Brothers in Trouble

Amir is an illegal Pakistani immigrant smuggled into England in the 1960s to work to send money to his family and perhaps even bring them over with him A skilled laborer he is forced to do unskilled work like shoveling sheep dung and processing wool He lives in a boarding house with nearly a dozen other men under the supervision of Hussein Shah He befriends a young student Sakib who dreams of being a writer Their existence is punctuated by secret movies a visiting prostitute fear of detection and deportation and the gangsterlike smuggler who comes by for his take every week The household is shaken up by the arrival of a white girl Shahs girlfriend and the sense of femininity and family she brings