FAREENA PORTER

If you don't mind can you tell me a bit about yourself, your background, and about your family.

SOPHIE KANABAR

So my name's Sophie Kanabar I was born Silpa Dattani so I'll tell you the reason for the name change, obviously partially it was marriage, but partially it was identity. I was born in 1966 so that would make me 56 now and I would have been six when we were exiled from Uganda. My history in the UK is very much educated in the British system. I didn't go to university I did pick up my career at 18 and then worked within the banking sector, got married quite young, because that was the done thing in those days, so was married at 21. I have three children who are now 34, 33 and 32, I have husband who was recently retired and I myself have recently retired. My career history is quite interesting actually because I was quite dyslexic as a child but didn't know, in those days dyslexia didn’t exist, I always struggled with English and I wondered why I found studies very hard. So I worked very hard at school and I did well in consideration, I went into banking system worked in banking for about 20 years, worked my way up the ladder alongside having three children, so I started in customer services and then went into compliance, went into wealth management and did very well in wealth management. I then decided that the ethos and how banking was working, it was just before the financial crash in 2008, it wasn't sitting well with my value system so I left banking and went into education. So I worked as an apprenticeship sales development manager within FE and then went on to do similar role within universities so I worked at Loughborough University until my retirement. So yeah that's my career and my quick overview of my summary.

FAREENA PORTER

If I take you back to your childhood can you elaborate on, obviously being six is a very young age to leave Uganda, can you tell me bit about your family in Uganda, your mum and your dad what your parents did in Uganda, where abouts in Uganda, and anything you remember about being in Uganda.

SOPHIE KANABAR

So being six is quite an interesting age because certain things stick in your head and I think you forget certain things so it's probably a delicate age to be honest. So I remember snippets of Uganda such as I know my father either worked in shop or owned his own shop, I believe he worked in a shop. We were relatively well-off, we had a very comfortable life, I had an older sister who was 12, a younger brother who was a year younger than I was so he was five and it was my mum and dad living in the house with, at that time I believe one of my uncles lived with us, so my father's brother, who was unmarried at the time. So we had a lovely house and I do remember elements of the house and I remember a courtyard where we used to play out and then we had next door, I believe there was Patel family that used to live there, and they had lots of children and we just used to have an amazing time playing outside in this courtyard and just fond memories of the two families living and working together and picnics. I remember picnics in Africa, picnics were a big thing because the weather was always so beautiful that I remember going out on family picnics having to thepla & shak which is like a spice roti with potato curry, that was the thing that you took on a picnic, so I do remember lots of picnics and I remember the expulsion I remember elements of being at the airport and they’re quite traumatic. So my first memory of that whole situation of being thrown out of Africa, we were in Kampala, which was obviously the hub of Uganda at the time, and I remember being at the airport and I just remember looking at my mum, so my mum at that point was seven months pregnant with my baby sister so she was obviously quite big and she was a petite lady she was only 4ft she was a tiny tiny lady and she was heavily pregnant. I remember being at the airport and it was just a lot of noise and a lot of confusion and I remember holding onto my mum’s sari and I just said to my mum “Where are we going?” and she literally just looked down and she said, she didn't cry she never cried until the day she died, she goes “I don't know” and l I had a murti (a statue of god) in my hand, which I’ve got here so you can see it, and she goes “I don't know” and that's all she could say and that image of her feeling so helpless, as a mother all she wanted to do is protect us but she didn't know what was to come, so how do you protect your children against what was to come and obviously there had been soldiers on the streets, there had been violence, there had been rapes, but I didn't know any of this obviously age six you don't hear or see that but I've heard subsequently evidence that that did happen and my older sister who's recently only just been able to talk about it mentioned that there were those atrocities happening in Uganda.

So it's first time we’ve every spoken about it and that's 50 years on. It’s quite sad actually because our parents never spoke about that trauma of leaving Africa and I remember how we were so poor when we were little, I'll tell you about the journey when we hit the UK, but I just remember mum and dad never ever speaking about the trauma it was always very much “that's forgotten now, let's forget that” and I remember asking my father if there were soldiers and he was like “no no there were no soldiers” well we know there were soldiers the evidence is out there but I think it was there way of dealing with it and protecting us. So, we got on a plane.

