Page 22 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

In Forest Gate we had a garden and a garage and I got my own
room for the first time, which meant my brother and I no longer
had to fight over who got to put their posters up: he liked Bruce
Lee, I had Farah Fawcett-Majors, although she had to share the
walls with pictures of Chelsea FC. In 1970 they’d won the FA Cup,
and in 1971 they won the European Cup Winners’ Cup, and they
completely captured my imagination. No one else in the family
cared for football, so I never got taken to any matches, but I
became a lifelong fan in the early seventies.
Not long after we’d moved, my parents announced that we were
going on holiday. This was incredibly exciting news, but when
they said we would be going to Pakistan my heart sank. They now
had children their families had never met and they wanted to see
old friends and relations. Kids at school were going to cool places
like Florida and Spain: Pakistan seemed incredibly boring in
comparison.
I don’t think my parents realised just how little I felt about the
country I’d been born in. I couldn’t remember it and I didn’t feel
any particular connection to the place. When my father talked of
home he meant Lahore, but for me home was London. After we
came back from our holiday, it would be another twenty years
before I’d find a reason to go back to Pakistan, and in time I would
come to understand my father’s love for the place.
There was a secondary school at the end of our road in Forest
Gate where I enrolled at the start of the new term. On my first day
I remember feeling completely lost. My school in Brick Lane had
had about 200 pupils, and by the time I left I knew everyone in
the building. Suddenly I was one of more than 1000 pupils in this
vast building with science blocks and playing fields: after the
upheaval of the move and the trauma of the fire, I felt quite
isolated for a while.
However, I quickly found a group of friends and started to settle
in. My best friend was a guy called Phillip, and we hung around

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