Several weeks ago, someone collided with my parked car and luckily, my neighbour took down the regisration number and so I reported the matter to the police. Quite quickly, the police tracked down who was responsible for the damage to my car (bumper had got cracked).
It was an Asian Muslim name, and call me prejudiced, but I immediately felt a bit more tense. On calling Mrs... let's call her ... Ahmed, she immediatley wanted to pass the phone to her husband. This annoyed me. If you drove the bloody car, and hit mine, you deal with the consequence, I wanted to say to her.
Anyway, Mr Ahmed then came on the phone and assured me they'd pay for the damage rather than taking it through the insurance.
Now, after several visits to the garage, finally the car is back. And the bill is £150 more than the estimate. I went to the house to collect the cheque and got invited in. I am not comfortable around Asian Muslim people... I never seem to read them right. They for their part, must see me as very strange as I have not married . That is the main issue for them, invariably!
Very quickly it turned out Mr Ahmed who I took to be maybe the grandad, was the father of the three kids and Mrs Ahmed, - much younger, was his second wife.
He has two adult kids from his first marriage to his cousin, when he came to the country, aged 25. The eldest is now 27, so he must be around 53 years old. He was self-employed and not working at present he said. Therefore, the extra £150 would not be easy for him to raise, he explained.
"You can pay what you were expecting to pay, now, and the rest, a couple of weeks later," I said.The house was very well furnished I might add and so I could see no lack there.
The wife offered cake and tea. Perhaps I should have said no, but I didn't. I was curious, and wanted to get to know them a bit. We chatted about how often marriage for girls here, becomes a trauma as they are abandoned as soon as the guy gets his passport. We talked about how often, the bride brought from Pakistan, is treated like a nokkar - a servant - by the in-laws, while the 'husband', is going out with white girls. I explained I have always refused marriage. I could see that was quite a big surprise for them. We fially agreed that the wife would bring a cheque tomorrow on her way to dropping the kids off at the mosque.
We are friends now, said the wife as I left. But I felt quite unsettled and insecure. I don't like Asian Muslim people to know where I live. And now, I feel quite exposed and vulnerable. Although I have lived all my life here in the U.K and had very little contact with any Asian Muslim community, I do know that the widowed and divorced women, as well as that very very rare creature, the woman who has steadfastly refused to marry anyone, must live with their parents or a brother or uncle - never alone.