FAREENA PORTER

You and your family already had UK passports but you had to go and get the visas at the Embassy?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Absolutely, obviously at age six I wouldn't remember any of that trauma but I've heard it was very stressful, the queues. My father probably would have been doing all that so that's probably why his presence wasn't there at the airport, he was probably running around doing everything else that needed to be done and my mum was obviously just looking after us. So we had British citizenship and that is an irony in itself because we talk about empire and we talk about the UK and you know how the UK welcomed us which they have but I'm sorry a lot of responsibility lays in the British hands because I believe Uganda was controlled by the empire up until the 70s I believe Idi Amin had some kind of gripe with a deal that been turned back on so you know the UK, as much as they absolutely did help us and I don't deny there were some amazing people, we came into the UK with that history which we weren’t aware of, with the fact that the National Front was very rife in the 70s and that was prevalent you know and I will tell you the stories about my childhood growing up in UK. We had Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech so there was a lot of hatred against us and I think you know, yes we've been a success, but there's a lot of history that goes behind that success and you've got to take the good and the bad it wasn't all just roses and I think that's what I'm quite keen to get across that there are some absolutely amazing people and I can probably name a few along the way on my journey but then there was the National Front, there was racism in the street. My mum had to face horrible abuse when she used to take us to school and that trauma stays with you and think that's why I changed my name, that's why I felt I didn't belong for such a long time. I grew up in Yorkshire which was predominantly white so we were the only Asian family in that little village that we lived in.

FAREENA PORTER

So did you get placed there following arrival into the UK and through the resettlement camps, do you remember that?

SOPHIE KANABAR

I remember the resettlement camp and I just discovered which one it was, so we flew into Stansted and I knew we were in camp and the memory I have of the camps is three things really: very very cold, it was just really really cold when we came off that plane, number two was we were driven somewhere and I think it was Stradishall that we were housed in and I only know that recently from discovering my sister's name was on one of the school registers. The other two things; mashed potato I can just remember the smell of mashed potato and cornflakes and it was smells as opposed to tastes, so even now when I make mashed potato it always takes me back to that moment in those camps.

FAREENA PORTER

And what smell takes you back to Uganda then?

SOPHIE KANABAR

So the smells of Uganda would be food like grilled makai, which is a whole sweetcorn that would be grilled, that smell because obviously it was outdoor eating a lot so yeah so those kind of smells. I don't remember any other smells or sounds bar food it's really weird isn’t it. It's so strange because I can't say I’m a big foodie but yeah food was something. Mogo was the other thing which is cassava.

So obviously we were majority vegetarian, so when we went into the camps my mother, she was very very heavily pregnant she couldn’t eat a lot of foods because they didn't agree with her palette, so she became very very underweight and she had huge amount of trauma when my baby sister was born.

FAREENA PORTER

Was she born in the camp?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No so she was born when we were housed in Ilkley so it was a little village we were housed in. So we went into the camp and I can't remember what period of time we were in the camp, I don't think it was longer than a month, and the baby was born in December so we must have been housed within a month. So we were housed in Ilkley in West Yorkshire in a council house and my sister was born in December but my mom, I think that trauma of it all was just so immense that she didn't want to knowledge my sister so she wanted to give her up for adoption. She wouldn’t name her, she wouldn’t look at her, and it was really quite sad, and I've only recently discovered all this through my older sister who like I’ve said has only just been able to talk about it. So she literally didn’t want my sister, she didn't want anything to do with life really, she was just functioning. My sister said that she raised my baby sister and my dad and her took the parental roles.

FAREENA PORTER

Do you think in hindsight that your mum had post-natal depression?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Absolutely she did, on top of actual trauma [from the expulsion]. It was both of their second marriages [my parents] so my mum had had an abusive first relationship and my dad's first wife had been killed in a car accident, so they’d already had existing trauma and then this whole, I don’t know what you call it, exile, refugee crisis. So, then we were housed in West Yorkshire in Ilkley where my baby sister was born and I can tell you about the Ilkley days if you’d like me too at this point.

FAREENA PORTER

Yeah your childhood, growing up, I think you know that that initial period of the ‘72 to ‘74 [re]settlement and what you have to go through as a family and as an individual with transition and a whole complete different lifestyle in a predominantly white area like you said I think that intense period of time of trying to find a way I think it's really insightful for us.

SOPHIE KANABAR

So I would say that's where a lot of my trauma comes from, if I look back, those initial years. So we were schooled quite quickly I remember my mum didn't go out to work she was raising us obviously she just had a baby as well. My father went to work in a carpentry factory, so he was out a lot of the day and we were at school. Now those early days were incredibly traumatic for me, I found the fact that we were brown in a predominantly white area, the fact that we would constantly be called “pakis” or [told] “go back home” or “you don't belong here”.

