“Brother, I had a bad dream and it was terrible,” a distressed voice in the Indo-Aryan language of Potwari says over the distinctly familiar fuzzy sound of a wearied-down and repeatedly-played cassette tape. “I don’t know why but I dreamt that you were ill.” Zareena Darr, the voice heard on the tape, recorded the message sometime back in the late 70s and early 80s whilst living in Canada. The tape was then sent to Zareena’s sister Halima and brother Yaseen, who were living in Ashton-under-Lyne at the time. “The things I want to tell you from the heart have to stay in the heart,” Zareena continued in the recording. “I couldn’t tell you everything and I have a lot of things to talk about. I don’t know when I’m going to meet you, and God knows when these locks on the heart will be broken – it looks impossible…”
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The recording was unearthed back in 2017 – offering a rare capsule of a difficult period of time for the family. That cassette tape, alongside a collection of others, now takes centre stage in a special exhibition in Greater Manchester that looks further into the practice of recording and sending voice messages on cassette tape in the British-Pakistani in the 60s and 80s. “There wasn’t that many people from our community that we could talk to – I was alone and dejected,” Zareena later recalled. “Anyone who suddenly moves over to another country feels alone, especially if they don’t know the language. “It was really difficult for me to accept that I was illiterate and couldn’t read and write because although I had the desire to study, I couldn’t. I struggled to accept it but started messaging on cassettes to my sister. I used to tell her about myself, or if someone died, or if someone was getting married, or feelings about our parents because they felt alone too. It was because I could communicate in this way that I felt happy, but there was a lot of heartache within myself about not being able to read or write.”
It’s a sentiment that is shared with others who have found themselves the subjects of the Tape Letters Exhibition at Ashton Library. Running until November, the exhibition – from Wajid Yaseen – has just moved from Ashton Indoor Market, following a successful five-month run. The exhibition came to life after Wajid, the director of Modus Arts, went rummaging through his father’s collection of tapes and discovered his own recordings. “The labels and inner sleeves of these cassettes were different from the pre-recorded music tapes that we were familiar with as kids,” Wajid explained of the initial discovery. “They instead had the names of relatives scribbled in either English or Urdu. “Re-discovering them in the family home triggered childhood memories of when I’d be cajoled into recording messages to distant relatives in Pakistan, and it dawned on me that these cassettes would be sonographic snapshots of time, revealing the migratory experiences of my immediate family and a heritage that I previously didn’t have access to.” The exhibition features first-hand interviews with those featured on the cassettes. For the exhibition, Mohammed Zareen submitted a cassette from his daughter Asiah, which was recorded for her family living in Pakistan. “[She] recorded a tape here in the UK so her grandparents and her uncle in Pakistan could listen to it,” Mohammed explained. “She gave it to me so I could hand it to them when I went on a visit there. They then recorded their reply and told me to play it to her and to all of my other children when I returned to the UK.” Others said the practice of recording messages between family and friends abroad was done because the cost of making phone calls internationally was just too expensive to do regularly. In one of the exhibition’s tapes, Halima Jabeen can be heard discussing the cold weather in Bolton. “Phone calls were just too expensive, so we’d record messages on cassettes instead,” Halima explained. “Listening to one felt like someone was sitting right next to you and talking to you in your own home.” The surviving tapes themselves are stored in London’s BishopsGate Institute, but have been creatively reproduced through a series of films, photographs and radio series by Modus Arts in order to preserve them as learning resources. The exhibition at Ashton Library, which is housed within the Tameside One building, has been described as ‘poignant and touching’. Cllr Sangita Patel, Tameside Council’s assistant executive member for culture, heritage, participation and sport, commented: “As someone from Ashton whose family came to England from India, I can fully understand the chord ‘T
