AN IMMIGRANT SAGA

...He is learning traditional English history and absorbing English values...

...Since she has not had any periods since the surgery, it was probably something more extensive than an abortion...

...Michael's College, Winooski, VT 05404...

...This way she could earn some money to supplement the rent income and pay the upkeep and the mortgages...

...her of being er ground and taken what for t step toward on her head ig and sewing, ts are "bleedany of these g and willing n Englishmen >n complaints e "so bloody :onomy, as is rgain because "vices for less apitalists who pical example ) the British >r Mr...

...They bought her ticket with the money her husband sent and she flew to London immediately, ready to settle into a new life, her long wait over at last...

...She stayed in her house and kept sewing and sewing...

...They are caught up in the misery which immigrant workers always face: they are used by their bosses on one hand and hated by the native workers on the other, because their own struggle for a living takes jobs away from the natives...

...He will eventually know more about Churchill, one of his ancestors' chief oppressors, than about Indian leaders such as Gokhale, Tilak and Nehru combined...

...She sold the other one, losing most of the money to pay the mortgage...

...Had he been an English doctor, we could have written this off as insensitive paternalism...

...Compared to some of these women, though, she considered herself fortunate...

...In 1964, a 58-year-old Pakistani gentleman who had some money and a heart condition, came to Pakistan from London, where he had lived since the late twenties...

...Not that she would enjoy the ample Victorian spaces, as the two upper stories and even the front room of the first floor were rented out...

...She could wheel him around in the pram on shopping trips, like the proper English child...

...His relatives urged him to marry, and after searching for a suitable woman, they found her, in the room in Llyalpur...

...Few publications are available to those who can read, and few of them speak English well enough to articulate their problems to the British authorities—even assuming that the authorities would respond...

...It was difficult for her to find a good doctor because she was far too modest to allow herself to be examined in any detail by a male doctor...

...These immigrants, most of whom came for economic reasons, are openly despised by many Englishmen, who blame them for Britain's severe economic problems...

...She would like to raise the rent, but since the present tenants are not giving her any trouble— and she gets along well with them, she wants to ensure that they stay...

...bob schildgen is an English and Journalism instructor at Merritt College in Oakland, California...

...One of the saddest things about poverty is this attempt to create a little dignity by such desperate, inexpensive renovations...

...Widowhood may have freed her from male tyranny, but there is little she can do with this freedom except keep on scraping a living together and hope that her son will somehow succeed in this unpromising city...

...She sews them together, receiving 35 pence (less than 70 cents) for each dress...

...Luckily, unlike many of the women she knows, she did learn to read Urdu and Arabic, principally to study the Koran...

...She already knew how unhappy the man's wife was...

...degree, for special students, for auditors, for enrichment...

...The surgeon, who did not speak her language, couldn't tell her...

...Finally, she did have an operation, but she never found out precisely what was repaired or removed...

...In 1967 she had a baby boy...

...But he was Indian himself, and as a physician had close knowledge of the immigrants' problems, in particular of the oppression of women inside an already oppressed community...

...When they finally got together, after several desperate hours of translations, searches and announcements, lie took her to the honeymoon home which, not counting her, was his last piece of property except for one other house nearby...

...Aside from this, she simply did not want to live and work for him in his house and on his terms...

...In fact, one of the most common complaints among immigrants is that the British are "so bloody lazy...

...He had had an interesting and varied career, doing everything from bit acting to working for Indian liberation to becoming a modestly successful confidence man...

...The home was a three-story Victorian in bad repair, in Clapham borough, where so many have come in recent years looking for something better than the poverty and limitations in the former British colonies...

...They gather up all their anxieties and unhappiness around one little pain and then come to us to get rid of them...

...AN IMMIGRANT SAGA BOB SCHILDGEN and B. DIN Female, 'coloured' and troubled Over 3.2 percent of England's 56 million people are now "coloured" immigrants or their descendants, from Pakistan, India, Jamaica, the West Indies and African nations which were formerly British Colonies...

