Ice-cream Charlie, the Muslim ice cream vendor

Imagine the sounds of early 20th-century Christchurch, maybe the clip-clop of a horse or the whir of a bicycle. Right here, outside the Bank of New Zealand, Sali Mahomet, or "Ice-cream Charlie" as he was known, sold his ice cream from a cart. He operated in the first half of the 20th century, a time when central Christchurch had many one-person businesses whose owners became local characters. What made Sali stand out was that he was a dark-skinned Muslim from Asia in a city that was otherwise overwhelmingly European and Christian.

Little is known about Sali's origins. Family tradition says he was born Mohammed Khan around 1866. There are tales of a childhood in a Russian city called Ashkhabad, with his clan being harassed by Cossacks and the female members dying from exposure. But on his marriage certificate, Sali listed his birthplace as Ceylon, and he also said he was Punjabi. He might have claimed to be born within the British Empire since New Zealand was proud to be part of it. His mother may have been named Addul or Adil, and his father, Sultan, was a hawker, as was his grandfather, Razzak.

Sali and his father left Asia and traveled through Australia, arriving in New Zealand around 1894. Here, "Saleh" became "Sali." They used Dunedin as a base and hawked household wares on horseback across Otago, Canterbury, and Westland. Sali had a riding accident that left him with a limp, which he minimized by having one shoe built up. This might have led him to seek a less demanding job.

Around 1903, Sali decided to become an ice-cream seller in Christchurch. He had a cart built, painted white and bright red with decorative gold patterns. He bought a recipe and sold his ice cream from this spot. Later in his career, he moved around the corner to Hereford Street. He first rented a place in Brightlings Lane, a working-class blind street that intersected Oxford Terrace, between Willow and Hurley Streets. His father, Sultan, died of a stroke there on December 15, 1905, probably while preparing for Sali's wedding.

On January 5, 1906, Sali married 19-year-old Florence Henrietta Johnstone at the Registrar's Office. He claimed to be 27, though he was about 40, to make their ages seem closer. They had four daughters. As children, they had features common to Eurasian children, and as adults, their dark complexions were seen as notable beauties in Christchurch. Sali named his children with names like Rahona, a flower and an Islamic word for basil; Rupee, after the currency of Imperial India; and Tulah, which is Hindi for "weighing scale," but Sali pronounced it "Tilla" and said she was named after a mosque in Samarkand that means "golden." One pupil at St Albans School even envied Tulah her "romantic" name. The fourth daughter, Florence, was named after her mother.

By 1907, the ice cream business was so successful that Sali bought land at 69 Caledonian Road and built a kauri house with a bay window, decorative woodwork, and ornate rose patterns on the ceiling. He even had electricity extended to a large wooden outhouse, his "dairy," where he made ice cream with great cleanliness. Horse and cart, and later a truck, brought 100-pound blocks of ice from the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company. He packed slabs around his product in the dairy and broke up ice with a mallet to keep it cool while transporting it to the Square. A young neighbor used to catch the horse that pulled Sali’s cart