But I Smile Anyway…

I’m bringing someone new to you, today!

I am very pleased to have a new author to introduce to you all, today, and a fellow desi fiction writer, at that, so I’m even more excited. Iqbal Hussain will be chatting about writing and his debut, Northern Boy!

Hello, and welcome to But I Smile Anyway, Iqbal! Let’s get you set with a drink, first. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate, or maybe a masala chai?

Oh, always a masala chai. Especially on a blowy day after we get in from a big walk in the forest with Milo, our labradoodle.

If we’re going for masala tea, I can offer you some homemade pakoras or a fresh batch of cupcakes baked by my daughter this morning.

As a huge fan of pakoras and cupcakes, I would have to have both. Savoury, followed by sweet. Perfect! I agree, you have to have both!

So, could you tell me a bit about your journey to becoming a published author, Iqbal? Did you find it easy to find representation and get published?

I’m trained as a journalist, so writing’s always been in my blood. But it was only recently that I tried writing fiction. I started with short stories, first just for myself and then entering competitions. Once they began to gain traction, I trusted myself to write longer, resulting in Northern Boy. It took many years to write, taking in at least twenty drafts. The book that’s coming out in June is quite different to the first version, which was more autobiographical – a series of vignettes in need of a plot.

In 2017, I was shortlisted for the Penguin WriteNow scheme for underrepresented writers, which was a huge confidence boost. A year later, I secured a place on the London Writers’ Awards. That’s when Northern Boy really took off, becoming fiction rather than a loosely disguised memoir. On the back of the LWA, I found an agent. Soon after, the agent changed careers, and I was passed to her deputy; she left the company a month later. I was passed to a third agent, who didn’t have a connection with Northern Boy or feel strongly about it, and we parted ways. I hear so much about agents’ and authors parting ways after building relationships; I can only imagine how tough that would have been.

It took a random tweet on Twitter about one of his clients to bring me to the attention of my now agent, the wonderful Robert Caskie. And it’s thanks to Robert and external editor Gillian Stern that the book properly took shape. We did a complete overhaul – tens of thousands of words were ditched, and new ones written. We went out on submission, but, disappointingly, there were no takers.

With a heavy heart, I was all set to shelve the book. Before I did, I entered a competition from Unbound Firsts, a new imprint of the crowdsourcing publisher Unbound, guaranteeing to publish two books a year from debut writers of colour. I forgot all about it, then learned I’d been longlisted. Which turned into a shortlisting. Followed by the amazing news that I’d won and been selected as one of their two books for 2024 – along with fellow winner Zahra Barri, with Daughters of the Nile. I’ve spent the last year doing further work on the book with ace editor Marissa Constantinou, making the final book the best it can be, and this time it really is done! That is truly amazing!

Do you have a special place where you do all your creating and writing? Somewhere away from the craziness of family?

We are lucky enough to have a study each, so I work in mine, usually with Milo keeping me company. I plug in my headphones, usually listening to Bollywood songs. You can take a boy out of Lancashire but you can’t take Lancashire out of the boy. While Northern Boy was being written, I listened to certain songs over and over again – they would take me back to the early 1980s, when some of the book is set. Music also features strongly throughout the book – both Rafi and his mother love music, and they’re always breaking out into Bollywood or ABBA songs. I’ve put together a Northern Boy playlist on Spotify, which gathers together all these songs. Fabulous! I have to admit to not being able to listen to anything when writing, because I get distracted and start singing along, instead of writing!

I noticed, on your website, that you are a composer, too. A man of many talents! I love singing, but to be able to compose your own music, well that is awesome! Have you composed music to go with your stories?

Thank you! I’ve always composed music, from an early age. I imagined everyone heard music in their head, but I realised as I got older that this wasn’t the case. I hear melodies and full-blown arrangements, and I then use my computer and a music production program called Logic to set out the music, with all its layers. I’ve come a long way from the toy piano I used to play as a child with its painted-on black keys! Rafi, in the book, is also musical, but he’s much more accomplished than I am! I haven’t composed music to go with the stories, apart from a theme tune if Northern Boy ever gets optioned for TV or film! But I’ve always envisioned any visual version of the book to contain a healthy dose of music and songs in the true tradition of a Bollywood film – can you imagine, a terraced, cobbled Northern street exploding into a colourful song-and-dance number, then returning to the red brick normality! Oh, I can picture it!

Being an author of Desi fiction, myself, I was thrilled to be able to chat to someone with similar experiences to me. What pushed you to write the stories that you have, so far? I read one of your short stories on your website, too, The Reluctant Bride, which was hauntingly beautiful.