FAREENA PORTER

Had you had the term ‘paki’ before?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No never because in Africa we accepted each other we would never even differentiate between religious Sikhs, Muslims or Hindus. Black Ugandans I know felt a little bit different but when my mum and dad talked about the black Ugandans it was always with fondness, so obviously there was this build-up of resentment, but honestly when they talked about Africa and their boyta as they used to call them, which I don't like the term because I think it envisages a slave, but they talk very fondly of the people that they used to work with or worked for them. But between 6 and 10/12 really, I found the transition incredibly hard. My mother used to, our school was 3.5/4 miles away she would wear a sari, she would always wear a sari, and she would walk us to school because obviously she was worried about our safety. Safety was a massive thing in her dimension, she wanted to make sure we were always safe. So she would walk us to school and she would be called names along the way and she would always walk us back and would wear a sari with boots underneath and it was heavy snow in those days we used to have 6 to 10 inches of snow it was always really cold. I found being at school really difficult I found it hard to fit in obviously language is a huge barrier, I remember I just found English so hard, maths I could just do it.

FAREENA PORTER

What was your native tongue?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Gujarati

FAREENA PORTER

Did you speak Swahili or anything?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No just Guajarati

FAREENA PORTER

So English was a whole ‘nother territory. Did your parents speak English?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No not at all, they had to learn it when they came to the UK. There was no reason to speak English you know the empire wasn't around [anymore] in [Uganda]. I know my mum had English lessons from one of the ladies in the Church. So our traumas were always literally getting to school, getting back safely, we had some really nice people, there was a lovely Christian family, the children’s names were Christian and Marie, I don't remember the mum and dad’s names but they were really lovely. They always used to take us to Blackpool, always used to make sure we were okay, so they were very very sweet. There was some really really lovely people there was a lady called Ann Hague that taught my mum to read, or speak at least English, I don't think she could read English for many years but she was able to speak a little bit of English, and she took us under her wing. There was a doctor, Mr & Mrs Rack, and I remember we must have been settled by November [the following November] because I remember going to a bonfire night and thinking why are they burning a wooden man on a stick. But they had the most amazing bonfire party really. So there was the good and the bad and I think for me, I really struggled with identity, my name was the biggest thing that I used to find hard at school so I was Silpaben but everybody used to call be Silpa or Shilpa, Sipa was my dad's nickname for me but at school they used to just ruin the name they used to call it syphilis or sipla or slipper. And it was awful because even as I grew up I used to spell it Silpa but I used to like it pronounced Shilpa then it was always like “well actually you don't say Shilpa its Silpa or Sipla” and I was just like “why can't somebody get my name right” so I changed my name by depol but I didn't change it till I was 30 so very late. I struggled with identity for a very long time because in Yorkshire I was brown and then aged 12 we moved to Leicestershire because my mum was very lonely, so I'll explain that journey. So those years in Yorkshire, you know what, they framed me I think they formed me, because my mum and dad were dealing with the trauma and they never talked about the trauma in front of us. So we would go to bed I would remember them sitting beside this little fire in the kitchen and I don't even know what kind of fire it was because it wasn't a proper gorgeous warm fire it was just a little, I think it used to warm the kettle up or something, they’d sit in front of the fire and talk about the good old days of Kampala and all the stuff that they used to do in Africa.

FAREENA PORTER

Did you ever hear them talk about the negative things between them?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No so I could only hear murmurs, they would never ever talk in front of us they would always make sure we were asleep. They would shut the door but we could always hear them, when they were laughing you knew it was the fondness and when they were very quiet then you knew it was probably the trauma, they were talking about that.

And they never spoke about it even in later years, so my father died in 2001, so quite a while ago now, and I think I asked him once about the soldiers and about Uganda and how we were in Uganda in the first place “if we're Indian why were we in Africa?” and again that's all back to empire as well, but nobody knows this and so he explained that history of his grandad or his great grandad who would have been one of the empires, I call them slaves but they were indentured labour, because they paid them a pittance to bring them across from India to Africa to work on the railways so he said “that's how we ended up in Africa”.

But my mother was amazing, so my dad was out at work a lot, so my mother, and this was the irony of it all, so she was a strict vegetarian but in West Yorkshire the main meals were beef but she would say to us “look you need to eat, you need to make sure you’re getting strong so eat whatever's on the menu whether it's beef whether its pork”

So she used to send us to Sunday school and I said mum “why?” and she used to practise Hinduism, so she would always pray in the morning and yet send us to Sunday school on Sundays and I was like “mum but you’re not teaching us our religion, why are you teaching us the Christian religion?” and she goes “It doesn’t matter, religion is religion, it's moral grounding” she goes “whether you learn Christianity, whether you learn Hinduism they all preach the same thing, how to be good people” and she said “it doesn't matter I will send you to church you will go to Sunday school” and we did and I knew more about Christianity than I did about Hinduism.

