Hi, I'm Emma Smith from Hertford, and I'm talking with Shahnaz Ahsan about her recent novel. Hi Shahnaz. Hi, nice to be speaking with you. It's brilliant to be speaking with you. Tell us, just start off,
tell us about your book. Give us the title. Tell us what it's about. Ah yes, of course. Hashim and Family is the title of my book. It's my debut novel, so it's been a long time in the making.
And it is the story of a family who moved from East Pakistan, which we now call Bangladesh, to Manchester in the 1960s. And that part of the storyline is very much inspired by my grandparents' experiences. And then it follows this family over a period of 20 years and their relationship between Britain and Bangladesh, and sort of the
challenges that they face about, sort of, settling into one new place while still having ties to the place they left behind. Yeah, I really, I absolutely love that about the novel and the sort of parallels, I guess, between the different places that the two families, the ways, we don't give too much away because there's a kind
of reveal in it, but can you talk a bit about what the relationship is between between Britain and Bangladesh, in terms of your novel? How do you see the two? How do you or your characters see the two places?
I think each of the characters view each of the places in their own particular way, as we do as people, so there are four, sort of, main characters, I suppose, and the ones that we see who do the migrating, at least from East Pakistan to Manchester,
there are two cousins who are called Hashim and Rofikul and Munira, who is married to Hashim. And each of these three, I think, have quite an interesting way of relating to different places. So you see some of them really sort of throwing their all into being English and in some ways being more English than the English,
because that's what they feel they have to do to be accepted. So you see instances of them, you know, dabbling with changing their names and the different ways that they react to that. And you also see that call of home, which again, I think lots of migrants, it doesn't matter when you did it, lots of migrants and
children of migrants, I think, still feel that sort of pull in different directions, I think. And what about the politics of East Pakistan and and the birth of Bangladesh? Because that was one of the things that I thought was really fascinating about that,
so one of your characters goes back as a War Reporter essentially, doesn't he, and then we've got this horrific, horrific depiction of war and what it's doing. I suppose what was interesting about that to me is that you're not idealising a kind of home country.
And what did you feel about that? There's bits about the war in East Pakistan which are so horrific and that much more horrific than anything that happens to the characters in Britain. But but you've obviously kind of structured it so that so that that's, there isn't this kind of idyllic place back home,
it's more complicated than that. Absolutely. And I think that's something that is again, probably quite common to people who have migrated from a place that then undergoes some kind of turmoil. So whether that's a war or some kind of natural disaster or something.
And the guilt that people feel, I think for having escaped whatever the trauma is back home, so to speak, and having that safety somewhere else. And as you say, what one of these characters does is he goes back to that environment and that place.
And in a way, I think it's a kind of guilt that a lot of migrants feel. So when things are going really poorly, you know, really badly back home, he wants to be there and be on the front line almost as penance, I think.
And the reason why I wanted to sort of explore the politics of the birth of Bangladesh is because it's, quite frankly, it's just something that I never was exposed to in the mainstream. So like throughout my education in the UK, I was never taught about it in school, it never featured on any documentaries or anything that I watched,
so everything I knew came from the stories that my parents told me or my grandparents and I think it's just such an important and recent part of history, I mean it only happened in 1971, and it's a way that you understand so much of migration history and patterns in the UK as well.
And that's yeah, it was basically one of the main reasons why I wanted to feature that in this particular book. One of the things that struck me was that a child born at the same time as the country and I was thinking about your novel as a brilliant sort of love child in a way of classic Coronation
Street on the one hand, and something like Midnight's Children on the other; the sense of a kind of a family or a domestic kind of story set against this extraordinary kind of political landscape. So you said that part of the inspiration for this was your grandparents' journey to the UK.
What were your more literary inspirations? Or who? Who do you draw on as a writer, do you think? Yeah. Well, when I was thinking sort of through the idea of this book and it had been sort of knocking around in my head for years, really
before I actually sort of sat down and decided to write it, I'd always thought of those books that explore a period of history and through the lens of a family or people. And so it's very character-driven, and this sort of stuff happens in the background.
