http://ncpaa.org/

Your timely help can save lives!

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has issued a drought alert for Pakistan where the provinces of Balochistan and Sindh have been severely devastated.  In a letter to the Pakistani organizations, Pakistan’s ambassador, Maleeha Lodhi, stated that an estimated $100 million is required to meet the needs of Balochistan and Sind to overcome the current crisis.

Pakistanis in the USA have been responding generously to the “Drought Relief Fund” for Balochistan and Sind. Dr. Naveed Iqbal has been actively raising funds, reports that school age children amongst the hard working people are the ones, who are sending money to help the people. A Pakistani living in Kentucky sent in $100,000 towards the Relief Fund and another contributed $500. It was suggested that the money be sent through the Edhi Foundation, an NGO registered in the United States. Any contribution made to Edhi is tax exempt.

What is the Triangle waiting for and when are we going to help the needy in Pakistan?  Can we feel the hunger and pain of our brethren in Balochistan and Sindh? If the Pakistani community in the Triangle cannot raise money collectively, then we need to contribute on an individual level. Lets skip a meal and forego our cravings for Breyers and Haagan Daz ice creams, Godiva chocolates, pizza supremes and crates of mangoes. Send a check (tax deductible) to Edhi Foundation in New York at:

               Edhi Foundation, USA
               42-07 National Street, Corona, NY 11368
               Tel: 718-639-5120

Please write Pak-American Drought Fund on the memo line of your check. Your timely donations CAN save precious lives!

The seventh Mehfil-e-Hamd-o-Naat organized by the Pakistani-American Association will be held on Friday June 16^th at Cary Bond Park Community Center, High House Road from 8 p.m. till 11:30 p.m. Volunteers are needed for Milad, Naat and Qawalli. Admission is FREE and refreshments will be provided. For more information, please contact:

Saeed Ahmed  ------- 919-469-0347
Mujahid Hussain ---- 919-846-0811
Ahsen Salim --------- 919-319-6345
Naima Khan ---------919-678-0909

The legendary Urdu poet Ahmed Faraz is visiting the Triangle area in the month of July. Faraz is one of the great poet of this era. One of the most famous ghazals of all times “ranjish hi sahi” is written by him. SHAM-e-FARAZ, an evening in his honor is being arranged by Urdu Majlis to meet and hear him recite his poetry at the Cary Community Center on July 7, 2000 at 7.30 p.m. Please mark your calendars. For more information, please contact:

Javed Quraishi: 919-932-5986
Jafar Abbas:     919-844-2136
Syed Arif:         919-361-5989
Hassan Imam:  919-469-4626
Seema Faruqi:  919-596-4792

Faiza and Abid Hussain of Durham, NC finally became parents. Their daughter Iqra was born on May 24, 2000 at Durham Regional Hospital. Iqra is their first child.

A monthly seminar by Urdu Majlis was held on May 13, 2000 at Caldwell Hall of NCSU. The Urdu scholar under discussion for the May Urdu Majlis, was Hamid Hasan Qadiri (1887-1964). He was born in a distinguished family of Bachhraon. He was one of the greatest Urdu scholars of his times and the author of more that thirty books including the classical: Dastaan-e-tarikh-e-Urdu. The discussion turned out to be rich and informative. It began with scholarly papers on Hamid Hasan Qadiri’s life, philosophy and poetry presented by Nauman Faridi, Seema Faruqi, Asma Khan, Sarfaraz-ul-Haq and John Caldwell.

A sumptuous dinner followed the next session in which the melodious voices of Shahzad Riaz and Saima Ali captivated and enthralled the audience by their singing of ghazals.

Syed Arif read an article Safar hai shart that he had written some time ago. This travelogue from Karachi to Miami was well written and liked by everyone in the audience. The evening culminated with a sense of appreciation for the great Urdu scholar from Bachhraon.

On April 22^nd Fareeha Sufder, an 11^th grade student at Millbrook High participated in a pageant organized by the Miss National Teenager Scholarship Foundation of South.  This foundation awards four college scholarships including one for studies in business. There were 99 teenagers from all over North Carolina with Fareeha as the only person representing Lahore, Pakistan.  The pageant commenced as the contestants walked on the stage, introduced themselves to the audience and shared their goals in life. The pageant concluded as the winners were announced and the New Queen was crowned. Fareeha found the pageant to be not only fun but also full of good experience. She met a lot of people and made new friends. Fareeha plans to study medicine after completing her college.

