A Childhood of School, Work & Marriages: My Aali Village of Hopes & Dreams

She opened the door and looked down at me with a smile. All I wanted was to see my dad and no one was going to stop me. At the age of six, I didn’t know why that night he had to sleep in another house. He had never slept away from us and what would he be doing sleeping in another house anyway. She smiled and let me in the room which was all covered completely in green cloth with golden tassels and many mirrors. The difficulties which followed were heavy enough to crumble mountains let alone crush young hearts. The race between the two wives to have the most number of children was evident and the daily battles were sometimes translated into flying cups at breakfast time and bumps on foreheads. The two wives later became partners in grief when he went on to marry his third wife, only this time from India. Mansoor managed to keep silent the pain of his tormented mother and disturbed siblings and channeled his energy to working in the farm. He used night time to study his lessons until he gained his PhD from England. As if to get away from his rotten ‘Islamic’ Arab village culture, Mansoor married Irene, a beautiful young English girl from the north of England. This book is about my story with a lot of humor and tears.