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Riffat
Akram arrived in Bradford in 1964. She was only eleven years old.
She says: "The journey was long and dreary. My father tried to teach
us some English on the way. I hadn't come across English before so
he taught us a few words on the train. When we arrived in Bradford
it was an extremely cold November evening. Foggy, smog, drizzle -
horrible. And I remember my mum's face when we got off. Some of my
father's friends were there to meet us. Dad said, 'We're here'. And
Mum looked around and she looked at the horrible, cold, dull, dark
place and said 'THIS is England!' I'll never forget that expression
for as long as I live. She was just horrified."
She adds: "England was the land of the rulers of India who we'd read
about a lot in history. In conversations at school children would
often talk about it and talk about it being at the other end of the
world. At that time I didn't know the world was round, so the edge
of the world was as far as you could possibly go - that was England!
I'd never heard of Bradford before. When people talked about England
they would refer to London, but other cities were not mentioned."
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Riffat
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