And that's not to say it's not important. You know, at some points, I chose to foreground that, but it's all, sort of, told through the human experiences and the human face of it. And in terms of the writers, I love Louis De Bernieres and
I think he's somebody who does that incredibly well, this idea of really getting into a place, so whether that's, you know, wartime Greece, you know, or an island off of the coast of Turkey during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which are just two of the periods that he wrote about,
but it's all through that, sort of, our human interactions with people. But also, I think there is, I mean, I certainly felt that there was a shortage, as I said, growing up, of those kinds of voices. I think now you've got more, sort of, writers talking about partition and you've got different writers who talk about, sort
of, the Bengali migrant experience, like Jhumpa Lahiri who is a writer that I really respect. And she talks very much about more recent migration from Bengal. So she also talks about India, Bengal going to America. But that's not that's not my family's experience.
So, yeah, that was why I wanted to do this. And tell me about the one thing that really struck me was the, well, the 'and family' of the title of your novel. Because in some ways, I guess what that conjures up, and there's something about the cover is a brilliant sort of mock up,
of it painted on it on the side, isn't it? And it is the sign of the shop. In some ways, that seems as if it might be quite a conservative idea or a quite quite a yeah, quite conservative idea.
And in fact, the family that you talk about is an extraordinarily blended, extended, sort of nontraditional one in all kinds of ways. And in some ways with these two really close women friends, Minera and Helen, at the heart of it.
I thought that was a really interesting take on family, and maybe we could talk a little bit about that. Yeah, because then a few people also said that and sort of commented on how it seems very, as you said, nontraditional like it is a very unorthodox, sort of family arrangements that we see in this book.
But for early migrants, that was actually more common than we think and, sort of, living in extended families, you know, space was an issue. So sort of lots of people living together was quite common. And the friendships and connections that, sort of, came about that you weren't just living together,
You're also neighbours, you were friends, you're each other's guides and that kind of thing. And one particular story I remember was my grandmother telling me about when she first came to the UK. So she was living in one of these big extended houses full of, you know, other East Pakistani men.
So she was the only woman in this house and there was a little boy who was there and he was with his dad. And I think he must have been in his early teens or something. But she and him were the only ones that were a bit different.
They were the ones that weren't going off to work every day. And it's kind of unthinkable that this young bride would be striking up a friendship with this sort of young lad, but they were all each other had.
And I sort of took that as an inspiration for these sort of unorthodox or unexpected friendships that definitely happened in that period. And I think also we often think that, you know, a lot of the language, even now about immigrants, is that they keep themselves to themselves.
They don't integrate with other people. We hear language about ghettoization and that kind of thing. And actually, people really did live alongside each other. These early sort of relationships, of, you know, of interracial and, you know, couplings really did happen and they weren't all, sort of, frowned upon, either.
I think actually in a way that generation were a lot more pragmatic and in some ways, more open minded then they ended up being when they settled in the UK and had children. That's so fascinating because there's a scene that really strikes me,
I don't want to give too much away about the book because I think it unfolds with a beautiful kind of rhythm, and I, sort of, I don't want to give away a lot of spoilers, but I was just thinking, there's a lovely bit, sort of, too, I guess, in the last third of the book where the younger generation,
so the, sort of, second generation migrants are talking, that they're in clashes with the kind of National Front and those kind of fascist protesters in the eighties. And there's a conversation between them and two people from this older generation,
Vincent, his character slightly on the margins, who I liked very much, and Hashim and the sense that the older generation, did you feel that they have had to compromise to keep their heads down and get established?
And in your book, it seemed that it was the next generation who were able to be more angry, standing up against racism and and more, yeah, more kind of out there, really? Yeah, absolutely.
I think that sort of comes naturally as well. I think there is a difference from when you have moved to a place and when you've been born there. And I think when you move to a place, it takes time to work out the systems and how things are and what the status quo is and how
much you can push that. And I think a lot of people at that time, as you say, really did just want to keep their heads down and get on with it and weren't really looking for trouble. I think trouble often found them.
