Once Were Radicals (11 page)

At school, we had scripture classes one afternoon a week. Believe it or not, my parents had fairly liberal views about religious education, so long as no one tried to drag their son out of his South Asian cultural and spiritual universe too early. They never imagined us living anywhere except Australia, and insisted I learn other people's faiths. This meant I never missed out on scripture classes, and it was left to me to choose which denomination to attend. In those days there was no Muslim scripture, though after one experience at the mosque, my parents would not have let me go even if there was.

At the time, Sydney only had two or three mosques. The closest mosque to us was on the other side of town in the dingy inner-city suburb of Surry Hills. The mosque ran a Saturday school, and the teacher there was of Arabic-speaking background. My parents strongly objected to his teaching methods. I objected to the fact that it was a
Saturday school and not a Sunday school like the one all my friends attended.

One thing that really got up my mum's nose was that the teacher used to teach us the Koran whilst keeping it on the floor. This was a complete sacrilege in our religious culture where the Koran was always to be treated with reverence. At home we kept it on the top shelf of our bookshelf, never allowing another book to be placed over it. It was always wrapped in cloth, and we would always make sure we had washed our hands before touching it.

Mum once walked in on our Saturday school lesson wearing the kind of translucent
dupatta
she always wore on her head during religious occasions. She was horrified to see that, apart from myself, all the kids and the teacher had their Korans placed on the floor. The teacher himself was quite perturbed by Mum's lax attitude towards wearing what he felt was appropriate headgear.

‘Sistarr, you shoodh be wearing za brobarr hedskarrf,' he reminded her.

‘Look at yoo! Vaat hipoocreet yoo are. Yoo mek childrun put Kooraan on dirrty caarput.'

Clearly Mum thought paying reverence to Allah's book mattered more than adopting what she thought was an Arab cultural fixation with women's headdress. It was to be the first, last and only time I attended Muslim Saturday school!

Mum's respect for scripture wasn't limited to the Koran. She also insisted we kept bibles and other holy books on the top shelf. Maybe she was hedging her religious bets in case we found out on the Day of Judgment that the Jews or Christians were right after all.

Mum had no theological or cultural reservations about my attending scripture lessons at school. She especially liked the fact that I was learning stories from the Old Testament about Moses parting the Red Sea and Joseph interpreting dreams because these same stories were in the Koran.

She also didn't mind my getting involved in Christmas passion plays. In one performance, I played one of the three wise men from some strange country called ‘The East'. It took me a while to figure out why all of us were picked for this role (the other two boys were a boy from New Guinea and a girl with Chinese parents dressed up as a boy). The baby Jesus was played by a white-skinned baby doll, and our teacher insisted Mary and Joseph be played by blond-headed kids. Perhaps she thought Bethlehem was near the North Pole, and that Mary and Joseph lived next door to Santa.

The incident with my broken arm proved to Dad that I simply wasn't street-smart enough to survive in the rough-and-tumble world of a state high school. Or perhaps it was the lack of supervision that led him to consider sending me to a private school. Or perhaps it was more to do with academic standards. My parents, like most middle-class South Asians, insisted that their children excel academically. In my case this was even more important. Mum kept reminding me that I was their only son in the most Indian drama-queen manner.

‘Vee have high hope for yoo. Becuz yoo are my
kaleje ka tukra
.'

‘Huh? What does that mean, Mum?'

‘Yoo are peess of my keednee.'

‘Urrgh, yuk!'

How is this for linguistic confusion: Dad told me today that ‘Kaleje' doesn't mean kidney but rather heart! Mum had been misunderstanding the word all this time.

It didn't help that I was at the top of my class, though I think my parents suspected this reflected more on the school than on me. In Pakistan school was far more difficult and challenging. We worked much harder, the discipline was much stricter and we had more homework. By contrast, school in Sydney was a breeze.

A number of uncles and aunties had started sending their kids to private schools. They argued that the standard of education was higher and the discipline was tougher, and that children who went to private schools managed to get better jobs and more opportunities than they'd otherwise have.

They were convinced that their children might face discrimination in the workforce when they grew up. The ideal professions were those where discrimination was almost absent. At the top of the list was medicine. Indian doctors never suffered racism as they were always needed. Plus all my doctor uncles used to spend half their time boasting about how much they earned and how much they paid the leasing company for their new Mercedes or Volvo.

Mum's biggest fear was that I would have
gori
(white woman) girlfriends in high school, and perhaps even end up marrying a
gori
. She therefore insisted that I had to attend a single-sex school. To do otherwise might bring shame upon the family and lead to gossip. I soon learned that so much of Mum's decision making was designed for reputation risk management, to minimise the possibility
of gossip. Indians don't have a specific chattering class—they're all master chatterers.

