A heart warming story.

Mctosh45 · A heart warming story.

Can Ahmad survive Holyrood?

Sunday Times, 5 th November 2006

http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/ article/0, ,2090-2435513, 00.html

The man on course to be the first Muslim MSP seems too gentle a soul
to enter the hard-nosed world of politics, writes Kenny Farquharson

In the middle of Glasgow airport an Asian man is standing alone,
weeping silent tears, a battered suitcase at his feet.

Another man approaches him and asks what is wrong, but the Asian man
speaks no English and does not understand.

It is June 1960, and the Asian man is Bashir Ahmad. Until a few days
previously, he had lived his whole life in a village of mud huts in
the Punjab, tending his family's buffalo and growing wheat.

In the arrivals hall, there is no sign of the cousin he expected to
be there to meet him. Using gestures and body language, the other man
is asking where he needs to go. Ahmad shows him a piece of paper with
the cousin's address on it.
The man ushers him to a bus stop and disappears.

When the bus arrives, the same man is at the wheel and collecting
fares. He waves Ahmad inside without asking for money, which is just
as well because Ahmad has none. In central Glasgow, when the bus
comes to a halt and the passengers get off, Ahmad stays in his seat,
not knowing what to do next.

"The man then comes to me and asks to see the piece of paper again,"
Ahmad recalls. On it is written the address of a tenement in
McCulloch Street, in Pollokshields. "He tells me to sit down. Then he
drives me to that address in the bus, right up to the door. Then he
helps me carry my luggage up two stairs and makes sure I am all
right."

This act of implausible kindness overwhelmed the 21-year-old. "That
man left such a good feeling with me about Scotland, and the Scottish
people, which I still have today," he says.

We are sitting in Ahmad's handsome terraced home in Moray Place,
Glasgow, an architectural gem designed by Alexander "Greek" Thomson.
Now aged 67, Ahmad has come far in the past four decades and is now
poised to make Scottish political history. Next May, he is almost
certain to become the first non-white to be elected to the Holyrood
parliament, and the first Muslim. He is ranked second on the SNP's
list of candidates for regional top-up seats for Glasgow.

The Asian community will have a voice at Holyrood to push policies
such as publicly funded Muslim schools. "I think this should be
supported, as our education system should meet the distinctive needs
and interests of all of our communities. " he says. "If the government
backs Catholic schools, why not Muslim ones?"

Meeting Ahmad for the first time, the impression is of a man with a
great gift for human warmth and generosity of spirit. His smile is
serene, his manner modest to a fault, and he dispenses huge platefuls
of delicious homemade curry with the pleasure of a man enjoying
playing host at home.

Yet it is alarming to think Ahmad could soon be thrown into the
bearpit of frontline Scottish politics. For one thing, his speech is
slow and his English is poor - surprisingly so for a man who has
lived in Britain for more than 40 years.
He struggles to articulate himself - at one stage in our
conversation, describing a childhood farming injury, he is unable to
conjure up the word "thumb".

More alarming is Ahmad's other-worldly demeanour. There is an almost
Forrest Gump innocence about him, a simplicity of thought that comes
across as - at best - naivety. It makes for an attractive human
being, but a politician?

I tell Ahmad he strikes me as a very gentle man, and that politics is
a tough business. Is he ready for the rough and tumble at Holyrood?
"How is it rough?" he asks, without a trace of irony. Well, I
explain, not everyone in politics is as nice a man as he is.

"Up until now nobody has played rough with me anyway, so I don't know
how I would react," he says with a shrug. "But I never became rough
with rough people, and I always got a good response back."

Ahmad has sustained this saintly attitude throughout his life, even
when a victim of casual racism.

He does not mind, he says, when people hurl racist insults at him -
in fact, he does not regard them as insults at all. "If someone calls
to me, 'You darkie', what's wrong?" He peels back his shirt sleeve to
show his brown forearm. "I'm dark anyway. If someone calls me Paki,
what's wrong? I'm from Pakistan. To me, I don't feel anything when
they say these things."

What does he make of the more common response to such racism - anger
and outrage? "They're wrong," he says simply. "Even if someone is
nasty to you, you shouldn't be nasty to them. What's the difference,
if one is nasty and the other becomes nasty too? Those people who are
awkward to deal with, if you don't become awkward with them they will
become very polite."

As examples, he offers a drunk man who once shouted abuse at him when
he ran a corner shop, and the young boys who used to taunt him in the
street. The drunk came back the next day to apologise, and the
children were recruited as grocery delivery boys.

