Memoir of the boy in the hood

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

In East is East, his semi-autobiographical play-turned-hit-movie about growing up in an Anglo-Pakistani family during the 70s, writer Ayub Khan-Din is represented by 12-year-old Sajid.

The story is told through his eyes - ones which always seem to be peering out from an oversized anorak.

Yes, that was him, grins Din, the permanently parka'd half-Paki half-pint.

"It actually fell apart around me. I was pre-South Park," he laughs about being a boy in the hood.

But East is East isn't made from only the fond memories. It is built on as many fraught ones, recollections of the cultural - and often physical - conflict suffered by his mother and family under the stern rule of his Muslim father.

There are only seven kids in the film as opposed to the nine siblings Din grew up with - "I couldn't afford in the film to have as many brothers as I have" - but both George (Om Puri) and Ella (Linda Bassett) are direct portraits of his parents.

His father, who died in 1991, had grown up in a remote village in Pakistan, joined the merchant Navy and jumped ship in England in the 1930s. Din's parents met and married after the Second World War.

"That must have been incredibly hard to do in those days. Back then if a white woman was seen with a black guy she was usually considered a prostitute. They got a lot of stick in the early days." And like the Khans of the film, they ran a fish and chip shop while raising a big family.

Din first started writing the story 16 years ago while still at drama school, having escaped his northern hometown of Salford for London and an acting career, which has included stage and television work and playing Sammy in Stephen Frears' Sammy and Rosie Get Laid.

Some of Din's motivation for starting the script came from the onset of his mother's Alzheimer's disease. He wanted to capture family memories as hers faded. And as his father began to care for his ailing wife, Din saw something different in their relationship.

"I thought that is what they had before the children came along and the problems started."

Invited to a writers' workshop in 1996, he dragged the script out of the drawer and the play opened soon after, eventually heading to the West End and off-Broadway winning Din various awards along the way.

Because of that stage success, Din says he wasn't surprised at the warm reception the movie - for which he wrote the screenplay - got on its release in Britain last year. It wasn't just the racial story mixed with the dark humour which struck a chord with British audiences, he says.

"It's not only a cultural thing it's a generational thing as well, and so many people from so many different communities and nationalities see their own fathers, their own parents' relationships, their relationships with their siblings.

"It's a very honest film as well. It's very human it doesn't pull any punches and it's not frightened of being what some people would say is sentimental. But I don't think it is sentimental. I just think it's human."

His own siblings have mixed feelings about the film, he says, and some prefer the play. And what might have his late parents thought?

"Dad would have hated it because he never changed. He never learned any of the lessons at all. I don't think he would have liked it at all. My mother would have liked it but she would have been a bit funny about washing our dirty linen in public. But all her friends have loved it."

* East is East is screening at the Rialto Cinema.