Held back from cycling by cultural traditions, it was not until Iffat Tejani faced a life-and-death diagnosis that she decided the time had come to set her dreams free
Growing up in Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania, Iffat Tejani would notice other children riding bikes but could only dream of joining in. “None of us girls ever got on a bike,” she says, speaking to me by video call from her Hertfordshire home. “We were sporty and would play rounders, but girls were not allowed to cycle – it would have been frowned upon.” Aged 16 Tejani relocated to the UK with her family; at 20 she married and set about raising a family of her own. Only with the onset of a health crisis, 17 years later, did her long-dormant dream of cycling reassert itself in her mind.
“At the end of 2009, I was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer,” says Tejani. “I was only 37 at the time and our kids were still very young. Because the cancer was stage three and I’d recently watched the Morgan Freeman film The Bucket List, I decided that’s what I needed, my own bucket list.” Top of her list was to ride a bike. Exercise was out of the question while dealing with the cancer, but after two years of arduous treatment Tejani’s energy began to return. “Six weeks after radiotherapy ended, I did a 5K breast cancer run,” she recalls, “and then I wanted to learn to ride a bike. Because I’m a Muslim woman, I was looking for a female to teach me, which was very hard to find.”
Unable to find a female coach, Tejani booked a lesson with a St John Ambulance man who taught cycling skills part-time. “On my first lesson, I hit a curb and fell off,” she chuckles. “The instructor wasn’t expecting to hear back from me after that, but I rang him the next day and said, let’s go out again today but can we go somewhere softer?” Over the next three days, Tejani picked up all the basic skills she needed to ride solo. “I’ve not looked back,” she grins.
Filling the gap
Within a few weeks of regular rides with her family, Tejani was ready to take her cycling to the next level: she wanted to reach out to other women like her who were keen to get started. Over the next few years, she gained more confidence, developed her fitness and joined group rides through British Cycling’s Breeze network. Yet there was something lacking from her cycling. “I was missing that community feeling,” she says, “riding with other women who looked like me and had shared values. I could see the gap.” From speaking to friends at her local mosque, Tejani knew that the demand was strong, and she grew ever more determined to set up a cycling club for Muslim women. “But life had another plan,” she sighs.
