Page 19 - James Caan - The Real Deal

1 · Brick Lane

As we got a bit older, the idea of going back became more
unappealing, and then it simply became illogical: why would we
want to go to a country where we didn’t know anyone and where
we barely spoke the language? Nevertheless, this was my dad’s
dream, and so he kept saving his money. Looking back, I can see
this has influenced me, too, because I’ve never been much of a
saver: he worked so hard and never really saw the benefit. I knew
that if I ever had money I would have no problem spending it.
The smell of leather went right through the house in Brick Lane.
The walls of my father’s workshop had hundreds of paper patterns
hanging up, and there were rolls and rolls of skins, fabric, lining
materials and all sorts of machinery. Hindsight makes this easy to
realise, but it was clearly always a fire risk.
The inevitable happened one night in 1971. My father was
woken by one of the heavy irons falling over in his workshop, and
at first he thought we were being burgled. He went upstairs to see
who was there, and as he went to open the door, the handle was
red-hot and the paint was peeling with the heat. He burned his
hand quite badly before he saw the smoke coming out under the
door.
The first I knew about it was when he came into the room I
shared with Azam. He was screaming at us to get up and got us
out of bed. My mum fetched my sister and Ayub, and as my dad
carried us out of the room – just as we were getting to the door –
the ceiling caved in. A few more seconds and there is no doubt we
would have died. I remember being absolutely terrified, trembling
and shaking, in part because I had never seen my father so
panic-stricken. I still wasn’t quite sure what was going on because
I was half asleep, but when that ceiling fell in the noise was
incredible. There was no way we would have survived.
We ran down the stairs and stood in the street in our pyjamas
just looking at the flames leaping out of the top-floor windows. I
don’t remember who called the Fire Brigade, but a fire engine

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