Travelogue – 17 – Immigration to USA
Some realities are observations eye-witnessed while others are the happenings experienced. The prayers in the Holy Qor-aan that my father spoke in the method he believed showed results. The silences of my wife practiced in her own manner bore fruits. But I have experienced event in my life that appeared extraordinarily out of the apparently ordinary situations. Whether or not one is to call those results a miracle is one’s choice but I am a proof that they had occurred.
In September 1975 I flew in NY Kennedy Airport. The Immigration staff gave me 90 days to set up my business and told me that I could apply for an Extension. My brother Majid Ali got me at the Airport and wanted me to stay with him a few days at least. I insisted to keep travelling. One reason was that the Greyhound bus ticket I had bought in London was to travel anywhere in USA for a period of thirty days starting the day I entered US. So the same night I got the bus and continued my journey onward.
Next day I reached my first stop in St Louis, Missouri. Mrs. Sylvia Ahmad got me at the bus. The reason was that from Pakistan I had written 35 letters to people in USA about my move. I got only one reply that was from Dr Bashir Ahmad who tried dissuading me from moving to US. He wrote that I won’t have a chauffeur to drive us around, my wife would have to cook and wash herself and we won’t have amenities as we then had. I wrote back that the road to the market place is all I needed to find. He was at his work when I reached St Louis; so his wife had come for me.
Thursday night I passed in our mosque. Friday prayer at the mosque was attended by Dr Bashir who asked me to accompany him home that day and see his farm the next day. Saturday breakfast was joined by Realtor Clarence who went on to show us farms and houses all day long. At dusk we reached a house that I refused to even see for I knew I could not afford to buy. Back at the farm and the dinner Clarence kept talking until we returned to inspect the house around 11 pm. Back at the farm Clarence still kept on selling the house to me until past midnight he got me sign an offer to buy the house. Sunday he brought back a counter-offer which I accepted. Tuesday he telephoned me that the bank had approved financing.
Credit goes to Dr Bashir that within the very first week of coming to USA I got our house when I had no job, no credit history and no established business. Quality home, distressed seller a widow who had to move, persistent agent who sold for nearly sixteen hours straight, bank ready to finance and a captive audience provided by the host was the ideal set up of several conducive factors that merged to make the sale. It looked like a miracle. This was our house in Rosebud, Mo.
During that week I had AAB Oriental Carpets and Garments registered as a d/b/a. For the next ten weeks I carried the samples of hand-embroidered garments to all kinds of stores. Repeat orders came in from some retailers including a Department Store. My Receipt Book was also my Order Book that showed the Advance Orders and the cash I received for the goods delivered.
Around 20th December I visited St Louis Immigration Office on Market Street. I went to know the procedure for Visa Extension I needed to visit Pakistan to fill the orders I had received. The lady officer asked me what I had done in the 11 weeks I had been in the country and I showed her my Receipt/Order Book. She looked at it and asked me to wait as she went back into an office that perhaps was of her boss. She returned with some papers that I filled. She took the papers and again asked me to wait as she went back. Soon she returned with an Order – not with an Extension but of approval as a Permanent Resident of USA. Surprised I blurred out, “When can I bring my wife and children?” She told me again to wait as she get some more papers. I filled the paper-work right there and gave it to her and she said that I would be notified by mail. In a couple of days I got the letter allowing me to bring my wife and children. This surely looked like a miracle.
A couple of days later on the 1975 Christmas Day I flew to London. I spent two days with my in-laws and then flew to Pakistan. Next day I visited US Consulate to issue visas to my family. Tom Dowling who I believe was the Vice-Consul reviewed the matter and told me I had to supply a Police Clearance. I visited the local Police Station same day and I applied for the Clearance.
For the next four weeks while the shipment of carpets and garments was getting ready I visited the Police Station nearly every day to get the Clearance. Every visit began with a cordial welcome to me by the top brass of the Station and ended with his smiling assurance to me that the Clearance would be issued in a day or two. Seeing my nearly daily visits to the Police Station a young officer one day introduced himself. He was an old friend’s younger brother who had seen me with his older brother when we were in College. I told him my dilemma and he took me to his room. He asked me to wait as he left and in a few minutes returned with the Clearance. He told me that the Clearance was on the desk of his boss ready for his signatures. He had shoved the paper in front of him for signatures while he was giving his usual meaningless smiley lip-service to some other VIP. I believe if my friend’s younger brother was not there, I would still be visiting Police Station daily getting smiles but not the Clearance that would have stayed unfinished on that desk.
I supplied the Clearance to the Consulate. I was told that the forwarding of papers-work to Washington DC, allocation of visas and issuing visas normally took six months. “But I have to fill the orders I obtained in St Louis within four weeks after getting the garments ready” I entreated.
We talked of my experiences in the USA as we sipped tea. A few minutes before closing time Tom suddenly asked if I had 48 Rupees on me. I pulled out a 50-Rupee bill as he pressed bell summoning his assistant. He told his assistant to pick up the bill, buy some dollars and return the remaining 2 rupees to me. The assistant went to do the needful and Tom said with a smirk that I must have thought the 48 Rupees he asked was as the bukhsheesh – the Urdu word for a tip. We had a good laugh. When the bought dollars were brought, Tom clipped them to my paper and told his assistant to immediately forward them to Washington DC in the diplomatic bag.
Next morning we were still asleep when our phone rang. Tom told me that DC had sent overnight the approval to issue visas to my family which I could pick up that day. It was hard to believe that something that ordinarily took six months had happened overnight. The family that needed pulling out of Quotas from 3 countries because of two births in India, one in Pakistan and three in England, the family from a known persecuted group, the family of a Permanent Resident for whom the request for visas had came in the diplomatic bag definitely had that Urgency under the Immigration Law which merited speediest possible processing. This issuance of visas surely looked like a miracle. And we left Pakistan the same week
