In a new home, but fearing for old one

In a nondescript strip mall in Inglewood, the political debate was as heated as the chilies in Arif Malik Awan’s fragrant Pakistani curries. As customers gathered at Awan’s Bilal restaurant, where Pakistani satellite TV piped out religious advice from an Urdu-speaking imam, the talk was of dictators, death and democracy.

Farooq Aziz, a 48-year-old Los Angeles accountant, recently returned from Pakistan, where he said he rallied outside the presidential palace in Islamabad to protest President Pervez Musharraf’s recent political crackdown. Western nations have propped up Musharraf’s dictatorial military rule for too long, he fumed, slowing his homeland’s democratic progress.

Bilal Awan, a 21-year-old Cal State Fullerton student who helps out in his father’s restaurant, said the bigger shock was the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto late last month. His aunt burst into tears, he said, wailing about the irreplaceable loss of a great leader and daughter of Pakistan.

“Whenever a great leader steps up to do something in Pakistan, they aren’t allowed to,” Awan glumly said. “They either get stopped halfway or are killed.”

The South Asian nation’s recent political turmoil has stunned many of Southern California’s Pakistani Americans, sparking passionate and politically diverse exchanges online, in community newspapers and in gathering places like Bilal restaurant. Opinions are sharply divided on whether Bhutto was a heroine or a “mobster,” as one critic put it; whether Musharraf is a dictator or Pakistan’s best hope for progress, as Pakistan Link editor Akhtar Mahmud Faruqui argues.

“I feel he is the best man to take Pakistan out of the present crisis,” Faruqui said of Musharraf, praising what he views as the former general’s honesty and promotion of education, science and technology. “Democracy is needed, of course, but if you want to take care of terrorism, you need a strong man.”

Whatever their political views, many Pakistani Americans said they fear that the political chaos, Musharraf’s crackdown and Bhutto’s assassination have worsened perceptions of a community already under siege from the fallout of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Hasan Shirazi, a Los Angeles banker, said it was bad enough a few years ago, when he went to volunteer in a Compton elementary school classroom and asked the students what they knew about Pakistan. He was startled when one student responded, “That’s where Osama bin Laden is living.”

Bhutto’s assassination has furthered perceptions of Pakistan as an extremist nation, he said. But Pakistani Americans like Shirazi say their homeland is in fact a place of moderation and hospitality, whose people first elected a female leader two decades ago, never gave religious political parties wide support, are crazy about cricket and have embraced American shows like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” dubbed in Urdu.

“The community is under scrutiny now, but I see it as an opportunity to engage with the broader public and share our common values,” Shirazi said during a conversation with fellow members of the Council of Pakistan American Affairs, which aims to promote ties between the U.S. and Pakistan.

Those common values were repeatedly voiced in interviews last week at Pakistani American restaurants, homes and shops and a mosque in the South Bay, where many of the community’s members live. Almost everyone interviewed had a story of being stopped at airports for security checks, hassled at school or work, of facing post-9/11 business slowdowns or being mistaken for an Arab or Mexican.

But they also extolled the kindness of neighbors, the quality of public services and American freedom and democracy -- political values they say they want Pakistan to have.

Hawthorne shopkeepers Arif and Amena Ebrahim, for instance, said their son lost many friends at his Torrance high school after 9/11 and was accused of being linked with a terrorist country. But Arif Ebrahim remains bullish on America, saying he received great healthcare during recent surgeries, public schooling and aid for his disabled daughter and abundant economic opportunities as a cashier, airport security officer and now small-business owner.

The hodgepodge of products in his store includes Islamic art, Pakistani spices, and traditional clothing and jewelry. But it was with the American flag that Ebrahim wanted to be photographed.

“We love America,” said Ebrahim, a Karachi native who came to Los Angeles in 2000 after waiting a decade for a family visa sponsored by his brother. “Anyone can enjoy their life here.”

A 2005 demographic profile by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles paints a picture of California’s Pakistani American community as relatively small, highly educated and solidly middle-class. The study, based on the 2000 Census, found that Californians of Pakistani descent numbered about 28,000, double the population of 1990. Community members say the figure now surpasses 40,000.

The data showed that 56% had undergraduate or graduate degrees, the second-highest rate after Indian Americans among 16 Asian subgroups examined. Nearly half were homeowners, with the median household income about $49,000, on par with the statewide average. Two-thirds were immigrants, with a 46% naturalization rate, and the majority were fluent English speakers.