I’ve always felt there’s a gap with stories with Pakistani, Northern, working class themes. The publishing industry is getting better, and we’re seeing more books from writers from underrepresented backgrounds, but there’s much work ahead. I love reading stories set in Bombay with servants and characters who read Kipling, or some wealthy suburb of north-west London, but that isn’t my reality. I also feel that if I don’t tell my stories not only will they be forgotten (by me and those who experienced them with me) but also never learned of by the wider reading public. I often return to themes from my childhood, a time that was particularly formative for me. When I was in my early teens, the house we grew up in was bought up in a compulsory purchase order by the council and razed to the ground, the houses no longer being deemed fit for inhabitation. A once thriving neighbourhood was wiped off the map, in every sense. At an early age, I realised that histories can be erased, and if there aren’t those of us who stand up and record them then it’ll be as if they never happened. I also want to give women from my mum’s generation a voice in my work. With limited English language skills, they’re literally denied a voice in their real lives, so I wanted to make sure I redressed this is in my work. The Reluctant Bride is based on the stories of churails my mum used to tell us as children. They’ve stuck with me and I wanted to do my own take on it. It’s one of my favourite stories of my own and I’m so glad you liked it too! I really enjoyed it!

Something I get asked a LOT is, “Is this story about you?” It feels like there is a segment of the population who can’t grasp the fact that I have stories to tell, made-up ones, not just my story. Have you ever had that? Is there an assumption that you are only able to write what you know?

Absolutely. As writers from underrepresented backgrounds, there’s pressure on us to reflect ourselves and our communities in the stories and books we write. To some degree, I don’t have an issue with that. After all, often we’re told to write about what we know. But that doesn’t mean to say that’s all I write, or that’s all you write. We are more than our own experiences. If we want to write a book set in a space station, or the court of Henry VIII, or about two white English characters we should be free to do so. We should only be limited by our imaginations, not by others’ expectations of us. 100% this, Iqbal!

Let’s get back to your debut, Northern Boy. I’m a Brummie, myself, so more Midlands Girl, but, can I just reiterate how much I enjoyed reading it, nodding along to many parts, picturing the scenes. Where did the inspiration for Rafi’s story come from?

Thank you so much! There’s a Brummie character in the book, Beverley, who, while a cameo, is a favourite of mine. If the book does get turned into a TV series or a film, I’d love Meera Syal (another Brummie) to play her! Rafi’s story started off as autobiographical, but as the drafts piled up it became more fictionalised. It’s hard to put a figure on it, but I’d say at least 70 per cent is fiction and 30 per cent truth, but I’ll leave it to the readers to work out which is which. To be honest, sometimes I forget myself! The problem with real life is it’s rarely interesting enough to carry a whole book. In early drafts, I had a whole chapter detailing a typical school day, including breakdowns of the lessons. Fascinating to me, but to nobody else, so it had to go! Other inspirations were the Bollywood films I was raised on as a child, the TV we watched, programmes like Fame which I loved, and of course the film Billy Elliott. OMG, I loved Fame, too!

You write relatable characters, and the community’s reactions were spot on when certain aspects of Rafi’s life came to everyone’s attention.What I really loved was how you wove his mother, Maam’s personality into the story, without switching points of view. She is an integral character in the story, and I really felt for her. Stuck in a country she really didn’t want to move to, with all manner of unfamiliar things constantly happening around her. Would you consider writing something which is more of a prequel, about her experiences of marriage and coming over to England?

From the outset, the book was always going to be about Rafi and his mother, Maam. Early advice from the Penguin WriteNow editors was to focus on their often tempestuous relationship, and to show how as Rafi was yearning to break free from childhood, Maam was doing the opposite and trying to reclaim the teenage years she lost when she married at an early age. Maam is based on my own mum, who never wore the same outfit twice, rustling up colourful salwaar kameez on her Pfaff sewing machine and still claiming she had nothing to wear! Maam’s story features in short stories I’ve written, including “Home from Home”, which won Gold in the 2019 Creative Future Writers’ Awards, and in “The Long Journey Home”, which was featured in the anthology Lancashire Stories. A shorter form of that story can be found online, in a story called “All Her Tomorrows” as part of the City of Stories project. It would be fascinating to write Maam’s story properly – interestingly, not something I’ve considered before, but you’ve given me food for thought.

I could see this on screen, you know. How would you feel about someone wanting to make a film or series based on your book? (I know I’d love Gurinder Chaddha to read my books and I want to make a movie!)

I would absolutely love Gurinder to take this! To turn it into a film, like in Blinded by the Light. She would totally “get” the feel of the book, the period, the music, the language hopping between English and Punjabi. Early on, I contacted Gurinder on Twitter to say what a huge fan I was of hers and she asked me to keep in touch. So I did, sending her a proof of the book a few months ago. She sent a lovely email back, saying “shabash, puthar”, which made my day! Now I’ll keep everything crossed that she wants to option for TV/film – but, as with all these things, I know how difficult it is to get financing, convince everyone else, pitch to a TV/film company, etc. I wish you so much luck! If you get anywhere, maybe you can put in a good word for me! 😉

I have to ask this, because of the premise of the book… are you an ABBA fan? Would we find you twirling around with a blonde wig on, pretending to be Agnetha with a hairbrush microphone? I love a bit of Karaoke!