And that comes through in the book as well. You know, sort of harassment and worse, was certainly something that people felt right from the beginning. But yeah, the next generation, the ones that have been born in the UK, the ones that sort of feel like they've got some kind of claim to this country, do expect more.
And I think you see that even now, you know, like future generations and all of that is completely legitimate, of course, you know, people have a long history with the UK before they've even come here, just by the virtue of the fact that they are from countries that were colonized.
And so this, sort of, long history that migrants have with the UK before they've even become migrants, again is something that I think isn't often talked about. I thought that what was interesting about the migrant, well, I was going to say the migrant experience when obviously that's a real, stupid kind of generalization because there isn't there
one. There are there are many, many thousands of people. Sure. But what the UK enabled for some of the people who came was quite double edged because on the one hand, there is some kind of almost, they're not fairytale, they're very kind of realistic.
And I enjoyed that kind of realism. But there are some really, you know, good news stories. Some things work out, some things work out really well. Unexpectedly, the families are able to progress economically and sort of change their situations.
But Minera is a really, really, really interesting, ambitious, clever woman with a husband who supports her, kind of brilliantly. You know, she is on her way and she gets the things that she wants. She gets, she gets employment outside the outside, the home and the business, the home business.
And then she gets her, you know, she's able to proceed. So on the one hand, there's all that kind of good stuff. And then on the other hand, there is this background of fear and you know, people don't want to walk home on their own.
There's a lot of protection of the young people knowing that they're likely to be targets. And that's very, clearly, unflinchingly depicted. So I mean, I guess it is double edged, isn't it, that their experience in your book, on the one hand, it gives a lot to them.
They work really hard for it. And on the other hand, it really treats them very, very badly. Yeah. And I think that's the reality of what a lot of families experienced as well. I mean, in a way for me, like as a, you know, on one side of the family and third generation, it's actually crazy to
me to think that I have family members who have lived in Bangladesh their whole life and have never dealt with their race and never been asked to, you know, so their ethnicity is never really come up. It's never been noticed when they're in class, it's never been noticed when they're trying to apply for jobs or anything like
that. And, you know, maybe it was naivety or people just weren't aware of it or anything, but those early, you know, people who were coming over, I just don't think had any kind of idea of what really to expect.
And so that kind of, as you say, that sort of double edged-ness of it. Yeah, it was an economic opportunity. And I think actually early on and again, this comes through in the book as well, you know,
So Hashim says when he first comes over, the plan is just to come for five years to do his work and to end some money and to like, you know, enough to set him up for when he goes back home.
And then I think what often happens and certainly what happens in this book is that those advantages of being here, those perceived advantages kind of take over. You know, fundamentally, there was a health care system that worked. There was an education system that worked and those very practical things.
I think especially when you have children, become enough to keep you even though you yourself is sort of that first generation who have come out from being displaced. That's what I think people mean when they talk about the sacrifice of people who come over, you know, they're the ones that really do sort of give up their sense
of, their sense of belonging. And I think it's actually really hard for us to really understand what that must have felt like to to really give up your sense of legitimacy in a way to do that for the benefit of your children or what you believe to be the benefit of your children.
And then as you say, that next generation come up and they have expectations that go beyond that, you know, it's not enough for them to just, you know, have these educational opportunities, whatever, they're citizens, they belong. They deserve more than that.
And I think that's a conversation you see happening throughout it as well. I was struck that, you know, there is there is racism, there are there are racists. They're very, they're really faceless in the narrative that they're just a kind of presence.
You know, someone's locking up the shop and they hear footsteps or, you know, someone's in a playground, just sort of shooting the breeze or something. I wondered if you'd made a sort of ethical decision not to make racists into people, you know, and not to write about, not to write about them so the White Brits
that you talk about are all well, Helen I guess is, you know, is an absolute part of the family. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you say that because I think on some level, I must have made that decision, but I haven't heard it sort of, you know, summed up as eloquently as you did just then.
