Poverty in Pakistan inspires dreams of wealth
While visiting family back home during the holidays, senior Ali Khan and his father went out to the major tourist attactions, including the Dubai Mall.
He remembers first grade weeping, feeling inadequate because he couldn’t understand his teacher.
She was speaking English and he was transitioning from living in Pakistan for the first five years of his life.
Senior Ali Khan is originally from Attock, a city located in the northern border of the Punjab province of Pakistan. In 2003, he and his immediate family came to America, leaving the rest behind. The open spaces, cows, lack of electricity in some areas, and hardships of living in a Third World country.
But in the past two school years Khan has gone back to Pakistan to visit. Opposed to vacationing in the summer because of the heat, Khan’s family prefers to travel during more reasonable weather. Because of this, it has even resulted in Khan being dropped out of the school system from being gone so long and lowering his GPA from a 4.5 to a 3.1 in the past school year.
But still, he always enjoys going back to the place he once called home.
Seeing life on the western part of the hemisphere has shown him that Pakistan has a lot of flaws, some of which can’t be fixed.
“I’m just grateful to have gotten away from there.” Khan describes the area as seen in the movies with run down villages and brick buildings.
Although Khan sees Pakistan for what it is, a not so fortunate country, he still has plans of beginning a future back home.
In his hometown, none of Khan’s family works full time. They buy, own, and sell properties.
Since his grandfather began the business of building, owning, and then selling properties, “there’s no such thing as work.”
His family is provided with what their grandfather started for them, which is (how much) property and money to live off of while keeping the lifestyle going.
From the amount of properties his family owns, the money from it converted equals up to one million American dollars.
“In Paki, value never drops,” he said. “It always goes up.”
At first his family had the expectations of a “typical Middle Eastern family” for his career.
They wanted Khan to become a doctor or even an engineer.
But Khan decided to follow in his father’s, uncle’s, and grandfather’s footsteps in selling property.
“I’m going to go to UOP so I can major in business, then I’ll go back to Paki to continue the business with my uncle.”
He plans to go back and forth from Pakistan and America to check on properties he owns out where his family live.
He loves where he came from and visiting family to get away on a vacation, but Pakistan isn’t a place to live for him due to the dangers from the lack of safety regulations and corruption of their government.
“I just want to make something of myself, and life, by becoming rich and successful.”