FAREENA PORTER

Don’t you think that was so open minded of your mother?

SOPHIE KANABAR

It was amazing, in that time her faith was her saviour. We had a lot of trauma with my sister, my older sister was my half-sister, and she had her own history and trauma of her mother dying so we had a lot of internal turbulence and trauma and it just never seemed to ease so I used to reflect to my mum and dad and they had say “a good relationship”. I remember my dad used to drink and the drinking got worse through the Yorkshire years.

FAREENA PORTER

Do you think the drinking was associated with a way to deal with trauma?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Absolutely it was and a way of forgetting and drowning those sorrows. I remember the drinking, but my mother was absolutely amazing she literally took that as “okay this is a side effect of what your father is going through I'll deal and make sure you guys have a really amazing upbringing” so she was so strong, absolutely so strong because she was so tiny it just amazed me that this woman had so much strength. So she dealt with my father's drinking, she dealt with my sisters’ trauma which was quite horrific, my sister had been through her own troubles with her own mother dying and then she lived through the whole [expulsion] at age 12, you remember a lot more. So she lived through that trauma so she had you know challenges that she was trying to deal with that then my mum had to deal with. My younger brother was, bless him, he just seems very quiet in the whole scheme of things, but his health wasn’t great he had awful asthma in those days, and he found the air very hard on his lungs. And then my baby sister who was absolutely beautiful, the nurses named her Rita which was a great name now if you think about it, it sits in between Asian and English culture, so they named her and I she was a beautiful child, she was raised by my [older] sister and my father, and then my mum did obviously then come back out of the depression and took care of her. And then at that time we also had my uncle come to live with us who was in transition, so he'd hit the UK a few months before us and then my aunt who was escaping a very abusive relationship, she came to live with us, so there was so much internal turmoil, that my mum dealt with and my father as well. You know I neglect my father because he did have to deal with it, although he drank some of that away, he still had to deal with the whole family it was his job to take care of us all to bring the money in. I think he used to earn something like £15 a week if that.

FAREENA PORTER

You talked about it earlier in the conversation, you remember vividly that you were very poor when you were growing up, talk to me a bit more about that, obviously when you first settled in Yorkshire, what did that look like?

SOPHIE KANABAR

I’ve probably got a picture somewhere actually. So it was Oxfam clothes, it was hand me downs, it was, you just felt so poor and you know to feel that poor is like, its again another way for people to differentiate you because you don't dress like them you don't talk like them, you don't even have the same skin colour. So, it was another reason for people, for children, to pick on you because you were poor. And being poor is really hard, you know when I reflect on how poor we were, like literally it was only my father working you wouldn't ask for anything extra. I don't think we had presents for years and years and years, I just recall my brother having a skateboard at probably aged 12 or 14 and he was the only one that got a present that year, he was the only boy. But it was clothes and food, my mum used to make food stretch so well and she used to cook Asian food because obviously rice can stretch very far, so she used to cook Asian food. I just remember clothes, we never went shopping, I always remember being in Oxfam clothes or hand me downs from friends or neighbours that were the kind that took pity on us.

FAREENA PORTER

And is that how you felt, that they took pity?

SOPHIE KANABAR

It’s funny I use that word, yeah I think it was pity, pity or generosity, there were some families that were lovely.

FAREENA PORTER

It's interesting how you immediately go to pity though isn't it rather than rather than they were just being kind and they cared.

SOPHIE KANABAR

Perhaps they did, perhaps it was a bit of both pity and kindness. Because what makes you take action? Pity perhaps, you can be kind but not do anything with it. So yeah pity and kindness. Its time though, I think the good people they gave time and time is so precious, time to show us the way, show us the language, take us to events and not be embarrassed to be with us. I think that was massive for me. I remember as child friendships were so hard to form, and I used to find it you know, once I thought had a good friend and then before you know it your dumped, and this still happens in young childhood everywhere so I'm sure it's not just because of race. But I used to find my childhood, I just felt I didn't belong.

FAREENA PORTER

Did you make friendships that have lasted the course of time or not when you were up in Yorkshire?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No not really, I remember Becky she was really good, she was a bit of a loner, so I think she fell on to me. My sister made friendships that have lasted she’s still in touch with one of her friends so it's probably the age I was at, I was probably too young.

