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Author Profile:

Sarfraz Manzoor was three years old when he arrived in Britain in 1974 with his mother, brother and sister. The family came to join their father- who had left Pakistan a decade earlier seeking a better life for his family- and settled in the Bury Park neighbourhood of Luton. Sarfraz’s father worked on the production line at Vauxhall while his mother worked at home as a seamstress.

Sarfraz’s teenage years were a constant battle in reconciling being both British and Muslim and, frustrated by real life Sarfraz sought solace by escaping into the fantasies offered by television and music. Music quickly became a passion but it was not until he was sixteen that his best friend introduced him to the music of a man that would change his life changed forever. Bruce Springsteen - a white, working class American rock singer - articulated everything that Safraz had ever felt about escape, realising your ambitions and not letting the best of yourself down. Inspired by Springsteen's music Safraz left Luton and ultimately became the prolific journalist and broadcaster he is today.

Extract From Book:

My Father's House
I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts

'My Father's House', Bruce Springsteen

In the summer of 1995 I was twenty-three years old; an unemployed British Pakistani with shoulder-length dreadlocks, a silver nose ring and a strange fascination with Bruce Springsteen. It had been six years since I had last lived with my family; having left to study in Manchester there had never been a reason to return to my hometown, Luton. After graduating in economics I had assumed I would be deluged with lucrative offers of employment but these had failed to materialise. While my friends were beginning careers in accountancy and medicine I was most successful at being fired from low-paid temporary jobs: I had been sacked from a data-inputting job for only typing with one hand and doodling with the other, and fired from a credit control agency for having stuck an obscene Public Enemy lyric scribbled on a Post-it to my computer screen. The longest job I had was as a directory enquiries operator. Being a slacker had never been a specific career goal but it was a lifestyle to which I seemed suspiciously suited.

My parents had assumed that once I graduated I would return to Luton with a degree and a job, but despite my lack of career and cash I was still not willing to come home. In Manchester I was free; I could stay out late, play music as loud as I wished, wear black leather trousers and red velvet shirts and shake my dreadlocks to Lenny Kravitz. Once a month I would make the three-and-a-half-hour train journey back to Luton to see the family but only out of a sense of obligation. I was barely on speaking terms with my father and most of my conversations with my mother were about how I hardly talked to my father. When I walked through the front door of my parents' home in my blue corduroy jacket with a 'Born to Run' enamel badge pinned on its lapel and my rucksack on my back, my headphones still plugged in my ears, I could sense my father's confusion. I knew he was thinking, 'What are you doing with yourself?' and the worst part about it was that I could never explain it to him.

When I rang my father to tell him I had secured my first writing commission he was silent for a few seconds. 'How much will they pay you?' he finally asked in Urdu. I never spoke in English to my parents.

'I don't know,' I replied, 'but it's not about the money. This is my first chance to be published in a newspaper. It's the local paper here in Manchester. The Evening News.'

'What are you going to be writing?' he asked.

'It's an interview with an American writer called Elizabeth Wurtzel,' I answered.

Nothing.

'I am coming down to London to talk to her and so I will be in Luton too.'

The interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel would be my first published article. Her book Prozac Nation was being published that summer; I had read an advance copy and noticed it contained countless references to Springsteen and his music. Wurtzel was someone who, like me, had found inspiration and sustenance in Springsteen's music. I persuaded her publishers to let me interview her on the promise I would place the interview myself. I then sold the feature to the Manchester Evening News. 'If you like the piece you can publish it,' I told the women's editor, 'and if you don't you won't ever have to hear from me again. You have nothing to lose.'

I boarded the Intercity train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston on the morning of 16 May 1995. Once in my seat I opened my copy of the Guardian, which had a story on the former Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan and his engagement to twenty-one-year-old Jemima Goldsmith. From my jacket pocket I pulled out a CD player and placed the headphones around my head. Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits had been released only weeks earlier and was in my CD player. As the train rolled slowly out of Piccadilly station I pressed the play button and began planning for the interview.

