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    The couple did come round to see the house and Mum was up at the crack of dawn cleaning it. She wasn’t with us any more, she was in her world, the one she had dreamt about and was now coming true. The odds were against us getting the exchange, but knowing Mum she would do anything, even if it meant selling her dowry gold.
    I knew things were going to change because I understood my mother. She had grit and determination and when she wanted something, she got it. A price was agreed and an exchange was made.
    Dad’s biggest concern was how Mum was going to run a hairdresser’s if she couldn’t cut hair and had never run a business before. However, she had other plans ticking as she discovered that the only food places nearby were a bakery and a fish & chip shop. That’s when she announced to Dad that she was converting the hairdressers into a kebab shop.
    The kebab shop took me through my teenage years, along with the grease that clung to my hair and skin. It was a convenient set-up. The shop was attached to the house by a door leading from the back room, which had a ringer that went off when a customer came in.
    I finally finished the Koran when I was fourteen; four years later than my sister, who had since passed her school exams with flying colours and was heading for university entry. My parents bought her a desk, a lamp and a comfortable chair. The bedroom was out of bounds for me in the evening while she studied.
    My time after school was replaced with chopping, kneading and scrubbing, before opening the shop at 6 p.m. It shifted the dynamics between my parents and me. No longer did they see me as a child, but instead asa responsible member of the family running the house alongside them – a role usually taken by sons in our tradition. My brothers had all left home by now and were living their own lives.
    Mum hired a chef from the local community. I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or coincidental, but either way it raised a few eyebrows to have a man working for a woman. The chef was known to me as Uncle Hajji. Hajji wasn’t his real name, nor was he my uncle, but he had done the pilgrimage journey to Mecca and therefore had the title ‘Hajji’. (Hajji is for a man, Hajjah for a woman.) He lived on the other side of town with his extended family, which was so big that they were scattered over a number of terraced streets nearby. He had arranged his two daughters’ marriages in Pakistan, left them there and brought back a village girl for his son to marry when he turned sixteen. His family came from a different part of Pakistan, which meant their Punjabi accent was hard for me to understand.
    I didn’t have many friends at the time because I wasn’t allowed out, and I was working in the shop when I wasn’t at school. Mum was worried that I was becoming socially isolated compared to the Pakistani girls who lived in a community. She introduced me to Hajji’s many nieces. To her relief, I ended up making friends with one of them: Shazia. She was the eldest in her family and spent most school days helping her mum bring upher younger siblings. When we were in the same room as our mums we spoke fast English so they wouldn’t understand. Mum was still speaking pigeon English but she was catching up. Shazia and I were the same age, but our lives were totally different.
    She was engaged to her cousin as soon as her umbilical cord was cut and she was announced a girl. The cousin lived down the road from her, which I thought was weird. All the girls in Hajji’s family got married young, and if it weren’t for being in England, they’d have all got married as soon as their menstrual cycles kicked in. The women in his family weren’t allowed to drive as it ‘gave them too much independence’, nor were they allowed to go out without a male escort from the family – and even then, they would have to walk 10 feet behind him, even if it was their little brother.
    I never passed judgement, nor did their