FAREENA PORTER

Talk to me a bit more, if you don't mind, [about] your memories of the racism side of it, so as we said the National Front were prevalent at that time. Obviously people used the easy word that was “paki”, but did you have any physical violence, did you see vandalism, were you exposed to anything during that initial period?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Well we were quite fortunate in the fact that we had, I don't know if it was because it's predominantly my mum that was always with us, and whether if there was a male it would have been different, but it was very much the name calling. I remember spitting and I can't tell you an incident, but I do remember people would spit at you. The name calling, my father, although he would never talk about it, his name was changed, and he was called Chhotalal and obviously they couldn't pronounce that, so they nicknamed him Danny. Our surname was Dattani so perhaps that’s where Danny came from. He never talked about it, but obviously now I've looked back on archives, and I've seen some of the things that the National Front were up to and I don't remember witnessing any of that but I knew it was around. So, I had the fear because it must have been on the news or somewhere, I can’t remember if we had a tele though, so I know the National Front were around but did I witness it, no, but I know it was there, so that fear factor was always there.

FAREENA PORTER

Talk to me a bit more if you don’t mind about that belonging phase, when you first moved up to Yorkshire. Did your parents deal with situations in a different way that they probably would have had they been in Uganda? Were they having to be much more tolerant and having to just accept things the way where? For example, like just having to accept that people would call you Danny, clearly not your name, how did your mum and dad deal with things like that?

SOPHIE KANABAR

They accepted it, I think they had no choice really. It was very much, and I reflect on this, it was very much “don't say anything, don't do anything, don't aggravate the situation, just keep walking if we're being name called along the street, ignore it, deal with whatever is coming, it's their country not ours” That's how it felt though, we're guests here, they've taken us in, but it's not our country so take the rubbish.

FAREENA PORTER

And do you think your mum and dad felt like that throughout the rest of their lives? That it wasn't their country and that Uganda was?

SOPHIE KANABAR

They would always call Africa home and even now I speak to my uncle, whose my dad's brother, and he goes “homeland” he calls it the “homeland” but you know and I can't knock Britain because Britain has given me so much and my family and my siblings so much, but do I call Britain home? I think now I do but only recently. I’ve often felt, I think when you face racism as a child, you are so in tune to when you face it as an adult. So, in instances where people might not know that they're being inadvertently racist you can pick up on it just like that.

FAREENA PORTER

It's that unconscious bias that exists in human nature and it's becoming more obvious in today's society.

SOPHIE KANABAR

Absolutely that and it's hard to point out those nuances, sometimes you don't see it at the time, but you look back and you think actually that was indirect racism and it happens in restaurants and shops you see it all the time. I see now, you can go into a shop and if there's someone in front of you who is elderly, who can’t speak the language, you can see some of the assistants [eye-roll or gesture]. And yet when we go to another country, we expect everybody to speak English.

FAREENA PORTER

Apart from your extended family that settled in [Ilkley] Yorkshire were there any other Ugandan Asians that settled there or other Asian people or families that had already moved there from before?

SOPHIE KANABAR

So there was one family that lived in Otley which is probably about eight miles away from Ilkley so we be friended them. They weren’t from Uganda but I don't know how they ended up in Otley. So there was that one family and I think as the years went on we did find that there was, in places like Leeds and Bradford, there was obviously a lot more Asians. We went to Bradford to do shopping I think for spices and things like that. But bar this one family I can't remember ever mixing with any other Asians, I believe we went to one Diwali do and it was probably when my sister was in her sort of late teens. So, my mum was probably worried about her and marriage so that's probably why we went to that Diwali do, because arranged marriage were still quite prevalent then, so I do remember going to one Diwali do in Ilkley. But then when I was 12 in 1979, we moved to Leicestershire.

FAREENA PORTER

So I was going to suggest is it a good time to have a break now? We’ve covered life pre- displacement and then immediately after displacement.

FAREENA PORTER

So as we said you had your life in Yorkshire and then you moved to Leicester so tell me how you are in Leicester today and how that came about?

SOPHIE KANABAR

It's quite funny I think that probably added to my layers of identity moving to Leicester. So the years in Yorkshire were traumatic, we were readjusting, we were learning the language and then aged 12, which is quite a tender age actually, we moved to Leicester. Leicester is the hub of Asian culture and we moved into Rushy Meade, at that point my dad's younger brother had bought a house and he said “you could live with me because you looked after me in Africa I owe it to you to look after you and your family” and we were still in council house in Ilkley. So he encouraged us, and my mom was incredibly lonely she just missed Asian culture, missed her family, a lot of her family were in Leicester at this point, so we moved.

FAREENA PORTER

Were they in Leicester because of the resettlement or because everyone migrated there?

