Ar' Back Yard - Back There and Then... by Anwar Dharma

It’s weird you know! But everything is so close to the release of Ar’ Back Yard (for those of you not familiar to the book soon to be released click on hhtp://www.arbackyard.com/ for more information) that it’s kind of scary..." yet very fuckin’ exciting to say the least.
Since I found out about Ar’ Back Yard being published, it’s pretty safe to say that I have become kind of obsessed with it.

I recently was sent an author’s questionnaire that covered everything.

But I have to say that the great thing about it was that for so long now I have just thought about the book and that’s it. But these were questions about me and the back story behind Ar’ Back Yard.

And even though I knew the back story - it has been the first time that I have had to document it. You see by telling the back story - I am in hindsight also telling my own story.

So to start remembering all those things and to start realising just how tied up and deeply involved I was in that world. You see I had to be really honest with all of it - and at times I just kept thinking - fuck - I really was a horrible little cunt back then.

But you see this is what happened and how things were for me back in the day - this was the truth and this is what formed the basis of Ar’ Back Yard so there was no reason to bullshit.

The only thing I’ll ask you all to remember, is that all of this I’m telling you is and has been for many years now in the past. I have not been part of that world for a very long time now and even though I don’t really have regrets - I do not condone all of what took place.

I only acknowledge that the authenticity of what I wrote was written from the heart and with the knowledge that I was involved within that world at the time.

It would be easy for me to paint a bad picture and say that I came from a poor family and had a bad up bringing that led me down the path I followed. But to be honest that would be complete and utter nonsense.

I was from a good family. By no means, the type of family that gave you anything had you wanted. In fact that was far from the case no matter what certain family members like to believe and it was also probably one of the factors that led me to the criminal underworld that became my family.

Possibly a piss poor excuse I know, but it’s not really the point I’m trying to make. It’s that I always financed myself and anything I wanted to do - usually by any means necessary that I could take full advantage of and make some cash.

I think that I once had a dream of becoming this great artist - well more of a graphic designer to be honest. But that never really panned out and along the way, throughout being heavily into the rise of Hip Hop and the entire culture that surrounded it throughout the early to mid eighties. This was before the whole Madchester scene took off and the clubbing scene arrived in the late eighties. And when this happened everything really kicked off in Manchester.

And from the first moment I experienced the ride (obviously including taking the drug Ecstasy) I was hooked. Not only was I captivated, I was infatuated with it becoming my life - and that it is exactly what it became. Through this period, these days were in my mind some of the greatest and also some of the worst times the city of Manchester ever experienced.

I had cleverly and very quickly started to make moves within the drug industry. It was almost by chance though if I’m truthful about it. I bumped into an old boss of mine who was at the time running a successful club in Warrington. He couldn’t work out why it was that nobody was buying his booze yet appeared to be having such a good time all night.

When I explained it him that the drug they were taking was Ecstasy - well he blatantly asked me if he gave me a thousand pounds what I would give him in return. I took the thousand and gave him his return - and quite simply that’s how it all began.

From there I started to make a name for myself - and even to this day I wasn’t quite sure how - but each week everything grew bigger and greater. And before I knew it I had my own business. Albeit, an illegal one at that.

For Christ sake I had the boss of the club in my pocket. He then went on to hand over both the club… and effectively me also…. to the head of security at the time. I even designed the bloody membership cards and all the artwork that they used for events.

I was membership number, VIP001 and thought I was untouchable. But I was simply young, dumb and way ahead of where should have been at that stage in the game.

And let me tell you something… being at that stage in the game at the young age that I was pissed off more than a few people to say the least. Things were becoming very heated around me with both the characters that I was pissing off and also with the law who were becoming aroused with current activities that were escalating on a week to week basis.

I was running round town selling all different classes of Drugs - from Weed to Ecstasy - to Coke - and from Coke to my personal worst fucking nightmare... Crack.

I was never really a violent person - but all of a sudden I found myself committing horrific violent acts as they became a necessity. And I although it was never something I got off on. It was always an issue within my world. I just kind of became used to having to do those things as terrible as they were.

I was selling everything at both wholesale and retail and I was making so much cash I figured that nothing else mattered. I was gaining a reputation and with a name like Anwar (there was no other Anwar around at the time) I was being remembered by all of those around me.

It was also around this time that my drug intake increased more and more and I never realised how much they were taking control of not only my body, but also my mind. I think since the early days of sniffing glue as a teenager I always loved that intoxication of all substances a little too much.

Fact of the matter was, as I’ve said, I loved drugs. I mean, I loved taking all drugs as long they didn’t involve sticking needles in my arm. I mean I loved clubbing and I loved popping Ecstasy. But Coke and Crack-Cocaine became my real downfalls - but we’ll get to that later.