Sana Ansari graduated from Jordan High School, Durham in May 2000. She plans to pursue a business career. Sophia Hussain also graduated this month from Riverside High School in Durham. She will be going to UNC at Chapel Hill this fall and plans to study medicine. Payamber Staff wishes both of them well in their educational endeavors.

Your husband or wife is a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident (he or she has U.S. citizenship or a green card). Your spousal petition has been processed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), you made it through your interview, and you got your passport stamped and even received your green card. So now you are a lawful permanent resident, right?  Well, maybe.

Some aliens who become permanent residents based on a marriage to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident alien must meet additional requirements before becoming full permanent residents. Their permanent residency is conditional. Generally, these are aliens who seek permanent residence as an immediate relative based on a marriage to a U.S. citizen, or who seek permanent residence in the Second Preference category as the spouse of another permanent resident alien, and who were married to the petitioning spouse within two years prior to the grant of permanent residence.

Once these aliens become permanent residents, they have full permanent residency in most respects, but with some important differences. They can work in the U.S.; they can travel freely in and out of the U.S. with their alien registration receipt cards (green cards) just like other permanent residents. And the time they spend as “conditional” permanent residents may count toward the residence and physical presence requirements for naturalization as a U.S. citizen.

But these aliens who have “conditional” permanent residence can have their residence terminated within two years of the grant of residence if any of a number of events occur. These events which may bring about the loss of residence include the termination of the marriage or the determination by the INS that the marriage was entered into for the purpose of procuring the alien’s entry as an immigrant.

Also, the alien must file an application to remove the conditional status of his or her permanent residence in the 90-day period preceding the two-year anniversary of the granting of that residence.  This application has specific procedures that must be followed precisely, or else the permanent residence will be terminated. The process of removing the conditional aspect of an alien’s status is complex and is outside the scope of this article.

So, if you think you may be subject to the conditional residency requirements discussed above, be sure to mark your calendar and be certain to meet all of the requirements imposed by the INS for removal of the conditional status within the time allowed, or your status may be terminated.

By Robert B. Spiro, Attorney, Bashyam & Spiro, LLP, concentrating exclusively in matters involving Immigration and Nationality Law, (919) 833-0840.

Outside the small village of Ali Raza Abad near Lahore, stands a dusty plot of land with a few tents made out of rags. There are children and dogs running about, young girls with their noses pierced on both sides of the nostrils sitting together and sun burnt men lying down on charpoys. These people are the gypsies often talked about as the wandering exotic people. They are nomadic and do not settle down at any one place. They speak different languages and practice different religions and customs. They have always been distinguished from other people on the basis of their looks, their lifestyle, their language and their pets.

In Pakistan, the gypsies are known as Odhs, Pukhiwaas and Khanabadosh. The gypsies are fiercely proud people who are Muslims belonging to the Rajput clan. They trace their forced migration from Ferozpur, India, to the time of Mughal Emperor Akbar and his fight with a Dullah Bhatti who belonged to the gypsy tribe. They recall tales their elders have been reciting about the bravery of their hero Dullah Bhatti and how he fought against the powerful and mighty Akbar. The gypsies, however, lost the fight and were driven out. Their predecessors used to tell accounts of the many days and nights they spent hiding in forests from the Mughal army, protecting their women, children and cattle.

The gypsies used to be cattle grazers when the open unclaimed land were plenty and they could let their animals loose and were not bothered by anyone. Now there is no longer a piece of land where they are allowed to stay for free. The owner is either too suspicious of them or does not want his land to become barren from repeated grazing by the cattle. As a result, the Odhs no longer want to move around as they did when they were cattle farmers.  Now they want to settle down and have regular employment but cannot afford to do so.

The Odhs realize that education is the key to becoming socially acceptable but, again, cannot afford to obtain education. Due to the high level of unemployment in Pakistan, some are now becoming more educated but they often end up following the footsteps of their elders and work as underpaid construction workers and laborers. The women also do mostly construction work. They would like to educate their daughters too but where they live, there is no school nearby and they know that since they would have to move away eventually, there would be no point in even sending the girls to school.

The Odhs of Hanjarwal strongly believe in the elder’s decision for marriages, which are celebrated with unique songs and dances. The gypsies in the Czech Republic or Spain do not have anything in Common with those in Pakistan except for the Romani language, which has evolved since the original one spoken in India but continues to follow a particular dialect and style. In Pakistan, it is known as the Odhki language. From Punjab to the inner Sindh, from the depths of the Frontier and the vast plains of Balochistan, every gypsy man, woman and child speaks one language, the Odhki.  The words of the Odhki are very unique, quite dissimilar to any language in the area of Punjab. Words like kalkeesna for man, kalkeesni for woman, taari for food, pakhi for house, khutt for bed and tokun for a dog are not found in any of the other fourteen languages of the country.

