No. 73
Adil Hassan is a London-born actor-writer trained at Guildhall. His tragicomic, absurdist work finds epic scale in the domestic. Of Egyptian-Indonesian heritage, he tells stories from within. He is now making his debut documentary on Egyptian fathers in diaspora.
This is an excerpt from a longer series of oral history interviews by Adil Hassan with his dad and uncle, exploring themes of migration, finding home, and fatherhood. Here he speaks about begging to be added to the printed government list for the UK training trip - and emerging number one at the end. He Quote: “Please, try even put my name just by pencil.”
Transcript
I was working as an agriculture engineer in the local authority, I just stayed in that position for almost a year, and they had to Go to another part of the town, the governorate place, and where is the mayor is. And they just went there by to do something, some work. And I heard that there is some people had to go to UK to learn something, to get some courses, and the government will pay for that. So. And when I hear that, I was very excited. So I asked, Can I see this? Told me, Oh, it's too late. Now. Is late? The list completed. The shows like 30, 73 people. They put in the list there, and they have to choose eight people from the 73 people. And this complete, there's no space for you. And they said it was printed, printed.
The list was printed. Oh, I said, please ask the person who's in charge there. Please, can you put me? I said, No. I said, please try even put my name, just by pencil, it was printed from the computer. I said, just put my name by even by pencil. Just try my chance. So he put my name. I was 73- it was 72 people on the list, and they put my name number 73 on the list. So I was happy. So after that, he has to get, like, some lessons in English and the lesson. Lessons. The teacher who gave us the lessons, she was American. A lady was American. She gave us the course, and she had to examine us and made test. So surprisingly, the they chose eight of us and I was on the top of the list. I didn't believe what happened, how? I was in the bottom, even though I wasn't in the list, and they put my name on the top of the list, I am the number one.