Just outside the Ahmed Oomerbhoy Memon Colony in crowded Jogeshwari is a frayed sign that says rickshaws meant for schoolchildren are “not allowed to enter.” Pretty finicky, and private, exactly like you would expect the Halai Memons, a traditional trading Muslim community originally from Gujarat to be. But tonight is very different. Broadcast vans are getting ready to beam images, and boys, girls, old men, women have all turned up outside their homes, under the colony lights, eager to share every thought and their anxiety. About “our boys,” they say, who were offloaded, detained by the Dutch and then freed after they were thought to be a source of possible trouble. Says Zafar Kulsawala, a perfume-wholesaler in South Mumbai, and the brother of one of the 12 detained passengers, 32-year-old Ayub Abdul Qadir Kulsawala: “My brother had just gone for a garment fair organised in Trinidad . How can they detain him? He was just a garment trader, and used to periodically travel to fairs in Port-au-Spain, Trinidad and Mauritius.” “A frequent flyer to Mauritius, at least for the past six years, Ayub doesn’t even have a beard”, adds Lubna, his schoolteacher sister-in-law, the enterprising one who decided to ring and call TV cameras over. “We have nothing to hide,” she says as she shows the paperwork that went into securing Ayub’s visa, and that of his four friends, all of whom work under the banner, Seasons Overseas.Another of his associates, 32-year-old Yusuf Haji Ghaffar Memon was also going to the Garment Fair organised as part of “Festival of India” by a company in Trinidad, V-J Star Trading Limited, from July 20 to July 31 and then in another city from August 4 to August 13. The young men, all garment dealers had got together and were travelling in a group, and were so homesick, according to Yusuf’s wife, Haseena, that “for a month-long tour abroad, they had taken two cooks along”. Haseena and Ayub’s mother Bilkees Bano actually spent a minute or so wondering how the cooks must be dealing with the Dutch Police: “How must those poor cooks be coping?” Bilkees Bano and her daughter-in-law agree that the men must have been doing some “hansi - mazaak” (cracked jokes) on the plane which may have aroused suspicion. But, she hastens to add, “they are very seedha sadha, nek and namazi boys”. Ayub’s wife Saba says her husband had taken her on vacation to London last year where her sister lives en route to a garment fair. “He is very straight and quiet when with me, but I suppose with his friends, you know how men are,” she adds with a smile, “I saw the huge alert there was in London when we went last year, I am sure they should take all the right security measures, but why not at least tell the families what is going on? We don’t know what to tell the young children about their dads.” The families seemed most upset about the fact that there was nothing official about it. No communication from either the airlines, the authorities, the embassy, or any kind of official word about what was going on. “The TV has been the only source of information for us so far. We will see if they return tomorrow and after that think of what to do,” said detained passenger Ayub’s younger brother, Yakub Kulsawala, the Chief Accounts Officer at one of the hippest stores for men’s evening wear in Juhu, The Millionaire Shop. Like the Memons and the Kulsawalas, the Batliwalas were glued to the TV, too. For Mohammed Batliwala, 43, a garment export dealer, was also one of the detained. He was on his way back to Mumbai after attending the garment trade fair. “Bahut tension ho raha hai TV dekh kar,” (I’m really tense watching television),’’ says Shabana Batliwala, 42, who has been crying ever since she heard of her husband’s arrest.At the Batliwalas’ upper-middle class residence at Diamond Housing Society, Jogeshwari, relatives gathered to comfort Shabana and 17-year-old son Habib. A Commerce student from Ritambara College, Habib, said his father had been running his garment export business for the last 15 years along with brother Mohammed Ishq. “My father last spoke to my mother for a minute before he boarded the flight and said he would return home in the night,’’ he says. Which is what Bilkees heard her son Yusuf say too. “The last thing I heard was him on the phone from Holland, it was a perfect ten o’clock then, he said—I am boarding the plane, budhwar ko insha allah ghar hunga.” (By Wednesday, God willing, I will be home.)