The interview was scheduled for two o'clock but, having left the directions to the hotel back in Manchester and being unfamiliar with the London underground, it wasn't until almost twenty past two that I was finally introduced, sweating and sticky, to Elizabeth Wurtzel. She was petite; with her enormous eyes and fragile body she looked the dictionary definition of kooky. Elizabeth very graciously accepted my fulsome apologies but each time she looked at me, mydreadlocks tied in a pink bobble and a ring in my nose, I had the feeling she suspected I was not a real journalist. I had scribbled my questions in haste on a sheet of paper and the dictaphone I was using had only been bought that morning. Wurtzel sat cross-legged on the floor opposite me sipping herbal tea while I placed the dictaphone next to her. Once we started talking my nerves disappeared.

Around twenty-five minutes into the interview, Wurtzel suddenly said, 'Hey, are you sure this thing is working?' She was pointing at my dictaphone. I'm pretty sure there should be, like, a red light or something?'

Mortified, I picked up the machine and examined the tiny cassette. 'Yeah, you're right,' I said, trying desperately to appear unfazed. It was at times such as this that I felt blessed to be brown-skinned; at least I did not have to be worried about blushing. 'It's not a problem, I'm making notes of what we're saying,' I lied, staring with rising panic at the blank sheet of paper on my lap.

'Are you sure?' asked Wurtzel. 'Hey, let me have a look, see if I can figure it out.'

I handed the offending machine to her and looked on helplessly as she examined it and, with the simple act of changing the direction of one of the batteries, made it work. My shame was now complete: I had been left looking like a fool in front of the woman whom I was interviewing, and whom I secretly fancied and hoped to seduce with my charm. To her eternal credit, Wurtzel remained helpful and charming despite the unpromising start to our interview; she reminded me of the questions I had asked and even extended our conversation to accommodate the earlier difficulties.

This confirmed my long-held theory that anyone who likes Bruce Springsteen is by definition a nice person.

After the interview I took the Thameslink train back to Luton. As the train trundled closer to its destination I began the familiar process of mentally acclimatising to coming back home. Luton gave me a headache.

The following day, before I asked my father to drive me to the train station to take me back to Manchester, I sat on the bottom step of the stairs while he sat at the desk by the front door. It was what passed for his office - a small wooden desk, an office chair, a tray for new mail and a telephone. This article I'm writing is going to pay well,' I told him. The easiest way to win approval with my father was to talk about money. 'Might be four hundred pounds.'

He stopped reading the newspaper and looked up at me. 'And what about after that?'

'There's a course I've read about - TV production. It's in Manchester.'

'And this course, how much does it cost?' he asked me, removing his glasses.

'Usually five thousand pounds but there's a chance I can do it for free - they have special bursaries.'

'And this TV business, is it secure?' he asked. 'Is there any future in it?' His voice was not filled with scepticism as I had expected but concern; when I answered that it depended on how good I was he nodded. My father was not a man given to extravagant flourishes of enthusiasm. 'So you might be a journalist?' my father continued. 'That's a good profession. Respectable.'

The next morning I said goodbye to my mother and my father drove me to the train station in our old silver Ford Cortina. I got out of the car, thanked him for the ride and waved him goodbye. As I boarded the train back to Manchester I sighed with relief. I was returning to my life and he was returning to his.

I defined myself in opposition to my father. All that he believed, the values he upheld, the ambitions he cherished I rejected as embarrassing and outdated. When he said he was Pakistani, I declared I was British; he was Muslim, I was confused; he believed in family, I championed the individual; he worshipped money, I claimed it meant nothing. I convinced myself that we were so different, the notion that I might have inherited anything from him appalled me. The sooner I could shed my past the better. When I was younger I didn't want to know who my father was because I believed my father had nothing to do with me. How wrong can a son be?