Free Once Were Radicals by Irfan Yusuf

screen, and would not enter a room when he was around. My dad found this behaviour somewhat extreme and even offensive, especially when later she was quite happy to appear in front of me when I was in my twenties.
    Mum’s aunt wasn’t always with the Jamaat. Her late husband was a successful businessman, and while he was alive, they lived for many years in the United Kingdom. Hence, Mum’s first cousins all spoke fluent English. Mum also showed me pictures of her aunt as a young, beautiful and fashionably dressed woman who, like many middle-andupper-class Pakistani women, would walk around in public unveiled.
    In fact, it was only after her husband passed away that Mum’s aunt felt drawn to religion. Like many conservative upper-class people, she was attracted to the ideas of Maududi.

    We always understood our stay in Pakistan to be temporary. We knew that eventually we would be moving on and returning to Australia. But for the next year or so, ours was to be a nomadic existence. That overseas trip left lasting impressions on all of us.

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Jewish brothers and Bollywood love
    After spending almost a year in Pakistan (it was actually only six months, but it felt like a year!), we spent a week in London and Paris before arriving in Princeton, New Jersey, where Dad was spending his sabbatical.
    Because my parents strictly enforced the rule that we were not allowed to speak English in their presence, I became so saturated with Urdu that I had to re-learn how to read and speak English.
    I was enrolled in a local school and another culture shock was in store for me. For starters, there was no uniform. Imagine the reaction I received when I turned up on the first day at school wearing a Pakistani school uniform and an embroidered skullcap. I soon realised this wasn’t exactly the College of Success, so the next day, I wore ordinary Western clothes.
    In the playground, I noticed other kids wearing embroidered skullcaps. Feeling a sense of affinity with them, I struckup a conversation with a rather large lad whose nickname was ‘King Kong’.
    â€˜So, are you learning to read the Koran?’
    â€˜Yes, I have a man with a big beard come over every afternoon to teach me the Torah.’
    â€˜Korah? It’s called the Koran. Do you read it from right to left?’
    â€˜Yeah, of course!’
    â€˜Do you have a big party when you’ve finished reading it?’
    â€˜Yeah, we get lots of presents too.’
    â€˜We don’t get presents in Pakistan. We get money instead.’
    King Kong and his friends wouldn’t eat food from the canteen. Once I went with King Kong and his mum (or rather, his ‘mom’) shopping. Kong’s mom wore a small headscarf, and she made a point of showing me which aisles to point out to my mum. When I did this, Mum told me that the food sold in these aisles had no pork in it. As such we Muslims and Jews could eat from there, even if there was pork everywhere else in the supermarket.
    I could understand about Muslims eating from there. But who were these people called Jews? I assumed King Kong and his friends were Muslims, just like me. They all wore embroidered caps and had men with big beards teach them to read a book from right to left. Mum had to give me another lesson on religious differences. She reminded me of the family that ran what was then Sydney’s only Indian spice shop on Bondi beach.
    â€˜Dhey J’wish peepul, just like yor firrend King Kong.’
    â€˜No they aren’t. They’re Muslim. They wear a
topi
just like we do. And King Kong has a
molvi
come to his house to read the Koran.’
    â€˜Hee not lurn Kooraan. He lurn
Thauraat
. It diffurunt book.’
    All these years, I presumed that kind old lady who gave me free ice creams at the Bondi spice shop belonged to the same religion as me. I assumed that anyone who spoke and looked and ate like us were us. Even after Mum explained that the ‘J’wish’