Michael Taylor-Jones, Gleaner Writer

Hassan Saleem, who flew all the way from Fiji to London, England, to meet Robert Lalah at the Word Power Book Fair in Highbury last weekend, shows off his collection of every Roving with Lalah story ever published. - photo by Robert Lalah

Hassan Saleem loves Roving with Lalah! So much so, that when he heard that Robert Lalah, the writer of the popular Gleaner articles would be appearing at the annual Word Power Book Fair in London last weekend, he got some money together, packed a bag, and with his daughter headed off to England from his home in the South Pacific island of Fiji, several hundred miles from London.

"There is the man! There is the man!" Saleem shouted as he bolted into the conference room at the Arsenal Emirates Stadium in London, the venue of the book fair.

Born in St Mary

"I cannot believe it is you!" he yelled, upon spotting Lalah, who was at the book fair promoting his new book Roving with Lalah - Slices of Everyday Jamaican Life.

Saleem was born in Islington, St Mary, nearly 60 years ago and migrated to London about 15 years later. There, he met a woman from Fiji, fell in love, married her and then moved to the island nation where he has been living ever since.

"I love your stories about Jamaica. They make me feel like I never left home. Every Thursday, the first thing I do is go on the Internet to read Roving with Lalah," Saleem exclaimed.

The excited man said that since migrating, he has returned to Jamaica only once (1985), so he uses Roving with Lalah to get his little piece of home, once a week.

Collection of stories

"It reminds me of what things were like when I was a boy. The stories are so great," he said. And he meant it. Saleem had been holding a white plastic bag the entire time and when he said this, he dipped into the bag and pulled out a large, bound collection of all the Roving with Lalah stories published in The Gleaner since Lalah started writing the stories in October 2005. He printed them from his computer at home and went to the local printery to have them bound and put into a protective jacket.

Understand the dialect

"Look at this! I keep all of them so that I can read them whenever I want. I have every single story that has come out in the paper," Saleem boasted.

Saleem's enthusiasm for the articles has rubbed off on other residents of his Fiji community where he is the only Jamaican. "Because I talk about it so much, everyone wanted to see what it was about, so they started reading it as well. Now it is a race to the computer to see who can get at it first. The people there are slowly getting to understand the language and the dialect. It really is a big thing there," Saleem laughed.