An honest account of the deadly travails of Pakistani Americans that receive scant notice.( Nasik)
“People think that in America, dollars grow on trees,” Asad once told us at the tavern. “And when you tell them how difficult America is for immigrants, they get offended.”He said he shared his troubles with a cousin in Pakistan, he said: “Yes, you enjoy all the luxuries of the first world in America and try to discourage us. Why? Did I ask you to get me a visa?”
The moon is fragrant. And this fragrance links us to the moon. Don’t you see these little boats, floating in the moonlight? Board them and they will take you to the moon.”
This was Asad, a 30-plus young man called lunatic by most of his friends because of his obsession with the moon. He had a vivid imagination, which became even more vivid in a moonlit night.
“You guys just see the outer surface. If you borrow my vision you can also see the dimensions I do. Touch this counter and you can still feel that warmth of the customer who just left. See, the idea is to feel. Touch. Embrace.”
Today, Asad is in a hospital, struggling for life. A bullet pierced his skull and came out from the other side. The doctors are still trying to determine the damage the bullet might have done to his brain.
He was doing the night shift in a relatively safe area of Northern Virginia when some people broke into the shop, shot him in the head and ran away with the cash.
Before he moved to that 24-hour shop, Asad used to work at another shop in our neighbourhood and often came to the tavern for “gup-shup (a little chat).”
As we gathered tonight to pray for his full and early recovery, we remembered another man known among his Pakistani and American friends as Khan Sahib or Mr Khan.
He was hacked to death outside his pizza shop in a rough Washington neighbourhood two years ago.
Then there was a cabdriver we did not know but attended his funeral prayer when we went to our neighbourhood mosque for the weekly prayers one Friday. He was also shot in the head and died on the spot.
And it was in December 2010, when I received a call from the late film and television actor Jamil Fakhari, asking me to help find his son, Ali Fakhari.
His son went missing in New York in early 2009 and the Pakistan Embassy in Washington had told him that his son was murdered, apparently by carjackers.
Jamil Fakhari refused to believe the embassy. “My son had no feud with any one. Why would someone kill him?” he said to me.
I wanted to explain to him that most immigrant workers are killed because they work in dangerous place and at odd hours. But I could not say this to him. I did not want to break his heart.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1058068/dollars-do-not-grow-on-trees-deaths-murders-and-suicides