To and From Pakistan, With Love

When M. Faiz Rehman came to the United States from Karachi, Pakistan, in 1985, he found it hard to get news from home by reading American newspapers.

“You couldn’t just click on to the Internet as easily as you can today and get news,” said Rehman, who publishes out of Cypress.

“There was no other source for me to find out what was happening in Pakistan.” So, Rehman bought a Macintosh and, with the help of a few friends, published the first issue of PakistanLink from his West Los Angeles home in 1992.

The first issue carried news of the Persian Gulf War and the ouster of then Pakistani Prime Minister Ben Azir Bhutto by Pakistani President Ghulan Ishaq Khan. The latest issue carried news of the overthrow of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Rehman said PakistanLink now has a circulation of more than 35,000.

He said the newspaper’s goal is to bridge the gap between the Pakistani community in the United States and Canada with that in Pakistan with news about Pakistani political, economic and religious activities.

“There’s a lot of important international news happening that you can’t find in most daily U.S. newspapers,” Rehman said. “News that I’m sure American readers would find just as interesting.”

The 11 PakistanLink staff writers and correspondents know the importance of informing the American public, but think the newspaper’s main purpose should be to speak to the more than 1 million Pakistani immigrants living in America.

PakistanLink assistant editor Akhdar Faruqui recently immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan and said he is amazed at the support PakistanLink gets from the Pakistani community.

Half the newspaper is devoted to poetry and literature and is written in Urdu, a language that combines Turkish, Arabic and English.

Rehman feels this section of the paper is important because most Pakistanis in the U.S. are first-generation immigrants or elderly Pakistanis who do not read English.

“This is our job, to educate our friends in the community, and this paper gives us a chance to do just that,” Rehman said.

Andre Briscoe can be reached at (714) 966-5848