The real drama off the field

"I hope Pakistan wins but I'll happily hold up the Indian flag as well, we can do it in Birmingham," says Zaheer a Pakistani brought up in England.

It's very quiet in Alum Rock. It's the middle of the day and the area is "deceptively sleepy" according to my taxi driver Faizal, who's lived in Birmingham for 25 years. Faizal, who's originally from Mirpur in PoK or Azad Kashmir, depending on what you want to call it, speaks with an authority that only English cabbies can have.

“Alum Rock,” he says, "is Birmingham's answer to the Wild West. All the violence in town begins here. This is where you'll find the gangs and the drug dealers and where the kids in cars blasting rap music, who've never read the Quran or understood the tenets of Islam, give the community a bad name. They decide something is un-Islamic and mark it with often violent protests. They shut off the streets and the police wisely don't enter."

The route we take through Birmingham to the Alum Rock district by Spark Hill and Small Heath is pocketed by shops like Shamish Braiding Saloon, Latif hairdressers, Ruposhi and Shamoli sarees, the Islamic Clothing and Perfume shop, various Halal meat shops — it's a whole world of contradictions. There's a Guru Nanak Gurdwara on the way, a Jami Masjid, a mosque run by Bangladeshis and even a Bangladeshi Women's Employment Resource Centre.

As we finally enter the famed Alum Rock, there's one startling difference among this and other areas. There's not a single white face to be seen anywhere. "Yes, whites don't come here," says Faizal. "Nothing will probably happen, but they won't take the chance. Even most of us avoid the area in the night. Gangs rule."

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