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Index of Stories
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| Pakistanis
leave their native land to find Lodi
As a young boy growing up in the village of Attock, Pakistan, Johnny Khan heard of a magical land far way: America. His boyhood village, next to the mighty Indus River and not far from to the fabled Khyber Pass, offered a life of simple subsistence farming. Families lived on small parcels, raising wheat and corn and goats.
Khan wanted more. He came to America in 1939 and eventually settled in Lodi, where he was one of perhaps only a dozen Pakistan immigrants at that time. In the years since, Lodi has become a haven of sorts for Pakistani immigrants, especially those from the area around Attock. “It is like the crow who flies and finds the seeds,” said Khan, now 82 but still strikingly agile and alert. “The other crows want to fly to the same place and find the seeds, too.” There are no official estimates of Lodi’s Pakistani population. Local leaders of the Muslim Mosque say church members number perhaps 2,000 total, with 90 percent from Pakistan. That would provide a figure of 1,800 or so in Lodi. The majority of those families, like Khan’s, have a connection to the Attock district, a picturesque area where the weather is mild and the soil fertile. “It is like Lodi in many ways,” said Shujah Khan (no relation to Johnny Khan), who came here in 1985 when he was 20 years old. “It is rural, with many farms.” The farms in the Attock area are typically small, with parcels handed down from generation to generation. To the north and west of Attock rise magnificent mountain ranges, some dappled with glaciers. The snowmelt feeds the Indus River, the life’s blood of Pakistan, which flows nearly the length of the country into the Arabian Sea. This portion of Pakistan, so close to Afghanistan and the Khyber Pass, has been the gateway for a secession of armies and conquerors, including Alexander the Great. The region has a rich if turbulent history and includes a medley of ethnic backgrounds. Like much of Pakistan however, the area is bound by a resolute allegiance to Islam. Life in and around Attock is based on faith and family. Employment is limited. Some men work for one of several British tobacco companies which have operations in the area. (Though the vast majority of Pakistanis are Muslim, and abstain from alcohol, the use of tobacco among men is common.) Others join the military. Most simply work the land, which offers a bountiful array of crops, from corn to cauliflower. The women remain at home to rear the children and handle domestic chores. Their cooking makes use of the array of food grown in the area, including beef, lamb, rice, raisins, corn, milk and butter. Most children attend public schools, with separate classrooms for boys and girls. Some, including the very poor and orphaned, go to private Islamic schools. The more privileged attend private schools where instruction is typically in English. Recreation, enjoyed in most cases only by men, includes swimming, cricket, soccer, volleyball and fishing. The influence of Western culture, some of it residual from British colonization, is apparent. Shujah Khan remembers watching American TV shows as a youth. “I liked watching ‘CHiPs’ and the ‘Six Million Dollar Man,’ ” he said. In Lodi, the patterns, in some basic ways, have continued. Many of the men are farmworkers or hold blue-collar jobs at local factories or at the Pacific Coast Producers cannery. Levels of education vary greatly, but most do not have the equivalent of college exposure. Many of Lodi’s Pakistani immigrants live on Lodi’s Eastside, where the mosque is located. Games of cricket are frequently organized in the fields of Blakely Park, across from the religious center. In Lodi, as in Attock and its environs, life for the Pakistani community continues to revolve around home and religion. But the pull to Lodi — and to America — is plainly economic. Johnny Khan, for instance, worked as a farm laborer, then became a farm labor contractor and eventually a farmer. He also invested in a motel. By dint of his hard work and bright, enterprising intellect, he has prospered. “I thank my God and my country for all I have,” said Johnny Khan, respected as both a pioneer and an elder statesman among local Pakistanis. Johnny Khan married his wife, Betty, a U.S. citizen, in 1955. They have two adult children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He and Betty share a spacious and comfortable home on Hemlock Drive. Johnny Khan said Lodi has emerged as a destination for Pakistanis in part because they feel accepted here. “In all my years here, I have never felt discrimination — never,” Johnny Khan said. Shujah Khan, too, said Lodi is tolerant of the Pakistani community. New immigrants feel free to wear the flowing shilwar, the pajama-like dress of their homeland. “I have had people ask me: ‘Why do you live in Lodi. Isn’t it prejudiced?’ But I have not suffered a single incident of discrimination.” Ironically, Shujah Khan, 36, recently left his job at a Stockton factory because he said he was the target of ethnic and religious taunting. He and some others, he said, have had initial difficulty adjusting to life in a more structured and intensive job market. “In Pakistan, there is lots of time and not that much to do,” he said. “Here, I had trouble getting up with the alarm clock.” Still, he is grateful for the economic rewards he has accrued, including ownership of a house on Tokay Street and a Dodge van. And, he is confident he will find another job to support his wife and infant daughter, Aisha. While some Pakistanis come to Lodi with the plan to someday return to their native soil, very few do, he said. “Life is better here,” Shujah Khan said. “Like me, we come here and get a decent home and a decent car and a decent life for our family, and we just live on.” |
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Contents »Pakistanis leave their native land to find Lodi |
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