...She was born in northern India in the late 1940s, in the middle of the bloody fighting between Hindus and Moslems, and the rioting and mass migrations which took place at that time...

...She does most of her work for Mr...

...For reassurance, more than anything else...

...The toilet, outside, around the corner behind a rotting door, was musty and full of earwigs and other creatures that slithered out from behind peeling plastic wallpaper which had been hastily applied to cover up almost a century of patch, piss and flaking paint...

...He had thrown away a lot in Pakistan, lavishing it on his relatives there in his triumphal return as the rare, successful emigrant...

...Safely tucked away in this modern cottage industry, isolated in individual households, the women like her are in no position to organize...

...Of course this is partly due to a thriving air pollution, the byproduct of an otherwise enfeebled economy...

...This woman later had an authentic nervous breakdown and continued to go on periodic dish and furniture smashing binges...

...She believes this sacrifice will help her husband up through the ranks of the afterlife...

...She assumes he started out at a pretty low level there and needs all the help he can get...

...She began to feel sick much of the time...

...You have to realize, in the cramped way they live, a trip to the physician is one of the few outings they have to look forward to, and it costs nothing...

...Three years later her family received word that she ssued at a moby their Com1 to afford conleir priests and a fitting conclu- n that occasion ith historical eternal misshe endures nd of people, story that the n old to new ihness of the tion to them, together with ilete freedom |uiet courage 1 which it is 'ard God...

...She tried to spruce up, to "modernize" here and there, putting cheap rugs on battered floors, coats of cheap paint on rotting wood, contact paper over cracked dirty walls, plugs in rusted eaves, flimsy curtains on windows that wouldn't stay open because all the old weight-ropes were mildewed away decades ago...

...The bathtub was in the tiny kitchen, and the dinner dishes were washed in the same sink where you brushed your teeth and hacked and spat out the London smog in the mornings...

...He explained, "These Indian women develop a lot of hypochondria because of the lives they live here...

...His earching for a oom in Llyal:eremony per:d to London, as he had put word that she could now come to London...

...The nephew argued with her, accusing her of being ungrateful and rebellious, but she held her ground and clung to her independence...

...There is no written record of the transaction...

...By being sick they at least get some attention...

...The baby, the aging husband and she slept in the tiny bedroom (less than 10 by 10 feet) and, in the smaller living room, ate what she cooked in the cramped kitchenbath...

...H. likes this arrangement, not only because of the low wages, but because he is not required to pay any benefits...

...Or perhaps often met hatred and discrimination...

...H., a vers her some into various receiving 35 s. As anyone who has done any sewing knows, this adds up to less than $1.00 per hour in the service of that good Englishman Mr...

...or M.A.T...

...His articles have appeared in a variety of West Coast newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Berkeley Barb...

...He had aged more than she expected because he was worrying about money...

...At nine years he is already able to recite King Alfred's noble deeds against the Danes, and as the lessons proceed he will discover far more about Queens Elizabeth and Victoria, and Gladstone and Disraeli than about his own people...

...He will have to be bright to survive London...

...MICHAEL'S COLLEGE WINOOSKI, VT...

...60 a credit...

...Racism intensifies this resentment, and if times get harder and the English have greater needs for a scapegoat, this "coloured element" will face increasing discrimination and hostility...

...And despite the tacky surroundings in this dirty, noisy section of one of the world's dirtiest and noisiest cities, she had to admit that life here was more comfortable than in the room in Llyalpur...

...Paint was peeling off the walls, windows were coming apart, the roof leaked, though not yet so badly as to reach the first floor, smells of dry rot struggled through the pleasant odor of curry cooking, and there was a general dreariness about the place, as there was, indeed, about this whole section of London...

...Sometimes her husband beat her, especially after he had been drinking...

...The following true story is about one of these women who has gone through an arranged marriage, immigration and a struggle for a living south of the Thames in London...

