Personal journey
Thanks to co-presenting Radio 4’s Saturday Live and Breakfast on Times Radio, broadcaster Aasmah Mir isn’t afraid to speak out. But finding that confidence has been a long, often tough process, as she explains
Iam nine years old and it is November 1980. We are going through the torture of Scottish country dancing practice. At first, it is fun – lines and lines of kids, groups of eight galloping down the middle, our black gym shoes squeaking on the netball court. But soon we have to do couples’ dances and the boys get to choose the girls. My throat turns dry as I realise I am left without a partner. The teacher intervenes and says the last remaining boy will need to have two partners.
The boy and the other girl dance awkwardly, gripping each other’s hands too tight. When it’s my turn, I gingerly approach him, but he keeps his eyes on the floor and hisses, ‘No hands!’
I am thrown. I don’t understand how we can dance without holding hands but I try. We leap about the floor, out of time to the music, our arms outstretched towards each other but as if an electric current prevents us from touching. It is the strangest experience, stranger still because when it is the other girl’s turn again, they spin round the room clutching hands as I study mine. What is wrong with my hands?
At that age, I was willing to make all sorts of excuses for my peers when they asked me if my blood was red, did I have a bath at home or could my mum and dad speak English. ‘They’re just curious,’ I would think. But a few years later, children became more direct with me. ‘You smell,’ or ‘Why would any boy like you? You’re too dark. You’re a dog.’ I had some lovely friends, but the kids who were vicious and unthinking left their mark on me for decades to come.
FEELING LIKE AN OUTSIDER
My mum and dad emigrated to Glasgow from Pakistan in the 1960s. They both spoke fluent English and had been to university – Dad was a financial auditor; Mum was a primary school teacher. They had four children; I was the third. We had a loving upbringing. However, our life outside home was more complicated.
At school, it often felt that whenever things were going really well, someone would say something or do something that pushed us away, that told us that we were not like everyone else. The boy who didn’t want to touch my hands, the parents of a school friend who wouldn’t let me past the doorstep of their house – they were acting out their prejudices. I took the comments about my appearance to heart. I would never look normal; I would always be too brown, too hairy, too foreign. Who would ever want me? I wrote off any future happiness, instead concentrating on things like school work or reading
