TASNIM LOWE

Tasnim was just a one year old when her father took her wrapped in a blanket, and placed her underneath an apple tree. He’d set a fire in the house behind her, and her mother, her aunt and her grandmother were consumed by the flames.

Her grandfather escaped to raise his granddaughter alone, without his wife, his eldest daughter, or his only other and youngest daughter. Of course Tasnim as a baby had no conception of what had just happened, and practically nothing of her mother to hold on to. All possibilities had dashed through the open roof, only returning as a light veil of ash.

When I meet her, there are tiny red berries on the large tree that hangs above her door, their colour popping into the uneven asphalt pavement like rain drops hammering on a windshield, as I try not to crush fistfuls of them with each step.

Nearly 16 years later, the diaries of her nearly 16 year old mother were given to her by the police, cracked and burnt but still bearing her name. For the first time, Tasnim was in the tangible presence of her mother for the first time since that night many years ago.

Tasnim is the subject of a BBC documentary, starting on BBC1 on Weds 13th November called Why Dad Killed Mum: My Family’s Secret