Member-only story
My Lovely Landlord
Remembering Mr Iqbal and resisting blanket hatred
I stood on the edge of a football field on a coolish day in late summer. Behind me, my sister was playing with her team. We’d travelled up to an away game, which meant the usual — we stood around cold, drank cheap hot chocolate, and, on this occasion, I tried my first oatcake (I thought it was vile).
Just across from the field, atop a small hill and relatively distant — hazy in the summer air — was a large Sainsbury’s supermarket.
“That’ll be Dewi’s local shop soon,” my mom said wistfully.
I stared at the bright orange sign, looming like a beacon, a signpost to a new world.
It was only 40 minutes up the road from home, but to us, this was a big deal. I was the first in my family to go to university. My parents and grandparents had attended the same high school as me. As a rule, we did not go far.
Once I started uni, I did indeed spend a lot of time in that Sainsbury’s. It was a lot of firsts for me: its photo booth was the first place I had an ID photo taken. It was the first place I went grocery shopping on my own. The first place I tried Mikado. The first place I signed a property contract.
(Incidentally, that view is no longer there. A row of houses was built in my final university year, obscuring it. Almost a message from the universe: this phase is over, on you go.)
Mr Iqbal was an old-fashioned businessman. He was tall and soft-spoken, bald and warm. He was the kind of man who took you to lunch to do business, which was exactly what he did. My partner and I sat in the Sainsbury’s cafe with him; we had hot drinks and a nibble, glanced over our rental contract, and signed. Out the window, I looked at the football field I’d stood on just weeks before — a lifetime ago. That was childhood; this was adulthood.
Mr Iqbal’s wasn’t the first property we looked at. There was a friendly and very middle class woman who took us in her car to view one of the properties. She laughed awkwardly as we pulled up to the property and saw two recycling bins full to the brim with empty wine bottles. “Someone had a party,” she said, or something to that effect.