My parents didn't want me to miss out, so they did some calculations and made a few phone calls to different private schools. At first they tried a local Catholic school. My dad still talks about that experience of speaking to the principal. Their conversation went something like this:

‘Hello, Mr Principal. I am inquiring about enrolling my son at your school.'

‘Certainly, and what is the young boy's family name.'

‘His name is Yusuf.'

‘You what? How is that spelt?'

‘Y-U-S—'

‘Hold on, let me grab a pen. Now, can you start again? This time a little slower.'

‘Y-U-S-U-F.'

‘Okay, let me repeat that back to you. U-F-S—'

‘Never mind. How can I get him in? What fees do you charge?'

‘Fees are not an issue, Mr … er … Ufsusf.'

‘Excuse me, I can tell you how to say my name correctly. I do have a PhD …'

‘Sorry. I meant Dr Ufsusf.'

‘It's Dr Yusuf.'

‘Yes, that's what I meant. Anyway, tell me. Is the boy a Catholic?'

‘No, he isn't.'

‘Okay, are you or your wife Catholic?'

‘No, we are not.'

‘Does the boy have any relatives who are Catholic?'

‘No.'

‘Well then, would you be prepared to have him baptised as a Catholic? That way, he could be enrolled without any hassles.'

‘Over my dead body!'

Dad and I visited various schools, and eventually narrowed the field down to two. There was a nearby Catholic school called St Ignatius College. The school looked like something out of sixteenth-century England, with statues of rather austere-looking men wearing funny hats and long robes. The school had both day students and boarders. I imagined what it would be like staying here at night and seeing these statues come to life like something out of a Michael Jackson music video.

More significant than possible nightmares were the cricket grounds. I was a complete cricket fanatic, though I was the only person in the family who supported Australia. Dad supported whoever won the game, while my sisters supported either Pakistan or the West Indies. The only thing we agreed upon was that we never supported England. In that sense, we were a truly Australian family.

Mum encouraged my fixation with what she called
kirkit
, hoping it might help me shed a few kilos. We were living in a new house around 1200 metres away from the old one. Across the road were large lush hospital grounds containing a single cricket net with a very rough surface for a pitch. Whenever we had family friends visiting, I would play cricket with their sons on this rough track which we referred to as the ‘Gaza Strip'.

So when I first visited the lush grounds of St Ignatius, I was impressed by the immaculate green grounds and the flat turf cricket pitches. I imagined launching an international cricket career as Australia's first (somewhat overweight) Indo-Pakistani Dennis Lillee, running in to bowl a few bouncers and knocking the space helmet off some poor frightened Tony Greig, sentencing him to a lifetime of exile from the cricket ground apart from the odd pitch report.

My dad had other concerns. He told Mum he felt the school was a little too austere for his liking. So he decided to try another school. This one was in the city and was run by the Anglican Church. I didn't mind Anglicans as my favourite scripture teacher at my state school was Anglican.

Dad picked me up from school early one day. We parked the car at Chatswood then caught a train to Town Hall. I imagined this would certainly be a more exciting way to get to school each day than walking among bullies or being dropped off at St Ignatius. It took us around thirty minutes along the North Shore line, crossing the Harbour Bridge and enjoying a gorgeous front-seat view of the harbour and the city skyscrapers. This was going to school in style.

We arrived at reception and went up the lift to the eighth floor of a building located just behind the Town Hall. The location of the building was exciting enough. When we exited the lift, it was as if we'd entered the twenty-first century. Of course, sitting in the twenty-first century now doesn't seem like a big deal. But for a ten-year-old in 1979, it was huge.

I started attending St Andrews Cathedral School at the beginning of Grade 5. Our school uniform was much more formal, consisting of a light-grey safari suit and a straw boater. Mum thought the safari suit would be good training for my future life as a ‘daaktar'—all my doctor uncles wore safari suits. I felt like a broadway actor wearing the boater on my head.

The trip to school now took at least ninety minutes. I had to catch a bus to a nearby railway station and then catch a crowded train to Town Hall station. Often the trains were so crowded that I'd have to wait until a number of trains had come and gone and a less crowded train was available.

It was on one such train that I recognised a boy in my class. His name was Donald, and he would catch the train most mornings and afternoons. The only time he would miss out was when he would be on choir duty. St Andrews has a world-famous choir, and choristers were expected to attend early morning practice and stay after school from time to time for what they called ‘evensong'. They would dress up in special robes and gowns and sing at our weekly chapel services.

My parents insisted that I attend chapel services because they felt it was important for me to learn about the dominant faith and religious culture of Australia. They also insisted I attend Divinity classes which were held once a week.