The Odhs are an unconventional people and perhaps this is one of the reasons why they get victimized in every country. In Pakistan, too, they are not even counted as real people and not treated as the real citizens of the country. The gypsies have no way of expressing their lamentations and do not have a representative to reach the government. They are ready to settle down but they have no land, they would like to educate their children but have no money; they have no way of conveying their demands because even though persecutions of gypsies have stopped, the discrimination still exists.

They are polite and are proud of their community and their race, their lifestyle and their people. Maybe they are so open and honest because they have nothing to hide no secrets, no shady deals and no dishonesties. They deserve representation and they deserve respect.

Thus, the gypsies have come a long way in many aspects of living. They used to be Wanderers, with huge fierce guard dogs and were ill reputed as being thieves and baby snatchers. Now they are a peace-loving community.

Abida Parveen is Pakistan’s greatest female singing star, a powerful vocalist who has made her mark in a number of styles. Born in 1957 in Larkana, Pakistan, Abida Parveen has been performing for twenty years. Her initial vocal training came from her father, Ustad Ghulam Haider. Later, Ustad Salamat Ali Khan of Sham Chorassi Gharana taught her. She was performing in 1977 with Radio Pakistan, in Hyderabad. She was then a featured performer on Pakistani Television and began public radio concerts at about the same time.

Abida Parveen has evolved a unique; versatile style which blends elements of classical and folk music. Much of her music is rooted in Sufi spiritual tradition and she has recorded qawwali music and related styles, as popularized internationally by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

She has attained immense popularity as a singer of ghazals – the romantic, poetic, and traditional style. The centuries old ghazal blends poetry and music in a sublime expression of love both romantic and spiritual. The results are nothing less than mesmerizing. Abida Parveen’s three-octave range and heart rendering expressiveness has led at least one critic to call her “the Um Kalthoum of Pakistan”. She is indeed one of the world’s greatest singers. She has twenty albums to her credit.

The first ever Pakistani North American Film Festival will take place July 15, 2000, in Atlanta, Georgia.  SAYA, a society of Pakistani North American young adults ages 18 - 29, is affiliated with APPNA.  SAYA is holding the film festival and a Pakistani fashion show event as part of its annual convention, scheduled at the Atlanta Hilton and Towers from July 13-16.

The audience is expected to be more than 500 strong based on Saturday afternoon SAYA fashion show attendance in the past years. The film festival will showcase work by Pakistani American and Canadian filmmakers as well as films, including Pakistani related themes and characters. It will highlight aspects of the Pakistani experience in North America. For more information, contact: Murad Toor, SAYA president: sayaemail@aol.com SAYA website: http://www.saya.net

ISLAMABAD, May 17: Nazir Sabir, 45, became the first Pakistani to reach the summit of Mount Everest from Nepalese side. He unfolded the Pakistan flag on the world’s highest peak. Sabir and his teammate, Benjamin Webster, 38, a photo- journalist from North York in Canada, reached the summit of the 8,848-metre (29,000-feet) mountain, accompanied by four Nepalese high altitude mountain guides who have already climbed the 8,848-meter peak. Nazir Sabir started hard-night-long ascent on Tuesday at 10pm and reached the top at 7.31am Nepal time on Wednesday. This was Sabir’s second attempt on mount Everest. In 1997, he had made his first try from the Chinese side as leader of Pakistan's golden jubilee expedition, but was driven back by blizzards a few hundred meters short of the summit. With this outstanding feat, Sabir, born in 1955 at Raminj, a remote village of upper Gojal-Hunza, in Gilgit district, has scaled five of the world's 14 high peaks of 8,000m.

Now you can buy airlines tickets for your next trip to Pakistan from Z & Z International Travel in Cary. This new travel agency has been in existence since January 2000 and is operated by Riaz Khan and his wife Fouzia from their home in Cary. Z&Z International Travel provides guaranteed seats on all major international airlines at the lowest rates. The tickets can be delivered overnight to your door. Riaz and Fouzia have been residing in the area since 1991 and are members of Pakistani-American Association. For all your international travel needs, do call Z & Z International Travel at 919-319-3586.

SAMIR showing off his new Pakistani dress to his parents: Rakhshi and Kamran in Greenville, NC.

