recognise all religions as good, though I happen to think Islam contains the wisdom of all those other religions.
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Cambridge Untold: Many aspects of modern British culture must clash with your values…
Zarrar Arshad: Yes, but my children remain very much part of modern British society. They watch TV, spend time on the internet, and go to their friends’ parties or Cine World like everyone else their age. I’m actually not very strict, though I do keep an eye on what company they’re keeping. I think if you put in place the right values, you can trust young people to know right from wrong.
Cambridge Untold: Is the Abubakar Siddiq mosque the only one in Cambridge?
Zarrar Arshad: Yes, and Friday prayers are getting very crowded! Cambridge is a medium sized town but it has a massive intake of foreign students from the Middle East attending the universities and language schools. Then there are local Muslims and new converts to Islam. We tried to acquire new premises at Coleridge school and the old Fiat garage in Romsey. We made an offer but didn’t get it. A new mosque will cost several millions. I’m actually hopeful we can raise the funds within Cambridge, though we’re appealing to Muslims in the UK and abroad. Many Muslims give 10% of their earnings to charity or for good works of this kind. Again it has to be clean money, earned in a moral way. We’d like to get somewhere quite central which visitors and tourists could visit as a new point of interest in the city. It’s very important that people see that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, as the media often portrays it.
Cambridge Untold: How do you feel about that portrayal?
Zarrar Arshad: It makes me sad. Those terrorists are misguided fanatics, certainly not Muslims. I now go out of my way to show British people that Islam is about care and compassion, about being on good terms with your neighbours.
Certainly not about blowing innocent people up. So it saddens me more than I can say. |
Cambridge Untold: For six years you were General Secretary of the Cambridge Pakistan Association and are very involved in the community. What changes would you like to see in Mill Road?
Zarrar Arshad: I’ve been here over 30 years and I think I know all the Mill Road business owners. It’s become a real community and many of us are working to build that further. To be honest, when I first came to Cambridge, Mill Road was rather run down. It wasn’t the kind of place to walk after dark, not only as a Pakistani but as anyone going about their business. Now that’s changed. There are lots of new shops and restaurants, some of them quite upmarket, and there’s a broad mix of people from Cambridge and the surrounding area. But we still have a long way to go: for instance, the quality of the actual road and pavement is awful. You could say Mill Road is becoming a victim of its commercial success. One big problem is parking. I have to park my car in Tenison Road and keep going out to pay for it. I get a fine of £30 almost on a daily basis. In the past people have suggested I stand for election as a local candidate. I’ve always said no, but now I’m tempted. It may be the only way to get real change. When I was in Dallas, Texas I saw some wonderful things they did to open up parts of the city to pedestrians, and I thought of here. Imagine Mill Road with people sitting out at tables in the summer! There could be rickshaw bicycles or even horse and carriage rides for tourists in summer…
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