SOPHIE KANABAR

So we had family that went through the resettlement process and one was in Congleton which was up North and then another family were put into Liverpool and then there was us in Ilkley. So there were three families that I know of on my mum's side, so they had all migrated to Leicester once they knew that Leicester was the hub of Asian culture. Then my uncle who had left Uganda, he had left [three] months before Idi Amin threw everybody out, through business. I say he was “fortunate” because he still had troubles, his work had sent him to the UK on a business trip I believe, and he was here, and he rang his work and said, “I’m due to come back” and they said “don't come back everything's kicking off here” so he had a British passport so he could stay here. So, my uncle had bought a house in Leicestershire and said “come and live in with us, were in Rushy Meade we can squeeze in, the two families can live together we can make it work”. So, age 12 I moved to Leicester, again you have this readjustment of “I’m 12, I’m speaking okay English now, I know I've got the language I’m getting to accept who I am and where I am” and then I move to Leicester and I'm this Yorkshire speaking lass with a Yorkshire accent living in Leicester which is predominantly Asian. So I go to a school that is I’d say probably 50/50 Asians and whites. And then you've got that other sense of belonging because again you have the same battle of, some of the kids don't want to know you, because I'm quite fair skinned and I put that down to my mum and dad they were very fair, so nobody quite knew whether I was Arabic, whether I was Iranian, whether I was Asian. So they’re like “well you're not Asian you don't look dark enough” so there [Yorkshire] I wasn't white enough here [Leicester] I'm not brown enough. I didn't know about Diwali and I didn't know about all the Asian gods so I didn't know anything about my Asian identity and in Leicester, obviously people have grown up with their own Asian identity, so they belong and I was like here I am thrown into another world where I don't feel I belong even though I look similar to my colleagues and my friends and they took me in I had some lovely friends and I'm still friends with them now so they are amazing friends but then I had that whole well “I'm not English and I’m not Indian because I don’t feel Indian and I don't know anything about my culture and I'm not English because they don't want me so where do I belong?” But you grow and you learn, it was funny though because I rebelled against my Indian side, so as soon as we came to Leicester my sister was 20/21 so she had a full arranged marriage and went into that full arrange marriage and moved to Holland. So I think that hit her hugely moving to Holland where again it's another language and another way of life. Her husband was Asian but was Asian Dutch and either through the Ugandan Expulsion or the Kenyan traumas they had ended up in Holland, so she went to Holland and then I was 12/13 so I was at college having the time of my life and then you get to 18 and arranged marriages start knocking and I was like “I don’t want an arranged marriage” From a very young you've got to learn to cook you got to make sure you can clean the house.

FAREENA PORTER

So there was never an option that you could pick your own partner?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No

FAREENA PORTER

And what if you had bought a white English guy home?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Oh god no that wouldn’t have happened, but it did happen with my sister. So my older sister had the full arrange marriage literally she only met her husband for the marriage and off she went whereas I was given an opportunity to see a few men. I was so bad at it, wearing a sari didn’t come easy to me and carrying a tray of tea with a sari was just a no go. So I did see a couple of men but I've been fortunate in the way that my parents they didn't stop me from having western culture. So I was allowed to obviously go out and go to night clubs, I had a couple of boyfriends before I met my husband, not that they knew about them, and they did find out about them actually my mum was so cool she was so modern for her age.

FAREENA PORTER

I was just going to say what a balance to try and juggle two different massive culture clashes.

SOPHIE KANABAR

Absolutely and I think she was scared of staying Yorkshire because my sister would perhaps marry an Englishman or you know a different type of cultural background so she moved us to Leicester and then when I came to Leicester I was predominately dating Asian men and then I met my husband who is Asian and he's the same religion and caste as I am but he didn't look the same cast he looked Sikh actually. So when we actually introduced him [to my family] they’re going “I’m sure he’s not, you say he’s the same religion and caste but he doesn’t look it". He had a lot of Sikh friends, so he had the long beard and was very Alpha male. But I found the transition into Leicester really hard and I became anorexic because that was my control thing of “Ok now I'm being pushed into an arranged marriage I don't know what I want I don't even know where I belong I don't know who I am” at 18 you're going through everything, a normal 18 year old is going through everything but an 18 year old who has been through the trauma of leaving country, growing up in Yorkshire, and then trying to find identity in Leicester. My escapism, and we all need escapism, and I realised my dad used to drink now, was fitness. I was like “I can go and workout and I can control my body” I was never a big girl but exercise and food were the two things that I could control. I remember my sisters saying to me and they’re younger than I am that “we worried about you because you were so obsessed with just going to the gym and eating”. I didn't realise I was anorexic until years later and even now I don't have a healthy relationship with food. So I found coming to Leicester incredibly hard, not as hard as Ilkley, Yorkshire though, but now I love Leicester I'll be honest it is the most diverse area of the country I know, where people are accepting, I know we've had troubles recently.

