Page 100 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

There was a trace of anger in her voice, but on the other hand
she was also quite impressed. I explained I was relaxed about the
repayments – I could easily afford them – and the debt wasn’t
secured against anything anyway.
As I embarked on a family life of my own, my father announced
that he was moving back to Pakistan. None of his children showed
any interest in taking over his business, and without that as a
possibility he didn’t see the point in carrying on.
‘What am I doing it for if it’s not for you?’
He had saved enough money to keep him in retirement, and so
the decision for him to move back was straightforward. For my
mother and my youngest siblings it wasn’t so easy. They didn’t
want to go – my mother didn’t want to live in a different country
from any of her children – and the kids were upset at having to
change schools, lose friends and go to a country where they really
didn’t speak much of the language. Nevertheless, as ever it was
virtually impossible to disobey my father, and so they went with
him.
Instead of moving back to Lahore, they chose Karachi, which is
more cosmopolitan, more developed, and my dad probably felt
they were more likely to adjust to Karachi than Lahore. I didn’t
feel good about him going because I knew he felt that we had let
him down by not wanting to take over the business. Him going to
Pakistan was like when I’d left home, only in reverse: I’d said, ‘I’ll
show you,’ and now he was doing the same thing.
My younger brother Andrew was old enough at eighteen to defy
my dad, and he stayed in London. I wanted to look out for him,
and one of the ways I did this was by buying my parents’ house in
Forest Gate. I paid the market price for it, a) because my father
wasn’t about to sell it cheap, even to his son, and b) because the
rent on it was nearly twice the mortgage. So I told Andrew that I
would buy it and he could rent the other rooms out, and in
exchange for managing it for me he could live there for free.

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