Customer Reviews

Emigré Journeys

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Written in chapters with alternating voices, this novel tells the story of a Pakistani immigrant to England in he 1960s and that of his teenage daughter some thirty years later. Like thousands of his South Asian compatriots, Amir left his village and illegally emigrated to the UK to work long hours to improve his family's prospects. He describes the hard life of living in a group house with other illegals, subsisting on the bare necessities in order to send money back to his family to buy land. Living under a shared fear of deportation, his household nonetheless offers a minor sense of community in the strange cold land that is Birmingham. His chapters offer a sense of the furtiveness that is the life of an illegal immigrant-money paid weekly to unscrupulous agents who got them into the country, black market money channels to get money home, fear of any interaction with the locals, etc. All of this is woven in to his telling of an awful event triggered by the arrival of an English woman in their midst.

His daughter Parvin's story is a somewhat more familiar and less compelling tale of the problems of cross-cultural integration. Parvin faces the paradox of her father wanting his children to integrate with their new country and his adherence to traditional values and perspective on what constitutes proper behavior. It doesn't help that her mother is an unhappy person utterly subservient to his wishes. Naturally, Parvin and her brother grow up rather more free-spirited than their father might wish, leading to problems. These issues will be familiar to those who read Hanif Kureishi's story My Son the Fanatic or the film made from it.

At times comic, and at times heartrending, the novel is an excellent insight into England's immigrant community and their struggle to integrate. Amir's '60s story is more interesting than that of his daughter, but it's all quick reading and worth checking out.

Émigré Journey is a poignant comedy of outsiders, trapped in a new culture, living in a new land, seeking an identity for themselves. Amir lured from his small village in Pakistan, looking for a better means of livelihood leaves for England. There he finds a hostile environment, living under perpetual fear of deportation. During his initial years he dodges his life between shoddy jobs, dilapidated housing, conniving agents and longing for home. He suffers all grief with a desire for belonging to this new land and being able to attain freedom. In his quest for adaptation he compels his wife and children to adopt the English ways of life. Interestingly when years down after his children are young adults. He battles and argues with them over their free spirited and carefree mannerisms as they refuse to do as he wishes. Unable to mould their lives to his way of living; he finds himself torn by the cultural difference enshrined in his house.

I felt that Abdullah Hussein did an exceptional job thoroughly depicting real life scenarios that people face when migrating over from South Asia.

Hussein tries to work in two different stories (the experiences of a Pakistani immigrant and the quickly maturing life of his independent-minded teenaged Desi daughter). Hussein uses the technique of having each speak their tale in alternating chapters. The result is a scarcity of story, detail and character in Parvin's, the daughter, lamentable tale of cultural and sexual frustration. This is a shame because, for me, her chapters were the most interesting. I was left wanting to know more about her life and experience in mid-60's Britain, a very fascinating time in general, and a very harsh and dangerous time there for Pakistanis in particular. These things he merely glosses over. The ending of the book was an extreme disappointment. Leaving me to say to myself, "is this it?"