I love living in Leicester, my brother laughs at me, he's only a year younger, but he seems to have a different trajectory on life and he's worked out in Holland, he's worked in Qatar. He's like a chameleon he fits whether he goes and I think that's just, I don't know if it’s because he was sheltered because he was boy, he was probably spoiled because he was a boy. I've never left Leicester, my older sister went to Holland and my brother has travelled the world with his job he's done incredibly, we've all done incredibly well, and I think that resilience that can do will do whatever it takes I'm going to make it happen it is innate and it's because of how we've grown up definitely. I mean I see my brother and he’s so successful and yet you look at him and you wouldn’t see it, he never shows off about how well he's done but he’s done incredibly well. He took himself through university, he's travelled the world with his job, he's built amazing architectural buildings in Qatar and Dubai, so he's done incredibly well and yet he won't talk about Uganda. He will not go back; he won't acknowledge any of it he just won't. He will go “I will never look back on my life I only look forward” and that’s his saying to this day never looked back.

FAREENA PORTER

Very different because I think a lot of people unpick the past to help them rebuild and understand why they are the way they are and move forward whereas some people see it in a negative context.

SOPHIE KANABAR

Absolutely and I think for me so from 18, I was married at 21, and it was a ‘love marriage’ [fell in love and picked my husband]. Then I went into a marriage that was very traditional so my father and mother-in-law were you know three meals a day kind of people.

FAREENA PORTER

Did you move in with your husband?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Yes I moved in with my husband and his family for 10 years so it was again. my family quite modern in comparison to them, I wouldn’t say they were ultra-traditional but just the way they ate, the way they lived was very traditional, so I found that was just very hard. I had three children very quickly, so I had to become a mum very quickly.

FAREENA PORTER

You’ve not had much adult life by yourself.

SOPHIE KANABAR

No I haven't actually it's probably just happening now. I discovered, and Sophie came to me at probably about 32/33, and I say Sophie is the person I’ve become as opposed to Silpa whose the person I was born as.

FAREENA PORTER

Did people call you Sophie?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No, so I was building my career, I was living through this arranged marriage system even though it wasn’t an arranged marriage but raising my children and then I discovered a bit of an aha moment, where [I thought] “Actually I'm bright I'm good at what I do” and I was at that point just building my career up alongside raising three children I was studying at 5:00am so that I could do my wealth planning exam, so that I could then financially be independent from my in-laws and try and build a house and build something for my family. So, I had an aha moment where I've been in the same job for a long time and I've been constraining myself and I thought you know what, it's a bit like the butterfly moment, you know when the caterpillar turns into the butterfly, it was like that of “actually nothing can hold me back now”. “I belong because I'm the right colour and I fit into the area I'm living in, I'm educated now, I know that I've got the brains to be able to do things” so then I catapulted myself into “I'm going to achieve whatever I want to achieve” I set myself goals, I had visions of what I wanted to be, I had value statements I literally reinvented myself and that’s when Sophie was born. I think Sophie for me is, it's what I became and I can't think of word for but it is my aha moment of “I can be anything I want and there's nobody going to hold me back, not my colour my religion, my creed, what I've had to go through, I've had to grow up in Oxfam clothes nothing can hold me back I can achieve whatever I want to.”

FAREENA PORTER

How did your parents feel about you changing your name?

SOPHIE KANABAR

My mum could never understand it.

FAREENA PORTER

And did she always call you Silpa?

SOPHIE KANABAR

My family still call me Silpa. In my family network I'm still known as Silpa, in my professional network I'm now known as Sophie.

FAREENA PORTER

Do you think it helped your career?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Oh god yes. I hate saying this it’s terrible isn't it.