But yeah, I think often, you know, racists or those kinds of individuals, whether it's, you know, in the media or whether it's in a novel, become the subject. And I didn't want them to be the subject.
And also, I think it then becomes easier to say these individuals and these are individual instances and that particular person behaves like that or that particular gang did this, but we're not all like that. And I actually think it's quite uncomfortable to admit, but I think that there are institutions and systems that were then and still are
now racist and discriminatory. And by talking about it as though it's sort of more generic, I think that means that we all need to be a bit more aware of our own complicit sort of, you know, part in this.
Yeah. Were you conscious as you were writing, did you did you ever feel you were censoring yourself or being making that that complicity, that point about complicity easier for readers? I'll tell you what I'm thinking of, there's a part in a school classroom, which in some ways, I mean, there's this awful violence in this book.
I mean that very, very well depicted and nothing gratuitous about it, but really, you know, really awful violence in both contexts, both national contexts. But the bit, the scene that I found unbearable in a way was was the teacher in school.
Yeah. And that seemed to be the moment when you were, I don't know, in some ways, most explicitly kind of political. Nothing happens to her, does it? There's no there's no redress. There's no one to speak to. No, there's nothing can be done.
There's no, there's no sort of resolution to that story. She's just presumably still there. It was a really, really shocking kind of moment, really. And I just wondered whether there were, you had more of those that you might have wanted to suppress or, I guess it's what your obligations are, whether you felt you had obligations
in writing this novel and who you thought would be reading it. It's really interesting that you say that because that particular part, more than any of the rest of the book, was personal for me. So that was based on an actual classroom experience that I had in primary school.
And I wonder if that sort of rawness of feeling maybe comes through in that as well that you were responding to in it? Yeah, yeah. In terms of, I guess, responsibility or what it was that I wanted to depict, I suppose it's the different elements of it.
You know, these days, especially people get really cross when you, you know, not accuse them of racism. But you know, when you say that this is racist or whatever, you know, it's almost like it's more of an insult to be accused of racism than it is for you to actually do something that could be perceived
as being racist. So it's like the emphasis has shifted. It's like it's a worse thing you could possibly be called, even if what you're doing is that and just fall into that category, which I find crazy. But that sort of feels to be the position that we're at.
You know, we know that racism is a bad word and we don't want to be associated with it. And yet it still exists and pervades in so many different ways. And what that particular incident does, I think, is just sort of showed the different ways it can,
It can exist. You know, we've got language for it now. We call it a microaggression. You know, so when, you know, somebody says something like, "Oh, you've written a book", you know, like in the way in which they say it, you know, like I actually had
Somebody tell me once a dinner party, that I got this book published because it's trendy these days to be talking about that kind of stuff, you know, that kind of thing is what we call a microaggression.
Is somebody saying, you know, your abilities alone are not enough, like you've got some of the kinds of advantage people are doing you a favour or something like that. And the way what that teacher does there, I mean, in some ways, it's not really micro like it's actually out and out aggression just about this kid.
Yeah. Making this kid, you know, question, you know, their identity and their sense of belonging and their legitimacy. So, yeah, racism isn't always, you know, somebody being beaten up, that happens in the book, too. And it's not always, you know, National Front demos, although that happens in the book, too.
There's all of these different facets to it. And yeah, I didn't want to bang the drum too hard in writing the book, but in a way I didn't really have to because actually, when you talk about the lives of people and if what you're doing is just telling the experiences of what a lot of people went through,
Unknown# then that's enough. You don't actually really have to to make these points because they sort of pop up naturally again and again, as they do in the course of real people's lives. It's a brilliant, it's a really brilliant book.
It's a really brilliant book, not just a brilliant first book. What are you writing now? What's going to be the next one? Is it too soon to say? You only just published this one!
No, no, it's not too soon! I have have been working on something else. I was sort of told that the further you are into your next book at the time of publication, the better it is. You know, because you're focused on something else.