It is interesting to note that the Urdu language is making waves in the USA where it has not yet been forgotten. Certain libraries in Queens, New York - probably the most ethnically diverse Borough in America - have the Khawateen Digest, Deputy Nazeer Ahmed kay afsaney and Chand Girhan an immensely popular Pakistani television serial. The vast collection of Urdu books is part of The Namast-e-Adaab collection that comprises material in Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati. You can Pick a local Urdu weekly from any Indian grocery store where young girls roam about in Shaloos making sections of New York City look like Tariq Road. The Urdu language now has a prominent web presence. You can enjoy Faiz and Miraji on the website carrying Urdu text. This sixteenth century Arabic-Turkish-Persian polyglot has lent words to urban America such as halal, ramadaan, mehndi and kala.

An American girl of Pakistani origin is surfing on the Net for a particular website in the county library in Queens, NYC, but is stumped. Her mother, whose head is covered with a dupatta, is wearing a roughly ironed kurta shalwar as she looks towards me hopefully. She nudges the daughter "Jao us say pucho." With hesitant steps and a reluctant expression, she ventures to ask, "Could you help me?" Every feature in her tanned face, her Bata shoes, her modestly long frock and tung pyjama screams out Pakistani. Here lies the dilemma. Talking to a fellow Pakistani she uses English. Iqbal Zaidi, a freelance writer for Californian newspapers calls this a deep-rooted inferiority complex. He moved to the USA three years ago. His seven-year-old daughter can speak Urdu because, he explains, "we did not reply if she spoke to us in English.'

Says Iqbal Zaidi, "Most of the Pakistani immigrants were semi-literate and felt it was heavenly when their child could speak in English, the language of the Pakistani elite."  Professor Shaheen Parveen who teaches Urdu at Columbia University is of the opinion that this is connected with a low level of literacy among Pakistani women. She says,  "women of Muslim India and Pakistani women are family oriented, preferring Bollywood movies or Urdu digests." And what of Urdu's fate? She replies: "They could preserve this language if they wanted to do so." Indeed of her forty-five students, only two are Pakistanis. This figure leaves a lot to be desired.

 "Urdu is being destroyed by Pakistani immigrants," snorts Mrs. Qamar Jaffery, the senior librarian at the Glen Oaks library. In 1990, there were 100,000 Pakistani Americans of whom half spoke Punjabi and only 30 per cent spoke Urdu. The figure has probably trebled in number as the bulk of immigrants fled from violence stricken Karachi. Mrs. Qamar knows the entire local community by name. She runs the Namast-e-Adaab program that Comprise books, videos and CDs in South Asian languages like Bengali, Gujrati, Hindi and Urdu at Queens' libraries. Library budgets reflect the ethnic distribution of the neighborhood. Glen Oaks is bursting with desis, thus Mrs. Qamar buys Akhbar-i-Jehan, Shah Rukh Khan movies and PTV plays.

Books, newspapers and journals are all readily accessible but there is a limited readership. Says Qamar Jaffery; "They issue Urdu books but far less in number when in comparison to Indian films. Children read less." She blames the parents who, she says, must teach the language at home if they want their children to integrate into the community. Most immigrants kept their language alive by teaching kids at home. Korean, Chinese and Hebrew are prime examples. But local Pakistani families are caught up in working hard and earning a livelihood. By the time they are financially secure, their children have reached their teens and have assimilated in mainstream America.

As Urdu is accredited at the official level, it can be used to fulfil a language requirement in a college curriculum. Columbia University, Berkeley College in California, Wisconsin and Chicago teach three-year courses that combine Hindi and Urdu. Frances Pritchett, the foremost Urdu specialist in Columbia reels the names of the colleges while I look at a painting of Ghalib in her room. Dressed in a topi and achkan, Ghalib appears as faded as his language. A familiar figure in New York mushairas, her Urdu vocabulary puts mine to shame.

Frances says, "I have yet to see a Pakistani family where parents know more English than the children." She sees Urdu's decline in America as a symptom. The problem is at the source. "Urdu is declining in Pakistan." In Pakistan, the stakes are high; Urdu must fight Punjabi for the status of a qaumi zaban, the national budget, the advertising revenues, and the prestige. She sees the spread of English medium schools that set aside Urdu as another reason. Attending such schools means opening the door to a brighter future in Pakistan.

Frances calls Urdu a luxury language, for those with fee paying ability. "The prevalent level of the language is enough to understand a Hindi movie, but not to enjoy a musahaira or write letters." As a last resort, she believes that Urdu can be taught like Arabic in Pakistan - with a tutor teaching children at home.

