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Ayesha's Rainbow by
Rabina Khan is about a young an angelic seven year old Bangladeshi girl,
growing up in an inner-London City borough, who meets her elderly
neighbour. Mrs. Peters, a white woman has lived in the East
End all of her life. She is lonely and averse to change,
especially towards accepting people of a different culture from her own.
A most unlikely, yet beautiful friendship develops between them, bringing
their two contrasting families together, crossing religious, cultural and
racial barriers. Only Graham Peters, the youngest sibling, wants to take
a different path, with a view to joining a racist political party. When
Mrs. Peters is attacked in her home, a chain of emotions unfolds,
affecting both families and the rest of the community. A time for
questioning loyalties, divisions, prejudices and friendship begins, in
order to discover what really happened to Mrs. Peters and more
importantly, why?
The book portrays the
many issues that affect both Bangladeshi and white working class families
living in inner London, such as the closure of the docks, ‘the end of an era' for generations
of many East End families as well as early Bangladeshi migrant workers.
Mrs. Peters' late husband worked on the docks and like many East Enders,
Mrs. Peters saw the stark differences between the rich and the poor. It
was so shamelessly flaunted in front of them but they failed to see the
Bangladeshis were in the same boat as themselves. Poverty and deprivation
often made people blind to the truth. The beautiful, modern apartments
built in the docklands were only affordable to those who were earning a
fortune. The jobs were only for those who had a “City-look” and who spoke
with a “posh” accent. But Mrs. Peters is proud of her
daughter Vivien, who becomes very successful in the City - against the
odds that she faced in her male dominated career.
Other, issues such as
overcrowded homes are touched upon as Mrs. Peters realizes that “Over-crowded situations
was certainly not
a thing of the past. Families just had to cope with what they had and
make what they could of their lives. It was as simple as that.' Through
her memories of the East End, struggling to raise her family and a
husband who worked hard in the docks evokes memories of the East End ‘good
old days' when ‘Sanitation
had been so difficult during those times, with toilets outside and tin
baths in the kitchen in front of the fire. People were much less private
in those days, but it made up for the fact that they felt bonded together
to support one another. '
For the Bangladeshi
family, they too had to struggle for recognition though the ugliness of
racism, prejudice and stereotypes, like the time Hamza
Ali was racially abused by a Council caretaker for playing football,” You ain't
getting the ball back. Don't you get it; footballs a white man's sport.
Go and play cricket, that's what you Indians are good at. Be like that Imran Khan.” The
family is unsure how to make friends with their elderly neighbour,
assuming from past experiences that ‘she
probably had her prejudices about them,' and ‘knowing the white elderly people from
previous experiences, it was probably going to be noise pollution. If she
was really unpleasant, she might probably say that his wife's cooking
smells were affecting her asthma and causing breathing difficulties.'
However it is Ayesha
who makes the first step to make friends with her neighbour and it is
through her that the two families learn about each other so that various
myths are made clear and they realize they share many common views. As
the character Shazia Ali puts it, “a good bitch about someone or something
united people. It overcame their differences as they found something in
common that they agreed or disagreed upon.”
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Rabina Khan self
published her novel first “Rainbow Hands” which based on her
experiences as a community worker in East London's
Isle of Dogs, during a time when a racist right wing candidate was
elected as a councillor in September 2003. The novel was published
through “Authorsonline” and was
available to order through the internet and local bookstores in London.
The novel received
wide publicity in various local and national newspapers as well as
magazines such as Asiana, Morning Star, Tower Hamlets Recorder, Authortrek and many others. © Fore-Word Press Ltd 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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