...In 1971 her husband died, leaving her nothing but the two decrepit Victorians, neither of which was paid for, and a few acres of land in Pakistan...

...She was a lot luckier than the female relative in Pakistan who had a marriage arranged with a young Pakistani in London...

...She knew very well that once he got her under his roof, in the guise of fulfilling his family responsibility and protecting the child, he could use her, even to the point of taking a bite out of her small sewing income...

...She has to depend on sewing and the rent of the other two units in her decrepit Victorian...

...Far from being a drain on the economy, as is often charged, these immigrants are a bargain because they are willing to produce goods and services for less money, leaving more cash for the very capitalists who accuse them of destroying the economy...

...The fter her affairs, sed, suspicious y she had left the mortgages, m on the joys Observers often got her under V responsibility sr, even to the swing income, nt to live and is...

...She learned many customs women must follow, from covering her head when a man enters the room to faithfully serving the man whom her family selected for her...

...Or, on better days, he would spend time plotting deals that could never come off because he simply didn't have a decent supporting cast...

...But the asthma is more likely psychological, according to a doctor we accompanied her to visit...

...The old dark man who had helped in India's struggle to overthrow colonial rule, who had known and helped Gandhi's followers in the thirties and forties, was now reduced to his own colonialism, a slum lord to his own people in London, depending on their rent payments for his income...

...But she hangs on...

...The land, which is not worth over 3,000 pounds, was contested by her brother-in-law and is still tied up in the courts there, which are even more corrupt and less efficient than British or American ones...

...For her, we see more long years hunched at a sewing machine, new layers of paint and contact paper over ST...

...She had a very difficult time finding him at the London airport...

...Because Pakistani and Indian women are already oppressed within their own communities, they are doubly victimized, both by the British and by their own tradition...

...H. Mr...

...and others...

...Her husband's nephew in London, the one whose family she disliked, wanted her to sell the two houses and move into his own decrepit Victorian, where she and her son could have a room all to themselves...

...His analysis squared exactly with what we had observed, and her comments painfully emphasized his diagnosis: "I want to go die, but I can not, I just can not," she kept saying after this visit...

...Sitting at the sewing machine was very strenuous, and bothered her back, her neck, bothered her all over, really...

...Perhaps he will be able to piece this history together, as he is a bright boy...

...Furthermore, she was not nearly so keen on the joys of the "extended family" as Western observers often are...

...Her social contacts were limited to the wives and daughters of her husband's nephew and his family, none of whom she particularly cared for...

...Among some 1978 faculty: Pierre Babin, Gerald O'Collins, S.J., Tad Guzie, S.J., Wilfrid Harrington, O.P., Charles Gusmer, Dermot Lane, Alexa Suelzer, S.P., Anthony Lobo, Cornelius van der Poel, Patrick Granfield, O.S.B., Jean-Marc Laporte S.J., Michael Fahey, SJ...

...She still does not know what happened...

...As anyone ioes not know id any periods unething more er nothing but vhich was paid The 85 pounds ranee was used >rth over 3,000 law and is still n more corrupt can ones...

...She already (This woman and continued shing binges...

...She grew up in Llyalpur, Pakistan, or more precisely, as she puts it, in a room in Llyalpur, Pakistan, since girls in her family were not allowed much freedom of movement...

...She refused, suspicious that he would try to get whatever money she had left after selling the houses and paying off the mortgages...

...His last significant illegal involvement was in the early sixties...

...H., a clothing merchant...

...Every few days H. delivers her some piles of cloth cut up by other immigrants into various parts of dresses...

...She was lonely, of course, a young woman shipped off to this foreign place...

...Her husband bought her a sewing machine, which she used to do piecework for a London clothing merchant...

...Those who have removal to one of the sterile apartment towers which come to the island of England, and who also happen produced the mutants in Clockwork Orange...

...She even manages to save 50 pounds a year to donate to an Islamic charity...

