Mah Hussain-Gambles

PM: Where was the secondary school?

MH: In Cottingham in Hull.

PM: Cottingham? And can you tell me...give us a sense of what the school was like? In other words, the other pupils, what their sort of backgrounds were?

MH: Yeah. It’s a...Cottingham’s a very kind of middle-class area, and a lot of people had horses and stuff. And I was, yeah, probably the only Asian pupil in the school, so it was different. Yeah. I didn't experience that much racism there, but initially I did, you know? Sort of somebody will write...somebody wrote Paki on the back of my chair, for example. But it's very different now there, you know, things have changed a lot. But, yeah, that's why I thought I'd never come back to Hull. But now it's very different, it's very multicultural and it's...imagine it continuum, it's gone from one extreme to another. It's, yeah, very different place.

PM: How did you feel about that incident, for example?

MH: Like I said, I've experienced racism in Pakistan, which was when you're young, it hurts even more, so you kind of get a bit hardened. I've experienced racism at university, as in being spat on, you know? I was walking to university, and this is Sunderland, so again, not a very nice place at the time, but I'm sure it's changed now, and, you know, these guys, workers, they just spat and said, oh Paki. I got beaten up once in a phone booth, I remember that. It was...I was at...on the phone talking, trying to get the results of my first job interview. So I was waiting, and I saw this man who was in a suit and he was walking past the bus stop where the...next to the phone booth. And he was...he just no reason turned around and kicked this old lady's trolley and then started spitting and shouting at these two old ladies. And then there was a young boy there, and he hit him. And I'm like, woah, what's going on? So I knew there was something wrong, he’s either drunk or something. So by the time I was told, oh, you've got the job, so I was like, yeah, should I leave or what? So I said, no, I'm going to call the police. Because I've just been having special lessons at university for self-defence lessons, so I wanted to try that out, you know, be a bit of a Wonder Woman. So by the time I called the police, and it's a nightmare, you call 999, it's like, what department do you want? So fine, you know, it's like, it takes ages. It's not like on TV where they pick the phone up. By the time I got through, the guy had spotted me and he opened and said, 'Oi, you Paki', and started to punch me. And he got my shoulder and, you know...I couldn't...once you...when you're in a panic state, I was in an enclosed space, all those lessons that I'd learned, I couldn't...you know, forgotten, real, you know...they just left me. So the only thing I could do was, I pointed behind and said, 'Oh, police', and he turned around. As soon as he turned around, I pushed him and I ran out. And then this nice...this kind man stopped on a...he was in a car and he said, 'Are you okay?' But the sad thing was nobody stopped to help these women. There was men there, they not...they just didn't. And I'm a young woman who was...you know, and that was more upsetting than being called a Paki.

Entry credit

Laura Owen