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8. To England 
ATTIA HOSAIN (AH): Of course, if I [were to] get a job in America that pays more - my first son has had to go [to the US]. He had a play on here at one of the theatres here, the Greenwich Theatre, and it didn't come into the Westend because you know there is a shortage of money and certain people won't back certain intellectual kind of plays. This was one of Christopher Isherwood's books made into a play.It had every success critically but didn't come in. He wanted to work here, he who was the first Indian-born to be in the BBC, the youngest after leaving Cambridge in the Slate [School of Art], didn't get work here. It is not easy for anybody still with the name that he has now - Hussein and - let us face it, color. When he started, and when my daughter tried to make something here, there weren't all these million Asians here. We were a rare breed, sort of weirdoes. He made a name for himself and David Lean said that he has to be twice as good as us to be where Waris is [son Waris Hussein, is now a film maker in the US; daughter Shama Habibullah, also a film maker, chose to live and work in India]. So he had to go to America, to work and he has gone and when he was going he was down-hearted because he wanted to do something here and he said it is like prostituting oneself to earn a living. Well I am not saying those people [who went to Pakistan] were prostituting themselves; but they really believed they were going to a homeland. They really believed it. But alas it was not our homeland like Israelis because already over there [in Pakistan] were entrenched interests. So let us face the politics and economics of history. QUESTION No. they haven't really found a place for themselves except for the city of Karachi. AH: Of course not. I chose to break my life apart. My whole private life going to pieces by staying here when my husband went as Textile Commissioner to Pakistan [in 1948 Ali Bahadur Habibullah was seconded to Pakistan by the Govt of India to help with reparations and reorganisation but did not opt for Pakistan]. I wouldn't do it again. I have learnt since. I would think of my material prospects, and I would think of security and emotional security because once one is in exile, one is emotionally in exile. As I said, the Quaid [Jinnah] could be nice to me and could understand me. To the last day before I left for England, shortly before that when we were lunching with him, I was sitting near him. He used to be nice to me and it was these great chauvinist, nationalist Pakistanis who didn't want me around at one time. Well, I loved Pakistan as a country, why shouldn't I have? When I was with the BBC, at that time it was called the 'Urdu Service' and not the 'Pakistan Service.' I was amongst the first over there to introduce certain things and to be their great Shakespearean actress and all the rest of it in Urdu because I happened to speak that language better than I am afraid Punjabis or anybody could. Shakespeare sounded better when he was spoken correctly, with the 'Sheen - Kaf' [high-brow Urdu] correct. I had to leave that work, because in the Pakistan High Commission there was an interval when amongst my friends, nobody was the High Commissioner and they said that I was amongst those who was talking against Pakistan and I went and my pride was so hurt that we would sit in the canteen and discuss it. But when the head of that service, who is a retired chap from the British Imperial Police in Pakistan, in the Punjab, said to me, why are you now not prepared to work on our terms which were weekly sort of things when I had contracts for three months, I said I refuse to. He said members of our Parliament come and broadcast, I said I don't. But I want to tell you that why would I sit and talk against Pakistan? Because I have my own closest relations there. I go there. I have friends there. I can not talk against it. It hurt so much because I had no other job. I was not qualified, I just happened to be a naturally good broadcaster. I was left without work until one day Feroz Bhai [Sir Feroze Khan Noon] came here. He was Foreign Minister and somebody else came here to see me and said how you are getting on and I said I getting on where? Your High Commission [interfered], I said. High Commission, what for [he asked]? Then they [the BBC] asked me to go back and afterwards this very same man [from the High Commission] said to me, oh I didn't know you knew the President so well. I said did that make a difference to you? Did I have to tell you who I was? Now I'll tell you that there were people sitting with me working in that room and if they had come in Lucknow to my servants' door, I would have said kick them out. But that is not what I worked for, I loved what I was doing. Q: So tell me how you landed up in Britain? AH: How? I just told you that I made an idealistic, stupid gesture that I will not go there [to Pakistan] in 1947 when my husband was in the Indian High Commission. When this division came - he was not Pakistani because we had British passports - but he accepted the job of Textile Commissioner and went to Pakistan. Sonny and I went to a reception and the women who were with me all this time in the Indian High Commission turned their backs on me. Because they thought I was with the Pakistani High Commission, and the Pakistanis were talking against India. Suddenly, this happens overnight, talking, but I said if I go with you I will never be able to say those things. I can't, I will sit here dumb, I would not be able to say that. I can't abuse the country I love [India]. I was born there and brought up there. So, neutral thinking then, when this country [England] also was different from what it is today, when there were not the same material values, when I thought that certain fundamental human values are still in this country which were not in their imperial outposts but here. Well, I said my children are being educated here, I will stay here. So he [Sonny] could not, poor chap send me money. He could only send it for their education. And I accepted that. I am not saying I was doing a great sacrificial act. It did me a damn lot of good. I couldn't boil an egg. I couldn't put the kettle to boil. I can now do everything, and I can be a very good charwoman or anything you want me to be. I even wrote. Like I had not written before because I had to, it had to come out. So I am grateful for that. I love my friends, I love my people. I say don't talk to me now of the whys and where fors of it. Now I am an old woman who merely believes in human dignity, which is being rapidly destroyed. > Image © The Literary Estate of Attia Hosain (LEAH) |
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