Manan Ahmed, a University of Chicago doctoral candidate in the history of Islam and South Asia, said the first wave of Pakistani immigrants to the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s were highly educated professionals. His father, an engineer, was among them. The 1980s and early 1990s saw a second group of less educated immigrants -- taxi drivers, restaurant workers and other blue-collar laborers. Many of them settled on the East Coast, gaining entry through programs like the U.S. diversity lottery, which awards visas to nations with relatively low rates of immigration, Ahmed said.

In the mid- to late 1990s, Ahmed said, a surge of immigrants began heading for Silicon Valley to work in high-tech industries.

But the immigrant population has fallen since 9/11, Ahmed said. Some people were deported on immigration violations during the FBI’s special registration of men from Pakistan and other predominantly Muslim nations, he said. Some left on their own. Meanwhile, the U.S. government significantly reduced the number of visas for new entrants from Pakistan.

According to U.S. government data, the number of visas issued to workers and other nonimmigrant temporary visitors from Pakistan declined by more than half, from 89,000 in 2000 to 39,000 in 2006. Student visas also declined by about half, and the Institute of International Education reported this year that the Pakistani student population fell from 8,644 in 2001 to 5,401 in 2006.

The number of immigrant visas issued also dropped, from 10,256 in 2000 to 7,675 in 2006. And Pakistan was deemed ineligible for diversity visas in 2002.

Those who remain, community members said, have encountered their share of difficulties. Hamid Khan, executive director of the Artesia-based South Asian Network, said his community service organization has fielded a sharp rise in complaints of hate crimes and job and housing discrimination since 9/11.

“The Pakistani community is under siege,” he said.

Shahid Raja, a Karachi native and Torrance resident, said his food import business folded after 9/11 because the U.S. government began holding up his shipments of Pakistani spices and other products for months. He became a cab driver instead but, he said, had to endure tirades from passengers and even attacks on his vehicle when they learned he was a Pakistani Muslim.

At Bilal restaurant, owner Awan said his business dropped by half after 9/11 but has since recovered. His son, Bilal, said he and his friends were called “camel heads” and other names at school. He said girls were intimidated from wearing the Islamic headdress and his own mother stopped wearing traditional South Asian clothing. She now wears jeans, he said.

“We had to change our way of life,” Bilal Awan said, adding that he still perceives bias when applying for jobs.

Anam Syed, a 21-year-old UC Riverside student, said the current focus on Pakistan has forced her to “own” her ethnicity as a Pakistan native rather than just a typical college student. That is not a particularly pleasant prospect, she said, given widespread ignorance about Pakistan among some Americans who erroneously believe it is a militant, Arabic-speaking Mideast country.

“Pakistan has always been moderate, so it is difficult to move amongst people whose only concept of Pakistan consists of dictators and terrorists,” she said.

Others say they’ve been blessed by kindness. Whittier resident Suhail Siddiqi said, for instance, that his Jewish neighbor offered to walk with his wife on her daily strolls for protection.

At the Momin Lodge, an Islamic center serving mostly Pakistanis on Artesia Boulevard in Torrance, Imam Hasan ud-Din Hashmi said the broader community has reached out to his congregation. After 9/11, the Torrance police chief came out to assure the community that it would be protected. Christians and Jews pledged their support. And city planners have been cooperative in dealing with the center’s plans to build a $10-million Islamic center with a new mosque, school, library and conference room.

Ajmal Mohammad, a cardiologist and graduate student in health education who attended Momin Lodge’s Friday prayer service, said Southern California has been good to his family compared with his previous home in Kansas, where stares were more common. Here, he said, the cosmopolitan populace, ethnic grocery stores and community centers like Momin Lodge have made life pleasant.

The sense that Pakistan stands at a defining historical moment has energized even young Pakistani Americans into embracing a new curiosity about their homeland, University of Chicago scholar Ahmed said, evidenced by an explosion of Pakistan-related Facebook groups, YouTube videos and other online activity.

“Before 9/11, I was like an average Pakistani living in Pakistan who did not care about Pakistani or international politics,” said Ahmad Bashir, 24, a UCLA graduate who immigrated to the United States five years ago. Today, he said, he follows Pakistani politics “literally day to day.”

Despite the diverse opinions, nearly everyone voiced a common desire for democracy and progress to come to Pakistan, for elections next month to be truly free and fair.

“Pakistan is supposed to be like America, with democracy,” said shopkeeper Ebrahim. “This is my wish.”

--

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

Editorial assistant Shazia Haq contributed to this report.