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Footage from the Love Express sound system in Birmingham in 1986, the scene Tanayah's dad was involved inThe Jamaican music scene, once a cultural aside to day-to-day life, took more and more precedence. Tanayah's social group narrowed until it included only the offspring of broken homes and badman fathers, all of which—at that time—centered around dancehall club nights in Birmingham.Things fell apart: his mom chucked him out because of his increasingly wayward behavior, and schooling stopped altogether. He moved in with his dad for a while before his mom, in desperation, sent him to Jamaica to spend time with his grandma. Tanayah was back within six weeks and had decided to change course."When I got back to my mom's I was this humble kid. She can see a change in my attitude and I know not to go home with too much badness," Tanayah tells me. "But in front of my dad and my uncles I'm smoking weed. There's older women sharing my bed. I remember, at one point, being at my dad's and there were some Yardies there and there were four guns just laying on the table. By the time I was 15 I was gone—just deep in that world."
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Tanayah says: "Yemen at the time was where a lot of Muslims were going to learn the religion. It wasn't as it is today. There was a connection there for me, brothers were there to meet me from different countries, from different races, and this became something that just cemented that there was no way I was going back into the criminal lifestyle. I started to learn a bit of Arabic and the cultural aspects of Islam."After four months Tanayah returned to England as a wanted man. Despite being on the run, and suffering two gang-related attempts on his life, Tanayah says he stayed on the straight and narrow through cash-in-hand and agency work, and a strict adherence to Islam. After four years the police caught up with him and, in 2005, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for armed robbery."I was relieved when I did get locked up. The running took its toll," he tells me.§We pull up next to a mosque and Islamic bookshop in a rundown area, with two dead sheep in the trunk. A few men dressed in Muslim robes are hanging around outside. Tanayah starts putting the cut up meat into plastic bags and handing it out to people as a gift, in accordance with tradition.Nine or ten people are now gathered around the car. A guy pulls up in a VW Polo and asks Tanayah what he's selling. Learning the meat is free he happily takes a bag and drives off."I was relieved when I did get locked up. The running took its toll."
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