![]() ![]() ![]() ‘I sew also,’ Alsana replied, and they had a pleasant enough chat about seams and bobbins, materials and prices per yard, in a motorway service station over an indigestible lunch. ‘Hot pants,’ said Clara, shyly, in response to Alsana’s wide eyes, ‘I made dem myself.’ Clara was tall, striking, a black girl with a winning smile, wearing red shorts of a shortness that Alsana had never imagined possible, even in this country. Alsana was small and rotund, moon-faced and with thick fingers she hid in the folds of her cardigan. They fell back into easy conversation, two old boys slipping swiftly into an acquaintance as comfortable as slippers while their wives stood either side of the bags noting they had this thing in common and no more: that they were young, much younger than the men they stood awkwardly beside. ‘Long time no see,’ Archie had said, reaching out to grasp his old friend’s palm, but Samad converted the handshake into a hug almost immediately, ‘ Archibald Jones. ![]() Samad and Archie had a friendship dating back to the Second World War, back to the hot and claustrophobic Churchill tank in which they sat side by side for three months, close enough to smell each other and to recognize those scents thirty years later when Samad emerged from Gate 12, Heathrow, with a young wife and a paisley patterned luggage set in tow. In the spring of 1975, Samad and Alsana Iqbal left Bangladesh and came to live in Whitechapel, London, the other side of town from Archie and Clara Jones. ![]()
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