A Trip Down Memory Lane – Kafait Travels

If you should want to book a holiday, a few clicks online and you’ve booked your trip. For many families within the Pakistani/ Kashmiri community, going to a reputable travel agent is an afternoon out, to meet a community figure whom you trust with competently organising your tickets and travel documents. Within several areas of Leeds, we find a number of travel agencies with a specialisation in travel to Pakistan; there is much convenience.

But imagine a time, 60 years ago, when preparing to go abroad to Pakistani required a person to beg, borrow, or catch a lift, in a time when very few people had a car. Then they would drive over to Bradford or even further afield to Birmingham, in order to source a travel agent for PIA, who could help you to purchase a ticket to travel to Pakistan. Asian men, who had arrived as economic migrants on the voucher scheme, in the 1950’s and 1960’s, would need to spend the entirety of their only day off in the week, to go and purchase a ticket.

For Kifayait Ali, who had arrived in 1957 from Chakswari in Azad Kashmir, this was a challenge which demonstrated a clear issue that needed to be addressed. He himself would travel to Bradford to buy his ticket in 1961 to travel home to prepare his family to come and join him in the United Kingdom. The challenges and inconvenience motivated Kifait to focus his talents upon providing a more localised travel agency service, as part of his desire to become an independent businessman, no longer wishing to be reliant upon earning a wage at the West Yorkshire Foundry. The now established Kifayait Travels, on Dorset Avenue was founded in 1968 in response to the need of the growing Pakistani and Kashmiri Community, living around Haji Kifait. Below are a few memories of his journey to this point in his career.

Born in 1932, in Issar, Kifait was the only son of local village shop keeper and landlord, Mohammad Alam. Kifait had seven other siblings and had a close attachment to his father, who valued his entrepreneurial spirit. In his early teens, he completed a basic school education, remembering the inflowing news of rioting and looting from across the Mirpur district during the partition of 1947.Still at school, aged 14|15, the local army recruited him to join the military, yet Kifait’s  father emotionally appealed and asked for his only son to be relieved of his training, to return and support him back in the village.

But Kifait’ continued to dream of travelling and working abroad. His Uncle Ferman Ali had already travelled to England with the Merchant Navy, in the 1940’s, settling in Bradford. His Maternal uncle Abdul Kareem and several other cousins had arrived to work in the north, during the 1950’s. So, the moment his uncles had invited him to come over to live with them, in 1957, a young Kafait was overjoyed. So, with his parents blessing, he headed to Karachi and took his first flight to England.

When he arrived, he initially stayed with one of his uncles, who resided on Blackman lane. He would later recall the foggy and cold climate, the cobbled streets, lines of back to back houses and dark smoky sky’s in the winter months. The house was a crowded terrace house with a number of his relatives living together. It very much felt like a second home, despite feeling so far from the valleys of Kashmir.

The community through the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s was small, consisting mainly of households of men in the Chapeltown, Blackman lane, Hyde park and Holbeck areas of Leeds. Amongst the well-known personalities of that time were people such as Gafoor Shah sahib, nicknamed American Sah, who lived in the Granges (Chapeltown), a wealthy landlord with a number of properties within Leeds and abroad. He would pass away in 1967. Alongside him, a café off Meanwood road, owned by Master Kadim, became a frequent meeting point for south Asian men to drink tea and help each other with the writing of letters.

 Most men worked in either the Mills down in Holbeck, or the Catton or West Yorkshire Foundry. There, Kafait could earn £40 a month, after working a 12-hour shift, 6 days a week. From this he could begin to save up in order to one day own his own business.

In terms of the needs and services which the first Pakistani/Kashmiri businesses provided for, very few shops sold cultural or religiously adequate food. Alongside the market the few Asian market traders in the city market, towards Harehills, Abdul Gani would have a small store near the Bayswater’s, Uncle Yusuf from Karachi would have a store on the Bexley’s and Ch. Sohbet Deen would have a small store in Blackman lane.

In terms of other independent small-scale business people, Haroon Todi was a man from Gujrat who would invest in a furniture business called ‘Aladdin’ and Ghulam Nabi, who had trained as a master tailor in Lahore, would set up a small shop on Shepherds place. Small family businesses and stores were beginning to open, owned by Kashmiri and Pakistani Migrants. These were all pioneering early elders who would later inspire Kafait to work towards his own goal of setting up a business.

Kifait would later recall that as foreigners, the Asian workers were not always treated well. On Crown point bridge, in Hunslet, young Caucasian men would attack Asian men and Rob them of their wages. It would happen to several of his own friends, In those early years.

Kafait took an interest in the local cinema industry, himself an infrequent visitor to the Marlborough Cinema in Bradford, in his leisure time. In 1963, he would begin to book out the Shaftesbury Cinema and hold Cinema screenings, once a month, in partnership with his friend Fazal Butt and his maternal uncle. These irregular screening days brought a sense of independence and a small profit for the group, whilst they still continued to work as labourers. For Kafait, this was a creative service which offered him an early experience of entrepreneurship away from home.

When he would begin to prepare for his home visit in 1961, and subsequently he would need to go to buy a ticket from the office of Malik Subidaar, who was a travel agent who headed the PIA office near the City centre in Bradford. After his own experience and observing the growing need for a travel agency for the Leeds community, he would establish an office in his own front room, at his family home at 16 Dorset Avenue, in 1968. With the advice of Malik Subidaar, he would become a sub-agent, working throughout the day to meet and assist with tickets and travel needs, as well as connecting customers with the PIA office in Bradford, removing the burden of needing to travel there.

From this sub-agency he would become well established, a household name across the community of Leeds. He would also begin to assist with a growing number of individuals needing to contact the airlines, as housemates and relatives who had passed away in England, had wanted to be buried in their ancestral graveyards, back in Pakistan and Kashmir.

The office essentially became a meeting place, a go to travel agency and advice point for those early families in the late 1960’s which has not changed up until Haji Kifait Ali’s retirement and continues till this day to provide the same travel services under his son, Iftikhar, who carries his father’s work ethic and legacy.