Abdul Rahim Khan

Abdul Aziz Khan’s story

My father, Abdul Rahim Khan, was born and raised in Batala, Punjab in pre-partition India. His father – my grandfather – had fought the British when they occupied India. So, when my father was lured to join the British Indian Army under promises of riches, he ran away from home aged 15 and moved to Tanganyika – present day Tanzania in East Africa.

He sailed to Aden with the Indian Expeditionary Force and marched all the way to Kenya, and then on to Tanganyika. His regiment fought the German forces during World War One – battles that aren’t often spoken about.

My father grasped a great understanding of the African landscape, which helped him in combat. But the Germans were not the only enemy. The problem of fighting in the bush in Africa is that there were so many bodies that animals of prey got a taste for human blood.

In order to dodge death by a hyena, leopard or lion; the soldiers would sleep in their camps surrounded by tin cans held together by string. One night, a lion tried to leap on to a soldier in my father’s camp – probably assuming he was a dead body because they were all asleep. But the lion got caught up in the string so the platoon could hear the lion running back into the jungle tangled in the tin cans.

My father didn’t speak much about his time in war. They saw a lot of things we could only imagine, and soldiers from the British colonies were not always treated well. They must’ve experienced trauma from their experience, but PTSD was not commonly spoken about in those days.

My father never returned to India because he could never face my grandfather after enlisting to serve the British. So, he remained in Tanganyika and joined the Railways as an officer.

It was here that he was introduced to an African lady through a colleague, whose partner was from the same area of India as my dad’s family. When he went to meet the lady, he also met my mother, and they later married.

I am glad my father never returned to India because otherwise he would never have met my mother and we would never have had the lovely life we’ve had. My family is very mixed, and we’ve had a great upbringing. I can speak four languages in addition to English: Swahili, Punjabi, Gujarati and Urdu. So, despite being born and raised in East Africa, and now living in England without ever seeing India, I still feel close to my South Asian roots.