Ahmad is a proud family man. A marriage was arranged for him with a
girl from his home village. Her name was Naseem and he did not get to
speak to her until four days after their wedding. They have seven
children - two boys followed by five girls, all of whom went on to
study at Scottish universities.

While many Asians of Ahmad's generation have adapted to western ways,
he remains a traditionalist. "As far as my girls are concerned, I
chose their husbands," he says, "and I wanted to do the same with the
boys, but I didn't succeed."

The sons chose their own wives, one of them marrying a Scots girl.
"And there have been no problems at all," says Ahmad, with a tinge of
relief in his voice.
Muslim fundamentalism is something that concerns him - "the
extremists do not represent the views of the community" - but he
cautions against an overreaction that erodes civil liberties.
Generally, he is dismayed by the attitudes of the younger UK-born
generation of Asians, whom he sees as feckless and lacking discipline
and respect.

"They are out of control," he says, sadly. "We were so easy on them,
never asked any questions. Whatever they asked we gave them. We were
working, working, working.

"Some of the children are very good, but most of them are ruined. In
my case, all my children are educated at university, but the majority
my children's age, they have failed. We cannot change them. They
don't listen to us, and the law of this country is too soft on them."

Why, I ask, does he identify more with Scottishness rather than
Britishness? "Because you people are very good people," he replies.

Ahmad first met Alex Salmond in 1995, when the MP spoke at a dinner
organised by a Pakistani welfare organisation and convinced him to
join the party.

Many Scots Asians saw parallels between Scotland and Pakistan, which,
in its early years, had been told by the British establishment that
it was too small and poor to survive as an independent nation.

"Independence is a good thing" says Ahmad, "whether it is for a
child, a man or a country."

Soon afterwards, the two men launched Scots Asians for Independence -
one of Salmond's most imaginative initiatives as SNP leader. These
days, it is estimated that most Scots Asians back the nationalists.

As an exemplar of the virtues of the Asian immigrant, the story of
Ahmad's business career cannot be bettered. When he first arrived in
Glasgow, he worked double shifts as a bus conductor and then a driver
to be able to send money to his family back home.

Then he bought a corner shop in Alexandra Parade, which opened at 6am
and closed at 10pm. It was later sold to buy a bigger shop, then a
restaurant and the Clydesdale hotel in Lanark. Ahmad eventually sold
it in 1993 and retired on the proceeds at the age of 54.

Scotland's Asian community contains some awesomely bright and
articulate people, many of them at the top of their fields in law,
medicine and commerce. It is fair, if not necessarily kind, to say
that, despite his business achievements, Ahmad is not in this top
flight.

Of course, the majority of white MSPs are not the greatest minds of
their generation, as Scotland has discovered to its cost in the past
seven years. But few of them had the burden of attention and
expectation that will fall on Ahmad's shoulders. Come next May and
his likely election, he will doubtless be the recipient of much
goodwill, from all political parties. It could not happen to a nicer
man.

Yet one cannot help but be concerned at how Ahmad will perform. A
common view is that Ahmad owes his advancement to Salmond's
patronage, that he is less of a potential problem for the leader than
a younger and more radical Asian Scot.

"It was Alex's influence that got Bashir onto the party's national
executive committee and Alex's influence that got him so high on the
list for Holyrood," says one party source. "Can you imagine what
he'll be like in a debate in parliament?"

Yet the man himself seems unconcerned about all this. "Yes, it will
be a big responsibility, but my pleasure will be in helping people. I
want to work for Scotland, because Scotland gave me everything."

One of Ahmad's few regrets about his life here is that he never again
saw the man who was so kind to him on his first day in a strange
country. Even though he became a bus driver, and always hoped to be
able to thank him properly, they never met again.

"When I became a driver, the strict rule was you never went off the
route," says Ahmad. "I would never have dared. He took a risk for me."

Thanks to that risk, and the debt to Scotland it engendered, Holyrood
is about to get one of its most enigmatic politicians.

Journey so far

1940: Born in Amritsar, in the Punjab region of pre-partition India

1961: Travels to Glasgow and starts work as a bus conductor

1967: Buys a grocery shop in Alexandra Parade, Glasgow. A restaurant
and hotel follow

1985: Co-founder of the welfare association for Asians in Scotland

1993: Sells hotel in Lanark and retires

1995: Meets Alex Salmond and joins SNP. Launch of Scots Asians for Independence

2003: Elected a Glasgow city councillor for the SNP, representing
Pollokshields East

2006: Second on SNP regional list of candidates for Scottish parliament
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