People - 18

A year-old peace process has shown real warmth between people of both countries, made cross-border travel easier and raised hopes of permanent peace. More and more families on both sides are looking for love across the barriers. Under the arrangement, brides and grooms in Pakistan, or Pakistani nationals living elsewhere in the world, can post [...]

The French literary event of the spring promises to be not the tortured musings of some silk-shirted philosopher but the memoirs of this 52-year-old Pakistani who came to France as an illegal immigrant and is now a hero of the Latin Quarter. Akbar travelled through Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Romania and Sweden before disembarking [...]

Vic Ahmed learned how to run a business at the school of hard-knocks: Lahore, Pakistan. The “serial entrepreneur” started his first company right out of college. Born into a family of lawyers, engineers and doctors, Ahmed grew up in a country the size of Texas that is populated with about 140 million people. Ahmed worked [...]

He left his native Pakistan in 1980 for a shot at the American dream. Arriving in California, he picked fruit and vegetables for 11 years. His housing accommodations were provided by the contractor. Traveling across the United States, his next stop was New York City, where he worked construction. Boston was his next stop, where [...]

This is no peacenik’s enthusiasm. Facts speak for themselves. Last month, the Indian high commission issued over 10,000 visas to Pakistanis coming to India. On an average, the Pakistani high commission in New Delhi issues 8,000 visas every month. Over 350 Pakistanis have descended on the city to attend a four-day convention beginning Friday evening [...]

Jimmy Engineer, who has done more than 3,000 paintings and won numerous national and international awards, is also a peace activist. At the peak of the India-Pakistan tensions two years ago, he walked from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to the Indian border with flags of the two rival nations embossed on his shirt, urging people [...]

Also an actor, Tevana is currently on a promotional tour across the South Asian Sub-Continent and the Middle East and the single launched it’s airplay there today, coinciding with Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain’s visit to the region, on City FM 89, Pakistan’s first radio station primarily focused on Western and English music. [...]

Rahman Baba is the Pashtuns’ most revered poet. Pashtun culture has suffered over the past few years with its link to the Taleban and Osama bin Laden. But that image may soon be revised with the efforts of two English teachers, Robert Sampson and Momin Khan Jaja, based in Pakistan’s North-Western Frontier Province. Working tirelessly [...]

The families of Wajahat Ahmed and Tayaba Sharif are from Pakistan, but Tayaba is a young woman reared in a traditional home in Saudi Arabia. In 1997, Wajahat came to Arizona from Karachi, Pakistan, to study electrical engineering at Arizona State University. In the fall of 2002, he traveled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during the [...]

Soon after Saleem Qureshi and Fatima Fasihuddin were married on Valentine’s Day 2003, they realized they had few married couples to hang around with. So that fall, the Manhattan couple started Zariya, a matchmaking service primarily aimed at young professional Muslims who have been raised in the United States. “Zariya” means “source” in Urdu, the [...]