My father, Muhammad Ismail, known as “Bowji”, has died aged 81, four weeks after retiring as a lollipop man in Huddersfield, and thus ending 60 years of dedicated service as a schoolteacher, millworker, community advocate and shopkeeper.
Muhammad was born in Chiti Koti, Faisalabad, which, in pre-partition India, was a farming village of Sikh landowners and Muslim workers. He was the eldest of five children of Ghulam Rasul, a poor and discontented goatherder, and Alma Bibi. Muhammad pursued his own education, becoming the village teacher and headmaster (“Masterji”), but also herded goats to make ends meet. In 1955, he had a traditional arranged Muslim marriage to Allah Rakhi; they were an ambitious couple in a young and unstable post-partition Pakistan, and dreamed of a new life in a foreign land.
Muhammad arrived in the UK in 1961, settling in Huddersfield. He yarned wool at William Oddy’s, manufacturers of the finest worsted. He saved enough to buy his first house (from a Polish refugee) and to bring his wife and their two young sons from Pakistan. They had three more daughters. Muhammad settled his five children into Spring Grove school, famous for pioneering multicultural education.
As the “Masterji”, Muhammad helped illiterate Punjabi men complete official forms. The family home was bustling with men in smart suits, enjoying gossip, dinner and peer support while pining for their homeland.
Unusually for a Punjabi man, Muhammad did his equal share of parenting by working nights. He and my mother remained poor, however, and to break the poverty barrier they started shopkeeping. They converted our living room into a shop which only served to provide their children with an endless supply of sweets. Undeterred, they became successful with a cornershop in Rastrick, Brighouse. They learned through hard grit that to serve the community meant staying open long after the supermarkets closed. Muhammad survived neighbourhood racism and abuse and a heart attack in 1998, but he continued to serve.
He refused to retire. From 2005, he worked as a lollipop man on Bradford Road, continuing even after a hit-and-run collision. In 2008 he was presented with the Kirklees Service Ambassador award.
He gave his children the same sense of service. We all work as doctors, lawyers and administrators in the NHS and academia. Muhammad is survived by his wife, five children, Tariq, Khalid, Sajida, Shahida and me, and 12 grandchildren.