Urdu has a tiny commercial base. Most of Shaheen's students want to work in development projects in the United Nations. Other appointments in larger cities where Pakistanis are employed in large numbers are at immigration offices, airport security desks and county libraries. On the more positive side, one finds that there is an abundance of Urdu weeklies as the popular Urdu Times and Pakistan Post published simultaneously from urban American cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. They are usually a one-man affair; the publisher is the editor, owner, financier and distributor. But the paper has no employing power. It's free and the cost is met by ads. Its content is mediocre - news, snippets from Bombay and nazms by homesick poets.

UrduWeb was launched in 1997. Its homepage says that the aim is to record all past and present Urdu literature and offers email in Urdu as well. It has links to Urdu text tools that enable translations, dictionaries and other fonts. UrduWeb is for 'Urdu savers' who Want to study the language. Maybe, at this point in time Urdu needs the Internet to survive out of Pakistan.

 Mrs. Qamar Jaffery is of the opinion that as long as the immigrants keep arriving Urdu will survive in America. Iqbal Zaidi has a gloomier view; he gives it no more than 50 years. He attributes his gloomy prediction to the spread of English in Pakistan. Frances Pritchett thinks Urdu will survive only as a passive language.

Ahsen Salim, son of a Pakistani diplomat, was born in Basra, Iraq and grew up in China, and Pakistan. He studied in England and now lives in Cary, NC. After graduating from University of London in Electrical Engineering, he started his career with Multitone, an electric radio paging equipment-manufacturing company. He then worked for Plessey, on microprocessors, and Babcock on process control before moving to the Connecticut, USA. Then came Gould, where he worked on programmable logic controllers and micro code and finally, IBM.

He does not claim to invent the Internet (like others) but he came very close to it. He was working on the upgrade of the Internet backbone from an unmarked building for IBM and NSF on a project that was then top secret and which became the most important infrastructure for the twenty-first century. He had one of the seven nodes in his office. There are now hundreds of nodes around the world. They carry the backbone for the Internet. Ahsen Salim visited NC while working for the IBM. He liked the area and moved to the IBM facility in the Park in 1993.

By this time he had started ADTI as a consulting firm and did some custom programming. Web hosting wasn’t on anyone’s mind then. It was then he realized the importance of this tool and envisioned the Internet boom and jumped on the bandwagon. ADTI officially started web hosting in 1994. He was still working after hours from his basement. He rented an office in 1996 and just like other successful businessmen; he left IBM.

Currently, ADTI hosts 1500 websites and over 3500 email clients. BorrowOrRob.com and Riverdance.com are very well known European companies and both are hosted by ADTI.

ADTI is located in Research Triangle Park. More information on the company is available from http://www.localweb.com. Ahsen Salim lives in Cary, NC with his wife Sumaira and 14-month-old daughter Aamna. They are very active with Pakistani-American Association and volunteer their time with it. Sumaira writes Urdu poetry. Both Ahsen and Sumaira enjoy Urdu literature and very loyally participate and attend the monthly literary meetings of Urdu Majlis.

KARACHI, May 4: Pakistani firm, NetSol International, Inc has announced that it is acquiring SuperNet AG, a German Internet Service provider, in a $20 million all-stock deal. A press release said that under the terms of the definitive agreement, NetSol International would acquire all of SuperNet AG’s issued and outstanding stock in exchange for 425,600 shares of NetSol’s restricted common stock. SuperNet AG provides high quality Internet access nationwide in Germany and manages online communities, services and delivers e-business solutions.  Last week it has announced of launching nationwide Internet services in Pakistan through its wholly owned subsidy eReady. With the brand name of NetSolCONNECT's. eReady plans to commence its  operation in Karachi from June 2000. (Dawn News Service)

ISLAMABAD, April 4: International Telecommunication LTD of the United States will invest $80 million for the promotion of information technology (IT). US Charge d' Affaires, Michele Sison speaking at a seminar here Tuesday said that the company would invest $80 million in Pakistan to help promote IT development. An American investor’s delegation will soon visit Pakistan, to initiate a new chapter of cooperation between the two countries, she added.

Minister for Science and Technology, Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman has welcomed the US firm's decision. The experience of Americans will be fully utilized for the promotion of science and technology in Pakistan, to meet modern challenges, he added.

The government was committed to equip the new generation with modern scientific and technical education, to enable them meet the new challenges, he said. The government is taking concrete steps to actively promote science and technology, both in the rural and urban areas, to ensure prosperity in every development sectors, the minister observed.