A Global Reach for Garage-Based Newspaper

It is an unlikely center of world affairs, this two-car garage with piles of carefully stacked magazines and books, desks with computers, a drafting table, a washer and dryer in one corner and an old wooden dresser in another.

But from Tokyo to Virginia, Russia to Texas and throughout Southern California, people interested in the politics and culture of their homeland, the Indian subcontinent, turn to Pakistan Today, the newspaper Tashbih Sayyed, 54, and his wife, Fatima, publish out of their garage.

Each Thursday, the newspaper plunges into topics ranging from raucous politics, social scandals and delicate religious debates. Sprinkled throughout are reports on the everyday doings in communities throughout Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, illuminating cultures in corners of the world often skirted by the mainstream press:

* The government in Lahore, Pakistan, cracks down on vendors selling ghee--clear butter that is a cooking staple--at above the controlled price.

* In an act of clan vengeance, two women in Khairpur are gang-raped in retaliation for an assault committed by one of their male relatives, and in a move to keep the public from making itself poorer, the Pakistani government outlaws extravagant wedding feasts.

* Tipped off by neighbors, the police stop a 28-year-old Hindu widow from immolating herself in an ancient ceremony outlawed 100 years ago by British colonialists.

Much of the newspaper also focuses on the critical political issues of the areas such as the alleged corruption of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s government and the constant border skirmishes with India over the Kashmir territory both countries claim.

Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India have been hostile since gaining their independence from Britain 50 years ago, although recently administrations in both countries have talked of peace.

According to the 1990 U.S. census, about 60,000 people from the Indian subcontinent live in Los Angeles and Orange counties, where Pakistan Today has the majority of its readership. The paper has a circulation of about 15,000 and has readers in every state in the U.S. The Sayyeds’ son, Wahaj, does the newspaper’s Web page, and readers around the world e-mail the Sayyeds.

Tashbih Sayyed’s particular goal is to encourage Muslims to examine their politics and culture in the uncensored forum of Pakistan Today. It is the first step toward learning to participate in the American political life, he said.

“Pakistani society is a religious society, and there, news is either seen as anti-Islamic or pro-Islamic,” he said. “Now I’m using this newspaper to try to broaden the horizons of my community.”

Tashbih Sayyed also tries to depict Muslims as politically and religiously moderate to balance new reports of terrorists and extremists.

“If the American people are ignorant about what it really means to be a Muslim, then it’s up to us to show that, practically speaking, being a good American means being a good Muslim,” he said.

The newspaper is not popular with Muslim fundamentalists, Sayyed said, in part because of headlines such as “Islam Is the Best Religion, Muslims Are the Worst Community” above articles criticizing religious intolerance or the lack of women’s rights.

Its appeal is mainly to religious and cultural moderates.

“Mr. Sayyed is respected in the community for trying to show Muslims in a different light in his newspaper,” said Pakistan Today reader Rehman Wagle. Wagle is chairman of the Urdu Cultural Society in Buena Park.

“He creates friendships and harmony and unification, and he has open arms and heart for all the faiths,” Wagle said.

The Pakistani and Indian community in Orange County is largely affluent, well educated and religious, Sayyed said. Many are caught between cultures.

“I am an American,” Sayyed said. “But there is an aroma coming from the monsoons of my childhood that pulls me--it’s like in a cartoon film when they show smoke coming from a hot dog toward the nostrils, dragging the nostrils toward the food.”

In Pakistan, Sayyed was prominent in broadcast news. He helped bring television to Pakistan in 1964 and ultimately became the national controller of current-affairs programming and news. At the peak of his career, he decided to move his wife and three children to the United States, seeking freedom of speech.

“I was already doing very well there; I made more money there than here,” Sayyed said. “But I absolutely had to be able to speak freely--that’s worth more than a successful career.”

With their two sons and a daughter at universities, the Sayyeds devote most of their time to the newspaper. Much of the foreign news comes from wire services, but the Sayyeds also have a network of 18 correspondents in Pakistan, India, England and other countries. The writers are friends and former news colleagues of Sayyed’s.

Fatima Sayyed, an artist whose oil paintings hang in their home, is responsible for layout and paste-up of the English section. She is the newspaper’s managing editor. Tashbih Sayyed, editor in chief, puts together the Urdu section.

Seven days a week they work side by side in the garage, except for Thursdays, when Sayyed supervises delivery of the paper. Since it began publication three years ago, the paper has never missed a deadline or delivery date, Sayyed said.

There was one close call when a critically ill brother-in-law was hospitalized just days before the paper was to publish. It looked as though he might die, and Sayyed panicked, torn between competing obligations. His brother-in-law recovered, and Tashbih Sayyed called a family meeting with all his relatives who live in Southern California.

“I said, ‘Any one of you dies on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, I’m very, very sorry, but I simply won’t be able to be there,’ I told them. ‘So please, try to keep this in mind.’ ”

Sayyed also has left tape-recorded instructions for his family to put out the paper should he die.

“They can mourn me two or three days later,” Sayyed said. “If the paper doesn’t go out, all my work would have been for nothing.”