FAREENA PORTER

It's that unconscious bias again, isn’t it?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Oh yeah totally. When I got one of the jobs that I'd applied for, you know it’s so funny English people are so transparent, but they don't realise it, I remember my boss saying to me and she was trying to be politically correct “I didn't quite know what you were or where you came from” and I was like “does it matter?” It doesn't matter and it makes me so angry because I did that, I changed it [my name] for my own personal reasons but I chose an English/Greek name, and I wanted it to be Sophia but then I was so afraid that people again would say “How do you spell that, is it with an -a is it with an -ia?” I’ve had to do that all through my childhood so I said normal English spelling, every time I say it now “it's normal spelling don't ask me how to spell it" because it just annoys me if you ask me how to spell my name and it’s so wrong. My brother changed his name, and I don't think he's done it officially but professionally he calls himself Rick and he's Rakesh and it has helped my career and people will say “no it doesn't matter” but we know it does. I’ve worked in graduate recruitment, and I know there’s research behind this where people judge what your name is and it breaks my heart it makes me very very angry that's why I love anonymous CVs. When I was in my job my biggest thing was I would always be that voice for the people that weren’t recognised, people that had talent and wouldn’t be seen. For me it still annoys me that the unconscious bias still exists, it will always exist. We do it to other nationalities, I've seen it in my family where they’re judging the new Indians that are coming into the country, they’re judging the Polish, or the Eastern Europeans and I’m like “hang on you were an immigrant yourself.”

FAREENA PORTER

You easily forget that people did that to you, “how did it make you feel?”, don’t forget.

SOPHIE KANABAR

So 33 was my…

FAREENA PORTER

Your Epiphany

SOPHIE KANABAR

That's the word I’m looking for, my epiphany it was absolutely.

FAREENA PORTER

Was you husband very supportive of that?

SOPHIE KANABAR

Yes, he still doesn't understand me, he doesn’t understand why I’ve changed my name he doesn't understand why I'm doing these stories [interviews]. He’s just so black and white.

FAREENA PORTER

Has his family got any relation to Uganda?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No, they’re Kenyan, they came before so they grew up poor but yeah. So 33 was my launch, and I’m 56 now, so in the last 23 years I've created such a lovely environment for my children they’ve all done amazingly. One is an assistant professor of economics, one is a senior sales manager for a land development company, and my daughter works for a charity so they're all very passionate very successful. And I think as my mom did with us she installed that England is, you’ve got opportunity, and you have, I can't deny England has given us or Britain has given us so many opportunities; education, the ability to succeed and you just don't have to do it through the work environment, you can succeed in lots of different ways.  So as much as I have challenges of how I’ve grown up, the opportunities we've had have been amazing and they’re never not open to anybody you just got to try little bit harder being brown or from having a different name that's not an English name.

FAREENA PORTER

Do you have any regrets about changing your name?

SOPHIE KANABAR

No, it's funny though because I don't expect my family to call me Sophie

FAREENA PORTER

The reason I asked you is because you were really open about telling me that you changed your name, really quickly, it doesn’t feel like it’s an issue.

SOPHIE KANABAR

It was an issue for very long time, I was embarrassed that I'd done it and my mum, she was embarrassed, because obviously she named me, they called me a name that they loved and she couldn't understand it and they still probably wouldn’t.

FAREENA PORTER

But it's interesting because my mum purposely gave us very simple names Fareena and my sister is called Shabeena. Very simple names that people would be able to pronounce, she said she didn't give us middle names because she didn't want to make things complicated. And you know that's a whole another generation after.

SOPHIE KANABAR

One of the plays they did at the Curve [Theatre] called Call me by my name, so I met one of the playwrights and we had this very name conversation and obviously he's adapted that and I won't say it's based around me in any shape or form but there was definitely a mention of it in Call me by my name

But you know it’s like my father he didn’t have a choice but to be called Danny. I love Danny it’s a great name, I've got a nephew called Danny now. But he didn’t have a choice, whereas I chose to change my name. And the reason I chose it was because, we've had quite a few massive traumas in our family, but we had another massive trauma, there was a murder of a close relative and that's all I'll say on this, and it was in the UK. And I just thought “you know what, we've given up so much, we've lost so much and this person died, or was killed, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, life is too short, you grasp it you do what you want with it and make it your own” and I think for my children, I mean so bright and they've done so well, and they put so much pressure on themselves, and I understand that pressure because I think they saw me getting up at 4 in the morning studying so that I could build a better life for them. We didn't get our own house till 10 years into my marriage so my kids would have been, nine was the oldest, so they saw that mum has had to work really really hard to get this far so they really embraced education and really wanted to do well.

FAREENA PORTER

But you know it all goes back to the trauma that the generations of that family have suffered and the hardship and not wanting to be back in that place ever again. It becomes part of your DNA.

SOPHIE KANABAR

Absolutely and the funny thing is when you have wealth, or you have a comfortable lifestyle you still think like a poor person. I went to London a few days back and I went on the tube and somebody said” why don't we just take a cab?” and I'm like “no no no you can't take a cab, it’s like ten times the price” and I'm still thinking like a poor person and my kids will laugh at me and say “mum you still think like a poor person” but I said “its innate”. I won't throw money away.