Book Festival: Walking the Line

Sameem Ali escaped a family culture which put death before dishonour to become an author, a councillor, and a critic of a society's misplaced racial sensitivity, writes Susan Mansfield

SAMEEM Ali walks confidently along the gothic corridors of Manchester Town Hall, greeting fellow councillors as she goes. I'm following her, wondering how this confident, sure-footed woman can be the same person as in the book I've just read about a frightened little girl who was beaten, abused and forced to marry at 13.

Ali's memoir, Belonging, may begin like a misery memoir, but as she escapes her family and they send men to pursue her, it turns into a gripping page-turner. Still, the most remarkable thing about it is the woman herself, who rose above it all. "I never thought I would be an author or a councillor," she says, brightly. "It's amazing what life throws at you."

Life threw a lot at Sameem Ali. Abandoned by her family as a baby, she spent the first six and a half years of her life in a children's home, which she remembers as a place of kindness and stability: "They gave me such a strong foundation. That made me who I am today."

Her problems began when, at six, she was returned to her family, at their request. But shocked as she was by the filthy house (which she was expected to clean), the alien food and language, what shocked her most was the complete absence of affection. Her mother beat her savagely. At one point during the interview, she parts her hair and invites me to feel the lumps on her head, permanent scars of having been hit hard with the heel of a woman's shoe.

When Ali was 12, the family moved to Glasgow. She stopped going to school, and shortly afterwards was taken by her mother to visit relatives in Pakistan. While abroad she was "married" to an older distant cousin who wanted UK residency. She later found out the arrangement was part of a settlement of a debt between the two families.

Her cousin raped her repeatedly, and a few months later she returned to Glasgow pregnant, a British-born child being a boost to the father's visa application. She gave birth at 14 and continued to skivvy for the family, but her son Azmier gave her a sense of herself she had all but lost.

"He saved me in a way," she says softly. "If it wasn't for him, I would have committed suicide. He gave me a purpose really, I couldn't just disappear off the face of the earth because I had to look after him." Two things convinced Ali that she had to act: she discovered that her mother was beating Azmier, now three, while she was out at work in her brother's shop, and she found out her family planned to send her back to Pakistan to fetch her "husband". She knew she had to get away, but had no money, and knew no one outside the family.

She was close to despair when Osghar Ali, a family friend, arrived for a visit. They became friends, and she confided in him. One day, he arrived at the shop with an engagement ring and an invitation: to run away with him to Manchester. Sitting on the train that day leaving Central Station in November 1987, Sameem, then aged 17, started to feel free.

"When Osgar wanted to marry me, I told him: 'We come as a package, I'm not leaving my son,'" she smiles. "And he said: 'I don't want you to leave him, bring him with you!' And 20-plus years later, we're still together."

But that's not the end of the story. Sameem and Osghar married and settled briefly in a house rented by one of Osghar's friends. But one night he arrived and warned them that they needed to move out. After spending the next day at the council offices, they were given emergency accommodation, but that night the police come to the door.

They had arrested three men on the motorway, pulled over during a routine check. In their car were knives, baseball bats and restraining equipment – and Ali's name and the address of the house she had left only that morning. The men confessed to having been paid by Ali's brother, Manz, to bring her and her son back to Glasgow, "no matter what it took".

Ali still shudders slightly at the thought. "If I had been found at that time, I think I would have ended up killed or in Pakistan and left there. I wouldn't have gone back to Pakistan without somebody forcing me, but they would have taken my son back to Pakistan and I would have followed."

Even this was not enough to crush her spirit. She testified against her brother, who was sentenced to several years in prison. She had a second son, Asim, and concentrated on bringing up her children, setting small, achievable goals each day. "I just wanted peace and quiet. My own space. I didn't want to be hit any more. I didn't want a lot of material things."

Did she never feel anger towards her family? "I went through a six-month phase of rebelling against everything Asian. I didn't cook the food, I didn't wear the clothes. But then I thought, I'm depriving my boys of the lovely food I used to make. Now I pick and choose which parts of my culture I want to involve my family in. And anyway," she chuckles, "I couldn't live on fish and chips!"

She also made contact with her family again, ignoring her mother's remonstrations that she should return to her "real" husband in Pakistan. "Blood is blood, and you can't ignore your family for the rest of your life. There is a distance between us, but at least we can call each other and say: 'Hello, how are you doing?'. I don't hold a grudge."

As her children grew up, she took an NVQ and got a job at the airport, but felt she wanted to do more. "I had my midlife crisis about the age of 32. I was looking at the children thinking, 'OK, I've had my children, what do I do now? I've done everything everybody else does by the time they're 50!'"

However, she suffered another setback five years ago when doctors discovered a tumour in her head, near her ear. "They couldn't do a biopsy because of where it was, so they didn't know whether it was malignant or benign. It was very, very scary. But they took it out, and it was benign."

The experience left Ali more determined than ever. "It made me want to make a difference. If you'd met me about five years ago, I wouldn't have said boo to a goose. But I've changed over the years, my confidence has come out. I'm using my new-found confidence to give other people a fair deal, because I didn't have one."

She became involved in setting up a residents' group in Moss Side and when a vacancy came up for a local councillor, she stood and was elected with the ward's largest majority to date. She also wrote her story, which was published earlier this year by John Murray. Part of the motivation for the book was to raise awareness of the issue of forced marriage, which she believes is a "hidden problem" in many communities in the UK.

"I don't blame my mother for doing what she did to me, she didn't know it was wrong. We need to start educating about other ways and means, and that what was right for you isn't necessarily right for youngsters today."

She fears that the authorities are dealing with the problem less effectively than they were 20 years ago, because of an increased perception of cultural sensitivities. "Somewhere along the line, somebody's gone and said 'Oh, it's a cultural issue,' and that's given them an excuse not to do anything. At the end of the day, if a girl is forced into marriage at 15, it's child abuse. If she's beaten then it's domestic violence, it's not anything cultural. Procedures are in place to tackle those things.

"When my brother gave money to people to come and get me, the police didn't think, 'Oh, it's a cultural tradition'. They tackled it for what it was: intent to kidnap. People keep using the words 'honour killing', but it's murder. OK, it might have been in the name of honour to the family, but murder's murder."

When I ask if she has further political ambitions, she smiles and shakes her head. But then she hesitates, remembering something a carer told her in the children's home all those years ago: "Whatever opportunities come your way, grab them with both hands". "Whatever comes my way, I'm going to grab it with both hands because you only live once." Given how far she's come already, there might be no stopping her.

• Sameem Ali appears at the Book Festival with Ayse Önal tomorrow at 2pm