...By the time he was a year old, she had learned some English, and was no longer afraid to go out, as she had been at first...

...She could not understand any explanation in English, and her husband Commonweal: 47 would not translate for her...

...4, 1978 Theology courses, pastoral courses, religious education courses...

...Unkeep, utilities and taxes swallow up much of the rental income...

...He had also lost some old friends who had been vital in his past deals, deals which were almost never legal...

...Immigrants to be "coloured," have learned to expect even worse seldom have an easy time of it...

...She spent only a few hours with him three years earlier and was not exactly sure what he looked like...

...Hard as she tries to keep him sheltered and isolated, she will not succeed...

...Since coming to London she has developed asthma...

...Like some Pakistanis, she is obsessed with color, ranking "coloured" people with such terms as "good" and "bad" hair, associating darkness with inferiority...

...What else can they do...

...Besides, they have been well-schooled to suffer as quietly and obscurely as possible...

...It will not explain colonialist history and economic forces which caused him to be born in London...

...Even those who came treatment...

...She tried then, and she keeps trying, even when she cannot understand the instructions on the labels of all those products made to create the illusion that everything is in good condition—better living through chemistry, as the American company says...

...This young woman was flown to London, only to be crushed when the man decided he did not like the merchandise and backed out of the marriage...

...Her duel with the sewing machine is a typical example of how useful immigrants really are to the British economy...

...For further information write: Rev...

...The new generation of the London underworld and obliging lawmen had passed him by, and he spent more and more of his time drinking and reliving the fabulous deals he had been involved in and the fabulous adventures he had squandering the earnings...

...The British have contradictory attitudes toward air pollution, as they do about most public topics...

...June 25-Aug...

...Paul Couture, S.S.E., Director, St...

...The marriage was arranged, the ceremony performed, and shortly after, the man returned to London, promising he would send for her as soon as he had put everything in order there...

...She had even taken what for many women in her society is a giant step toward emancipation, refusing to put her veil on her head when he entered the room...

...Although the British claim that immigrants are "bleeding" the country, the truth is that many of these "coloured" people are very hard-working and willing to accept menial, low-paying jobs which Englishmen snub...

...Her whose family to houses and where she and lemselves...

...They love to complain about it, but they cannot be pried from the autos which create it...

...The county council is pressuring her to do some costly remodeling to reduce the fire hazard...

...Also, he had changed in those three years, which made it even more difficult to pick him out from the dozens of dark old men at the airport...

...man who had le to Pakistan s late twenties, r, doing everyiian liberation ;nce man...

...Phone: (802) 655-2000...

...Few of them have any concept of unionism, and even those who do would be afraid to take union action, as they would lose their jobs to other immigrants, or even to unemployed English women...

...Six week and three week courses...

...English education will surely not teach him to defend himself against race prejudice, resentment and the charge that his people are intruders...

...And he had been drinking a lot because he was depressed about money...

...He had lost a considerable amount in some bad business deals...

...Commonweal: 49 old grime, more years of tedium and sometimes just to the United States, a country made of immigrants, plain wanting to die and not being able to...

...Because of her own racism she tries to shelter her son from the influence of both the immigrant blacks from the West Indies and the English whites, for whom she has about equal scorn...

...b. din is an Anglo-Indian woman, born and brought up in London, who assisted the author with interviews there...

...In his heyday as a con-man he benefited from contacts both with key lawmen and important swindlers, but now most of his police and criminal cronies were dead...

...The nephew considered it his "duty" to look after her affairs, especially her financial affairs...

...For M.A...

...Her total income last year was 974 pounds —less than 2,000 dollars—not a terribly impressive sum for a person accused of destroying the British economy...

...The 85 pounds she had saved from her household allowance was used for his burial...

...She comes here and bothers us with every little ache or pain...

...late 1940s, in ;n Hindus and grations which Llyalpur, Pakiin a room in mily were not ¦ learned many sring her head Uy serving the Luckily, unlike learn to read s Koran...