For as much as I and just about every other fucker at the time loved these so called harmless little pills that were becoming known as the ultimate love drugs - I was involved in the business side as well. And at the end of the day business is business. It was always about making money and nothing else. But the money - the cold hard unaccounted cash also meant more drugs were available whenever I wanted them.

So unlike most people for whom it was merely a recreational hobby for weekends - for the likes of me it was a seven day operation I lived and breathed. I became so caught up in the world and all of violence that was associated with it that it kind of got to a stage where I just thought that that was the normal world people lived in.

But as the years past along with all the battles and fall outs, the decline of what I was involved in began to engulf me. At one stage I had arrest warrants out for me in Manchester, Wilmslow, Macclesfield, Congleton and Warrington. All it would have taken for me to be banged up would have been to be pulled over in a routine check that was the normal thing to happen back then. I’d have been arrested on a number of allegations and conspiracy theories (most true by the way) that they wanted to question me about.

So I fell off the radar again (kind of) and even though I know I was wanted there - I moved back to Macclesfield where I had family and even though I knew I was under investigation I figured it was a few years ago, so figured what the hell eh!

And then that’s when I decided I was going to do something really stupid - not that I thought so at the time.

I moved into town and took over a large percentage of the town’s drug business stepping over everybody’s toes along the way, and very much to everybody’s dismay.

You see I’d lived a different life up until then for a number of years now. And the people in that town knew this and weren’t entirely sure what to make of me. They thought I was now some crazy Mancunian Gangster - and I suppose at least in their minds I was anyway.

I ended up playing on this no end and led them all to believe I was bigger than I was. And you know what? It worked.

But this also proved to be one of my downfalls, and eventually I was arrested on a number of charges from Possession with Intent to Supply all the way through to numerous Firearms charges. All of which after well over a year of finally getting to Crown Court were pretty much thrown out on the basis of - bizarrely - the judge figuring because of my skin colour (I’m not even that dark by the way… but do have both an ethnic background) that I was the victim here and that, I had been in some way targeted by the police because of that.

I mean, who the hell was I to argue with that? I swear to god the judge had a better blag up his sleeve than even I had - and mine was pretty good to say the least.

One thing I forgot to mention here though - and by no means least - is that through this period I also had a daughter named Hannah who would become my only true meaning in life and main ambition to succeed. I got almost out of the business and even got a job in a studio doing design work in textiles. All I wanted was for my daughter to be happy and did everything that was physically and financially possibly to achieve those goals.

Which was achieved for a two year period with me about 50 percent in and out of the game at the same time (you can never really get away from it) and which worked immensely (kind of) until the day her mother and I split.

I am not laying blame at anybodies door here in any way whatsoever here - but this was the defining moment in my life where everything changed.

My head went west and I lost the plot. I went back to all my old ways. I hooked up with everybody from the past and I hit the crack-pipe over a four month period in a way that would have killed most people after a day’s session with the kind of abuse I was self inflicting. Locking myself away with a camping stove and old empty jar of Nescafe with weeklong non-stop cooking and smoking sessions of the lethal drug.

I was on a mission to smoke and get my hands on as much money and as many drugs through any means possible - and then literally lose myself on a one way ticket.

And that’s when the dark side engulfed my world and the death threats arrived in a very real way that brought my world crashing down violently around me. After a period of this violence I knew that I was left with only two options. The first I couldn’t justify (however I knew that these guys after me had already made full justification within their own minds) or two, I had no other option but to get the hell out of dodge.

And that’s exactly what I did. I moved down to London to sort not only my drug problem - but also my head out.

So I suppose when looking back, Ar’ Back Yard was an idea I’d carried with me for a number of years after this period. I had lived through those times - mainly on the wrong side of law (as by now I figure you’ve worked out for yourselves) and within the confines of the criminal underworld that surrounds Manchester.

I had many good - and many bad - times whilst living there and experienced a lot of what happens in the book.

When I say that I experienced everything - I am not saying that in any way shape or form that the book is word for word gospel and that it all went down the way it does in the book. I have used an author’s literary licence to… How should I put this…? Let’s just say I’ve taken certain situations and then I have put them into completely different scenarios, exaggerating how it happens so that there will be no conflicts of interest.

However - You will find references throughout all three books to drug taking of a number of different class drugs and the experiences with those drugs. They are based on very personal experiences through some of my younger years were I was heavily involved with taking drugs myself as by now you all know.

I think that in all fairness I am not one character in the book. However I can relate to three of the characters in a very, very close way. I think I used these three fictional characters as a way to cover different eras and times - feelings and emotions - achievements and complete fuck ups, all at the same time without having to write each story separately for each of those different time periods...

I can't fit anymorte in this article so - To read the full article and more about Ar' back Yard including 5 extracts then please click on http://www.arbackyard.com and go to Blogs and click on Fact of the Matter...