He was a man already in his nineties when I first met him, too old to walk very much unaccompanied. Whenever we were granted audience with him he’d be sat almost motionless atop a heavily padded sofa. Flawlessly smooth skin, piercingly sharp eyes, and lips pursed intentfully. My master was iridescent.

A poem by Avaes Mohammad.

I was born and raised in Blackburn. Though set in deepest Lancashire, growing up in the city felt like a mini-India or Pakistan at times, divorced from the rest of Britain by place, race and time.