Book review: The forbidden love of two lonely strangers seeking a port in a storm

Debut novel about two immigrants, trying to navigate their lives in a country where bosses have no compunction about underpaying vulnerable workers

Manish Chauhan.

• Belgrave Road
• Manish Chauhan
• Faber, £16.99

This debut state-of-the-nation novel, set in Leicester in the UK, is a love story between two strangers, both recent immigrants, trying to navigate their lives in a country where bosses have no compunction about paying vulnerable workers abysmal wages.

There is Mira, a young Indian woman, who comes to England to live with her husband Rajiv in an arranged marriage. She has met him just three times before moving in with him and his parents on the eponymous Belgrave Road. Rajiv, an Anglo-Indian, is in love with someone else.

In the meantime Mira, who is lonely and disappointed with England, finds forbidden love with Tahliil, originally from Somalia.

Asylum seeker Tahliil travelled to England, via Libya, on a precarious boat voyage with his troubled sister to join their mother. Brother and sister have had terrible experiences which are left mostly unexplored in the narrative. Tahliil can’t even open up fully to Mira.

It would, perhaps, render him an emasculated victim. The reader can only imagine the ill-treatment meted out to this rather delicate man who had to leave his own country and risk his life in order to start a new life.

There is something inevitable about the love affair; two lost people seeking a port in a storm. 

Tahliil works two jobs, as a carer and as an assistant in a cash and carry outlet, while Mira works next door as a cook in a sweet shop. 

Tahliil’s English is not great, so there is a lot of awkward tentative language from him as he tries to be understood by his lover. She attends English classes to improve her grasp of the language. However, there is a depth of feeling between the couple that no language barrier can diminish.

Love story based on  hope and dreams

This is a love story based on hope and dreams. Mira, unhappily married, tries to imagine a better life with Tahliil and vice versa. They spend their time together planning for their future with talk of a house of their own and a beautiful garden. 

That they don’t have the money or prospects to achieve their fantasy is often referenced. The lack of money is a recurring theme. Despite being paid only £6 or £7 an hour, they manage to save but you can’t help thinking that a mortgage would never be affordable for this exploited couple.

Day-to-day life, away from dreamland, sees Tahliil having to hire a solicitor for his visa application. It’s depicted as an arduous process, adding to the alienation that Tahliil feels in a country where he is almost invisible. However, being a worrier, he frets that the Home Office knows all about him working illegally. Every asylum seeker is at it. It’s for basic survival; a catch-22 situation.

Mira gets on well with her mother-in-law who is always goading her to have a baby. But all is not well between the in-laws. The mother-in-law suffers domestic abuse at the hands of her husband. Their finances are in jeopardy as the husband owes money for his failing business while his wife is about to lose her job.

Ravij doesn’t emerge as a fully-rounded character in this novel. It’s hard to get a sense of him. But perhaps this is intentional as Mira knows very little about her husband. She has no clue about his inner life as he doesn’t reveal much of himself to her.

Something happens in the closing section of the novel that poses a huge challenge for Mira and Tahliil. Will their relationship survive in the face of adversity?

Having built their liaison on an imagined future, they can only hope that they will continue to dream of a happier life.

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