IMRANA’S LIFE AS A CHILD
CLEANING windows when she turned five, scrubbing a concrete driveway as an eightyear-old and learning to cook when she was nine.
That was Imrana Jalal’s life as a child. But it was also full of fun, as well as hard work.
She and her sisters — Joycelyn Nazhat Jalal, Carolyn Ariza Jalal and Fareen Riha Jalal — were certainly not mollycoddled as young girls, nor was their brother Saiyed Altaf Jalal.
Their father, Saiyed Abdul Jalal, knew how hard life was because he grew up poor.
And using his experience as a backdrop, he brought Imrana and her siblings up the best way he knew how — tough and ready to take on whatever life would throw at them.
“We were firmly disciplined, got hidings when we did wrong, were punished when we overstepped the mark and feared our father’s wrath,” Imrana recalled.
“Probably, if we were New Yorkers, we would be in permanent therapy.
“Our mother’s daily threat when we were misbehaving was, ‘just wait ’til your father comes home!’
“I think that a stricter upbringing is better than a liberal one. It produces more disciplined adults.”
Mr Jalal’s ancestry hails from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
He could be referred to as an ethnic Pathan or Pashtun Muslim.
However, he was born in Lautoka to Sarwar Jan and Haji Saiyed Raihman and grew up in Suva — and also on Nairai Island, Lomaiviti.
His mother’s family was the only Fijians of Indian descent living on Narai at that time.
And during his formative years there, he was given the iTaukei nickname ‘Taitusi’.
It is a name he still wears with a lot of pride today.
When his mother died in August 1941, Mr Jalal was only seven years old.
And because his father had left Fiji in 1937 to return to Pakistan, Mr Jalal was essentially orphaned and passed from one relative to another until he was a teenager.
Sarwar Jan was born in Suva. Her mother, Prandei, was a Hindu.
The story, as told to the Jalal siblings by their cousin Shamima Ali, was that their father’s maternal grandfather, Ballu Khan, a Pathan, used to watch Prandei being beaten by her husband.
At the time, they were living in the Western “sugar lines,” as they were then known.
One day Ballu Khan marched uninvited into Prandei’s home, took her by the hand and led her away. Her husband was too afraid to do anything.
Mr Khan converted Prandei to Islam, named her Noor Jan, and married her.
He had told his family before he died that his daughter (Sarwar Jan, Imrana’s grandmother), had to marry a Pathan.
“It was this injunction that led to her fateful alliance with our Dada (paternal grandfather).
“Sarwar Jan met her future husband, Haji Saiyed Rehman, when he came to Fiji as a 17-year-old missionary from what is now Pakistan — but which was then still part of India — to spread Islam in the Pacific.”
They married and eventually had three children, including Mr Jalal.
When Sarwar Jan was expecting their third child, Saiyed
Rehman decided to return to Pakistan, leaving her, and their two young children, behind.
He never saw his wife again, and it would be another 35 years or so before he would once again see his son Abdul (who, in 1971, was a father of three).
“The family legend states that, after her husband’s departure, our grandmother would wait every day on the beach on Nairai Island, hoping to catch sight of his boat returning him to her.
“Eventually, she died of a broken heart.
“Years later, Dada said that he had tried to return to Fiji but the war and subsequent Partition of India had prevented him from doing so.
“It is hard to separate fact from fiction, but certainly, the tensions and bitterness about his departure, and his attempts to return, remain in our family to this day.”
Despite all the emotional upheavals and the fact that his formal education stopped at the age of 12 when he completed Class 8, Mr Jalal strove to make the most of every given opportunity.
After the death of his mother and with his father being away in Pakistan, he went to live with his relatives — the wealthy Jannif family.
He was trained to be a joiner and carpenter and worked at the Public Works Department.
After a stint at PWD, Ben Jannif, family patriarch and head of Caines Jannif Ltd, trained him as a photographer.
“Our father eventually became part of management at the family-run Caines Jannif Ltd, where he stayed until the end of his professional career.
“He became a successful and highly respected businessman, notwithstanding his lack of formal education and he remains close to the Jannif family to this day, and in particular, to Sofia Jannif.”
Mr Jalal met Rosemary Bimla Grant on the tennis court in Suva.
They were part of the Fiji “Indian” Lawn Tennis Association, an organisation that was formed because non-whites were not allowed to play at the Albert Park tennis courts which was reserved for the “Europeans”.
They married in 1959.
The Jalal family was a mixed bag of faiths because Mr Jalal was Muslim and Mrs Jalal a Catholic.
Imrana said her father is a deeply devout Muslim who strictly observes all the laws of Islam — according to his Sunni mainstream interpretation — and prays five times a day.
He believes that all Muslims have the right to ijtihad — to independent judgment of Islam.
“Dad has grown more tolerant of others while observing the rules more strictly for himself as he got older.
“Over the years, he has tried to get us to be more devout but, apart from my brother Altaf, none of us are praying or observant Muslims, although I still both consciously and subconsciously identify myself as both ‘Muslim’ and ‘Catholic’.”