Author of We are a Muslim, please
My name means…
My first name, Zaiba means ‘Adorned one’ – I was named after a famous Pakistani actress, a screen goddess – Zeba. When people ask me how to pronounce it, I tell them – “Well, it rhymes with ‘labour’ or ‘neighbour’. My surname, Malik means ‘Master’. In the Koran, Malik is the Angel who guards Hell – quite a scary thought!
As I child I was…
Mainly confused. I grew up in a predominantly Asian area of Bradford but was the only Muslim in my school year so every day was a contrast, a navigation between two cultures. Everything from what to wear – my father insisted I wear trousers underneath my skirt to fasting at school made me stand out which…I couldn’t stand
I wish my parents had told me…
In life things get easier as you get older. That awful fraught feeling you may have as an adolescent does eventually go away and you start to feel comfortable with who you are. For me, it’s been a blessing to have grown up with two cultures – though it has taken me until my fourth decade to realise this. I hope there are more people out there who are a bit faster than me at getting this!
While detained in prison in Bangladesh, I found comfort in…
A mangy old cat that roamed around the prison grounds. It was so diseased it had almost no fur, lots of scabs and only one eye yet it insisted in coming into my cell on a daily basis. I never dared touch it but I watched it for hours as it lay outstretched on the filthy floor, fast asleep and purring away – as though there was no issue, no problem with being held in an overcrowded jail with women who were political prisoners, victims of rape and domestic violence.
The hardest thing to write about is…
Death. In my book, I recall the time when both my father and Uncle died and I could feel exactly what it was like at the time they passed away. In particular, it was painful to recall the day when my father’s body was taken out of our house in a coffin and the dreadful realisation that he was lying in a wooden box and was about to be lowered into the ground. Sometimes when you’re writing, it’s really quite uncomfortable to place yourself back in difficult situations.
To me, being Muslim means…
Believing in a God who is humane. It also is a personal affair – my version of Islam may differ from that of other Muslims but I have my own beliefs that I keep to myself.
I’m scared of…
Lots of things but I am quite claustrophobic so tend to keep away from large crowds. I don’t know where that stems from – but I do recall being trapped under a bed for hours as a child when a game of hide and seek went badly wrong; my hair got tangled in the wire frame and no matter how hard I screamed, my siblings – lurking in their much better selected secret places – left me there for what seemed days. It makes me shudder when my niece and nephew now suggest a game of hide and seek!
If the world was only one colour, I’d like it to be…
Yellow, because I don’t possess any yellow clothes but I do find it a very uplifting, jolly colour
In my Year of Silence, my thoughts were mostly about…
The lino on our kitchen floor. I used to fix my gaze on the patterns for hours when my Mum was quizzing me as to why I’d stopped talking. I had no answer for her. I basically put myself into a trance so that by the end of the year, I knew every single scratch and mark on the entire floor.
My parents make me laugh when…
They watch British TV – soaps, comedies, films etc – and they talk all over the programmes, complaining how rubbish TV in ‘Ingerlernd’ is and then they stick on some terrible low-rent Punjabi drama – badly scripted, acted, directed – the works – which they are totally engrossed in. I’ve learnt there’s no point criticising the implausible plot-lines or the painfully long song and dance routines – it’s best just to keep quiet and watch.
For more about Zaiba Malik, visit her website.
