Arshad Mahmoud
Recording
I was too shy to talk
Interview 
English
“Yeah, I was five years old when I come here, in England. So, I can remember the recordings – I was quite young. I’s say the recordings went on till the early eighties… mid-seventies. Obviously then telephone was more (in use) but, I can remember the recordings because they used to make me stand there and say; “talk to your aunty in Pakistan and say this, and such aunty and such uncle”, and I used to be shy to talk but they used to make me talk. I remember that much. And the idea was that you know they can all sit over in Pakistan and listen to our conversation. Vice versa they send they send a cassette, and we’d all sit around a table, and we’d listen to their conversation because the telephone was very rare.
You know TV in a house was rare never mind a telephone so, it was… you know it was just a thing that… somebody was going Pakistan, there’d be excitement, “let’s do a cassette!”, and send it in, and it reach within a day or two, and they can listen to our conversation or anything we want to tell them, messages, it was a easy way to communicate, I think at that time.
My brother would do it, older brother and my father would do it. When we knew that they going to get the recorder out, we used to run and hide somewhere and they’d find us and then make us talk. One or two times they’d pressed record and we didn’t know that they were recording, and they’d ask what do you think about Pakistan and this and that, and then you realised what they were doing. When they’d ask you, we used to run a mile, me and my brother used to run a mile. We didn’t want to talk.”
Interview English
“Yeah, I was five years old when I come here, in England. So, I can remember the recordings – I was quite young. I’s say the recordings went on till the early eighties… mid-seventies. Obviously then telephone was more (in use) but, I can remember the recordings because they used to make me stand there and say; “talk to your aunty in Pakistan and say this, and such aunty and such uncle”, and I used to be shy to talk but they used to make me talk. I remember that much. And the idea was that you know they can all sit over in Pakistan and listen to our conversation. Vice versa they send they send a cassette, and we’d all sit around a table, and we’d listen to their conversation because the telephone was very rare.
You know TV in a house was rare never mind a telephone so, it was… you know it was just a thing that… somebody was going Pakistan, there’d be excitement, “let’s do a cassette!”, and send it in, and it reach within a day or two, and they can listen to our conversation or anything we want to tell them, messages, it was a easy way to communicate, I think at that time.
My brother would do it, older brother and my father would do it. When we knew that they going to get the recorder out, we used to run and hide somewhere and they’d find us and then make us talk. One or two times they’d pressed record and we didn’t know that they were recording, and they’d ask what do you think about Pakistan and this and that, and then you realised what they were doing. When they’d ask you, we used to run a mile, me and my brother used to run a mile. We didn’t want to talk.”