Yes, I am partway into the next book. And again, that's also sort of focusing on a family, a South Asian family. But this one is actually set in a small town, which is very much based on the town that I grew up in.
So it's an anonymous town in West Yorkshire at the moment, and it's this idea of children moving away and then coming back home. I'm really pleased to hear that, not only, well, everything about that, but particularly to hear it is set in West Yorkshire, which is a homeland for both of us!
Yes, it is! Because I wondered why you didn't set this, why you didn't sey this in West Yorkshire and why it is set in Lancashire instead? Is that because that's where your grandparents came to? Why was that the setting?
Erm, it was two reasons. One is that that is where my grandparents went to. And so the stories and things that I'd heard, for me, it just sort of it happened that that's where it popped up. And that's related to the second reason, which is that the very first chapter when you see Hashim, sort of standing
on a train platform somewhere in Manchester, that first page that you read as a reader is the first page I ever write, and it's basically unchanged from how I wrote it. And that's because it was the first scene that came into my head when I was thinking about this book.
So Hashim just sort of turned up in my mind and he happened to be in Manchester. And then after that point, it didn't really feel like I could change it. So, yeah, that's why. So yeah, I'm looking forward to writing about somewhere that I'm sort of a bit more personally familiar with, having grown up there.
And I think it would be nostalgic as well, I quite like writing about places when I'm not there in a way, I think you sort of remember places a bit more sharply, a bit more vividly when you're not actually physically there.
So that's what I'm working on now. That's really great. That's really great. And then I just thought maybe we'd would finish up with just a quick, if you could do a whistle stop tour between Hertford and now for you,
I think people would really love to know, you know, how you got from A to B or H to, just give us the potted version. So you did History and English. When did you graduate?
So I graduated in 2009, and then after that I went to Bradford, so back home for a year and I did a Masters at the University of Bradford at the Peace Studies Department there, which I absolutely loved.
And it was very different to doing History and English, but it was working with studying alongside people who were like working in development and that kind of thing. And for a while, I actually thought that I might go down that line, but in the end I got a job in London and I always said that I wouldn't
contribute to the brain drain. Like I was really, really adamant that I would stay in West Yorkshire but ultimately a job came up in London, and I really loved the look of which was working in Interface in a nonprofit. So I moved down to London and basically spent the next eight years working in various different non-profits and higher education
and then I did a Masters in the US. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship, and I went to UPEN, The University of Pennsylvania and did a Master's in nonprofit leadership and and it was actually then that I started writing Hashim and family.
So then when I came back to the UK, I sort of decided to prioritize writing. So I carried on working in higher education, part time and then writing part time as well. And what does that take us up to?
Then I did a very Hertford thing and got married to somebody who I had met at Hertford! And yes, yeah, give him a shout out! Yeah. And then we moved to Ethiopia last year for his work, so we moved to Addis Ababa almost two years ago now, actually.
So I've been living in Ethiopia for the last two years. So, yeah, you asked for a whistle stop tour. I think that's taking you to a couple of continents even! Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. So we should wrap this up...
It's been so really great to talk to you. Really, really great. I absolutely loved the book, and one of the ways I loved it is I've been thinking about the character since and sort of one, yeah, kind of wondering what they're doing.
It's a feeling I have when I read someone like Anne Tyler, who I think is a really brilliant chronicler of a kind of ordinary but kind of extraordinary kind of interrelationships and stuff. And I'm thinking afterwards what are those characters doing and I thought that about Hashim and family.
I think it's a really, really brilliant novel. So let's let's give that a shout out to everybody who is listening. Hashim and Family by Shahnaz Ahsan, but I just wanted to say thanks Shahnaz and congratulations! Thank you so much.
I really am. I am so looking forward to the next one in the unnamed place, which we all know is Keighley. Yeah, yeah, we might as well give that one a proper shout out! Yes. Yes, thank you. It's been so good talking to you.
Brilliant. Thanks Shahnaz! Thanks!