I’m a HUGE ABBA fan! On this point, Rafi is me – we are indistinguishable. And I did indeed have a best friend, Shaheeda, the model for Shazia in the book. We would spend hours pretending to be Bollywood starlets, especially Parveen Babi and Hema Malini, and there was an incident similar to the one in the book where Shazia turns Rafi into Agnetha. But she made me up as Maya from Space 1999, complete with mehndi dots for eyebrows, a widow’s peak traced with a surma pen and a diaphonous costume made from dupattas and chadars. And I did go into the local shop in character, tottering along on my mother’s wedge heels. I have no idea how I had the gumption. I can still remember the shopkeeper’s open jaw when I trotted in. I LOVE this! You really are my kind of person!

I love to be nosy and ask this. What is next for Iqbal Hussain? Any new projects you can tell us about?

I’m currently working on a middle-grade children’s book, “The Time Travelling Misadventures of the 7th Son”. Once more, it’s set in the North, in a working-class Pakistani household. The protagonist, Zubair Miah, discovers that, as a seventh son, he can travel back in time. Which he does to try and save his parents’ marriage. While the book is aimed at a younger audience, it has the same mix of humour and pathos of Northern Boy, and even shares some of its characters and settings. We’re hoping to submit the book to publishers shortly, so that’s exciting! There’s another children’s book after that, set in a mythical world called Djollywood – people by Bollywood-loving djinns – and I have ideas for more grown-up novels too. And now you’ve also got me thinking about writing Maam’s story!

Well, I am glad I got you thinking! I know that my 3-book series, has already got wings with at least one prequel, possibly two additional novellas and two more possible full length novels, branching out about some of the other characters! I look forward to hearing more from you. 🙂

Thank you so much for popping over for a chai, Iqbal!

Thank you for the great chai and questions, Ritu!

You are most welcome, and it would be wonderful if you fancied a return visit. 😊

The Blurb

Joyful, defiant and dazzling, this is the story of Rafi Aziz – a Northern boy dreaming of his name up in lights.

It’s 1981 in the suburbs of Blackburn and, as Rafi’s mother reminds him daily, the family moved here from Pakistan to give him the best opportunities. But Rafi longs to follow his own path. Flamboyant, dramatic and musically gifted, he wants to be a Bollywood star.

Twenty years later, Rafi is flying home from Australia for his best friend’s wedding. He has everything he ever wanted: starring roles in musical theatre, the perfect boyfriend and freedom from expectation. But returning to Blackburn is the ultimate test: can he show his true self to his community?

Navigating family and identity from boyhood to adulthood, as well as the changing eras of ABBA, skinheads and urbanisation, Rafi must follow his heart to achieve his dreams.

Buy Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1800183143

My Review

Northern Boy: A big Bollywood dream. A small-town chance. by Iqbal Hussain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a brilliant debut by Iqbal Hussain!
I love finding a voice where I can relate to the characters and the situations, and the story is compelling, too. This had all that in spades.
Northern Boy uses a dual timeline to tell the story of Rafi Aziz. It follows his childhood in Blackburn from the 1970s to the early 2000s as he returns home, ending with an ending in the present era.
Rafi Aziz is not your usual young Pakistani Muslim boy living in North England. He’d rather be dressing up with his best mate, Shazia, and dancing around her room, singing pop songs and Bollywood hits, than playing football with the rest of the lads.
Music has been a part of his growing up since he can remember, with a mother who sings with a beautiful voice around the house and dotes on her youngest son, encouraging her to join in with her all the time.
Things come to a head when the family realises that his talent is a passion, and he wants to pursue his love of music, singing, and dancing rather than become a doctor or an accountant.
Then, negativity starts, and “What would the neighbours/community say?” becomes more important than allowing Rafi to realise his dreams.
When we jolt forward, Rafi is older and more established as a well-known stage actor/performer, living a life he’s sure his family would disapprove of in Australia. He heads back to his hometown for Shazia’s wedding, where he has to deal with the fireworks and many concealed parts of his life are uncovered.
There were so many things I loved about this book. Rafi is a boy I could have met growing up. I knew of many who suppressed their interests because it wasn’t the done thing.
I also really related to Maam, his mother, who was battling her cultural demons, missing her homeland, and wanting what was best for her children.
This is Billy Elliot, the British Pakistani Edit! An incredible immersion into the life of a boy who just wanted to follow his dreams.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Unbound for an ARC.

About the Author

Iqbal’s debut novel, Northern Boy, about being a “butterfly among the bricks”, is out on 6 June, with Unbound Firsts. His debut middle-grade children’s novel, The Time Travelling Misadventures of the 7th Son, is due out on submission shortly. His work appears in various anthologies, including Mainstream by Incandescent and Lancashire Stories by UCLan Publishing. Iqbal’s nature writing can be read on sites such as The Hopper and caughtbytheriver. Iqbal lives in north London but remains a Northern boy at heart. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram as @ihussainwriter. His website is www.ihussainwriter.com.