Dubai memories from 1965: A Pakistani tailor family’s five-generation journey from Murshid Bazaar to Dubai Hills

The passports see everything. 

Mohammad Zahid Khan’s family has preserved two of them like heirlooms. 

There’s an unsaid reverence that exists around the two hardbound books sitting on a well-polished table. The pages are turned gingerly, and you see names written in ink and the stamps of visas from different countries. 

The passports on the table are fragments of the lives of Mohammad Umer Khan and Badrun Nisa, both from Karachi. A story that began in 1963 and now stretches across five generations, travelling all the way from a small flat in Murshid Bazaar, a neighbouring tailor shop to now a logistics business and a spacious villa in Dubai Hills.  

The legacy carries on with their sons, and grandchildren. “Five generations. That’s a true success story,” says a proud Zahid, one of the sons. 

We sit in a brightly lit room. The family shares their stories, within stories, punctuated by laughter. 

Badrun Nisa remembers a different Dubai.

A Dubai without the malls, cafes, sidewalks, and restaurants beckoning to you at every corner. For those few minutes as she speaks, the dining room vanishes and she pulls us back to the days of 1965, when she arrived by ship from Karachi. The ship was anchored in the middle of the sea, and they had to switch vessels. After a tussle with ropes and the ladders, they finally arrived in Deira.

Her father was already working in Dubai as a tailor. “He came here in 1963. Then my mother.  And we came in 1965 from Karachi.”

Was there a particular reason why her father wanted to come to UAE? He just did. He was determined to come, and so he did, and set up shop as a tailor. “He called us earlier, because he didn’t like that his family was far,” she says.

And so, on arrival, she absorbed her new world of Murshid Bazaar. There was nothing here back then, she says. But she still remembers the sights of old shops and the fish market. She can still describe the old houses, that had pieces of wood with locks. “The first house had two bedrooms,” she says.  Soon after at the age of 16, she went back to Karachi, got married and returned with  Mohammad Umer Khan. “All my children were all born here, in Rashid Hospital.” 

"My whole life has been here, childhood, adulthood and now even old age,” she says. 

While her husband worked for 12 hours at a shipping logistics company, Badrun Nisa found company in sewing at home. But she never wanted to sell them; she just made them for her children, later daughters-in-law.

Yet, life wasn’t completely spent at home. There was a joy in watching films. They would go to Nasir Chowk, and sat in a theatre that had no roof. “We saw Mughal E-Azam here, and Ganga Jamuna. My father loved films, so he would always take us and go. ”

The concept of malls did not exist; something unheard of for the children of today. For Zahid, and his siblings, enjoyment came from one centre that came later where they would go for fun. And later a park, too. They used to roam around Deira, Bur Dubai, and sit in the Abra for sightseeing. “In those times, they would take around Dh10, and there would be around two to three families in one Abra."

It was a quiet life. But it was filled with the sounds of memories. 

“It was an amazing childhood. We were very naughty children,” agrees his brother, Mohammed Khalid. There was an awe on seeing Dubai grow from the ground, and one of them being was the development of the Trade Centre.  “My father’s office was there. And the first time I went there, I saw from up above, it felt so high. I felt as if I was in a plane."

Badrun Nisa rarely has any complaints, not even about the hot weather, back then in a time that did not have any air-conditioner, something unthinkable today. "But it didn't feel so hot back then," she says mildly. Her son Khalid laughs and interjects, "If it did get hot, we used to fan ourselves."

Mohammad Umer Khan is soft-spoken. His granddaughter Haniya shares a little anecdote first, before he does: As his parents died early, he would play games to earn tuition fees in Pakistan. Umer Khan smiles a little on hearing this. As he hears more remembrances, he starts speaking about Dubai, and a life spent watching ships.

As Umer Khan says, his father-in-law once called him to the tailor’s shop to work. As he was not familiar with stitching, he decided to continue his shipping career that he began in Pakistan. And so after much searching, he found a job at Port Rashid, where even the journey involved was a little tedious, involving an Abra and a truck. “I had to note the sounds of the crane, among others. That was hard,” he says.

He was away for 12 hours. He would leave early in the morning, when the children were asleep. And when he returned by truck again at night, they were asleep, too.

Life was just all about work, and that’s all he had known. “Just work, work and work, and then I got a job at Sea Land,” he says. Zahid describes how the rhythm of watching ships continued: Umer Khan would step out of his office at Ras Al Khor and see the ships entering at Port Rashid. They would climb up to the roof and see the containers arriving.

He worked so hard, says Badrun Nisa. “Every job that he worked in. If there was rain, he would wake up at night and check if everything was okay.”

And he worked till the 90s, and then in 1996, he started his own logistics business, which involved in the whole family. Over the course of their time in UAE, the family has lived between Ajman and Dubai in the late 90s and early 2000s, and it has filled with difficulties. For instance, there was a point in their lives when they had only one car, and would all depend on the license of one brother. They didn’t have phones at the time; only pagers. So they would use the public telephones, and would phone office, to ask for a pick-up.

And sometimes, they had to walk to office in the heat from Carama to Bur Dubai. It was a 25-minute walk.

Yet, despite and due to all the toil and sweat, the business grew and flourished. “All of us are into logistics now and property,” adds Zahid. “We have a family home in Ajman too, where my parents used to live too, like a full joint family. Then all of us brothers moved here, and this villa was built last year. So my elder brother asked them to move here, too.” 

The conversation turns to Eid.

Eid was a quiet celebration once. They would just stay home and eat their food, like usual, back in the 1960s. There was no one as such to celebrate with.

But today, their home is overflowing with love and laughter. Khalid’s house hosts grand feasts, with over 200 people. That’s the beauty of Eid: “Everyone just comes, has food and is dressed in the best. The house is filled with plates of dishes, which of course, includes biryani,” he explains.

We wish each other Eid Mubarak, and leave. The passports remain on the table as we left them, still telling the story.