Word: manzoor
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Mohammed Manzoor had to work for 11 years before he could bring his wife and four children over from Pakistan to join him. He lived in a house with 31 other Pakistanis, sleeping in shifts. When his family was finally able to make the long trip over to England, his wife had all of five rupees in her purse and not a word of English. It's no surprise, perhaps, that the youngest Manzoor boy, Sarfraz, grew up in a household that stressed self-reliance and hard work, with no thought of pleasure. It's equally unsurprising that...
...immigrant's story of hungry hearts and divided loyalties is delivered with uncommon honesty and understanding in Sarfraz Manzoor's Greetings from Bury Park. But what gives the memoir its special kick is that the Pakistani-born Briton, now 35, manages to stake out his own life, more hopeful than his parents', not by becoming an assimilated Englishman, nor by turning to radical Islam, but by becoming, of all things, a Springsteenite. In the songs of the Catholic Bruce Springsteen, from New Jersey, the keema aloo-loving boy in working-class England finds a way to grasp his parents' dreams...
...great charm of Greetings from Bury Park lies in the everyday details of Manzoor's coming of age in a home that will never be home for his mum and dad. His mother, when he was young, cut the grass with a pair of scissors, while his brother slept on a hospital trolley bed, and the others all slept on the floor. His father got up at 7 a.m. and dressed for work even after he had been laid off by the local Vauxhall car plant. As for Saf, we meet him wearing pajamas under his trousers so he doesn...
...shocked their families. In Crawley, an industrial town 33 miles south of London, the mother of Yasir Khan, 28, insisted her son had gone to Pakistan for humanitarian work. In Luton, 34 miles north of London, the parents of computer-engineering student Afzal Munir and taxi driver Aftab Manzoor, both 25, weren't aware the two had joined up. Both lived with their parents in modest suburban houses in this quiet town that is home to 22,000 Muslims...