tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post7348946236870816845..comments2024-03-26T19:25:43.970-07:00Comments on South Asia Investor Review: Pakistani-American Tops Richest Americans of South Asian OriginRiaz Haqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-90764524332131763472017-04-03T16:48:20.721-07:002017-04-03T16:48:20.721-07:00Ex #Pakistan Prime Minister Qureshi's #Washing...Ex #Pakistan Prime Minister Qureshi's #Washington home to sell for $8M. 6th most expensive in DC mkt http://dc.curbed.com/2017/4/3/15163828/home-pakistan-mooen-qureshi-massachusetts-heights?utm_campaign=dc.curbed&utm_content=entry&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter … via @curbeddc<br /><br />The pending sale cost more than Jackie Kennedy’s or Rex Tillerson’s homes<br /><br />At the moment, this Massachusetts Avenue Heights listing is the sixth most expensive single-family home on the D.C. market. Soon, it will close as one of the priciest sales of 2017 so far, above Jackie Kennedy’s Georgetown home and Rex Tillerson’s Kalorama home. The pending sale is an even $8 million.<br /><br />The former owner of the home was former acting Prime Minister of Pakistan and the former senior official at the World Bank Mooen A. Qureshi. The late Herbert Haft once lived next door to this listing, and Vernon Jordan Jr., a leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement and close advisor to President Bill Clinton, lives on the same block.<br /><br />In 2011, the owner of this listing attempted to break records by placing it on the market for $12 million, making it the second-highest residential listing price in prior Washington history. Two years earlier, it was priced at $18.5 million, which was $16 million higher than what the owners at the time bought it for in 2000. It later returned to the market in May 2016 for $8 million.<br /><br />At one point, the residence was two properties. In 2001, the property was converted into one with eight bedrooms and 13 bathrooms across approximately 15,000 square feet of space and over an acre of land. Other notable features inside include a library, two kitchens, an elevator, and a pool cabana suite.<br /><br />The listing agent is Eugene Coleman of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278279504304651957.post-3330679672354637382014-03-13T20:49:50.472-07:002014-03-13T20:49:50.472-07:00Here's a Men's Journal story of Pakistani-...Here's a <a href="http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/races-sports/pakistans-fight-club-20140313" rel="nofollow">Men's Journal</a> story of Pakistani-American Mixed Martial Arts champ Bashir Ahmed:<br /><br /><i>In April 2013, Bashir Ahmad stood bleeding in a cage before a 12,000-person stadium crowd in Kallan, Singapore. Having defeated his Thai opponent, the mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter draped the green-and-white Pakistani flag across his shoulders and hoisted his gloved hands as the stadium. The crowd – along with a 500-million-person Asian TV audience – cheered for Pakistan's first national MMA champion. The accolade was made all the more precedent-breaking considering Ahmad's true identity: just a few years earlier, he had served in Iraq as a U.S. soldier. As relations between the U.S. and Pakistan remain strained due to drone strikes, Taliban attacks, and lingering resentment over the unauthorized commando raid on Osama bin Laden, Ahmad has become the unlikeliest of national heroes – an American soldier turned MMA champion. "I've gotten Facebook messages asking how I could be a part of the U.S. army and support the killing of Muslims," he says. "Does it get to me? No. My whole life has been a paradox."<br />Born in Lahore in 1983, Ahmad moved as a child with his family to Great Falls, Virginia. In 2002, he joined the National Guard to fund his tuition at Virginia Commonwealth University – thinking he'd only spend one weekend a month doing military drills. "When I first got there and asked if they'd served in Afghanistan, they laughed and said 'We can't even make it to the highway without getting lost,'" Ahmad says. Yet nine months after the beginning of the Iraq war, in 2003, Ahmad was deployed to work as a medic on a bomb disposal unit in Mosul – a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. "Have you seen the movie Hurt Locker?" he says. "That was my day-to-day life. We'd drive five times a day to wherever in the city there was a suspected IED or car bomb."<br />------<br />Despite his rising star in Pakistan, Ahmad says his time there has shown him how essentially American he remains. "When I came here I was like, 'oh I'll fit right in'," Ahmad says. "No, I was definitely different – a foreigner." Pakistan's pervasive anti-American rhetoric and uncritical nationalism irritated him. "It's so mixed up, it's so ridiculous," he says about the country's political climate. "There are Pakistanis whose whole family is in the U.S. and they want a visa, yet they hate America." One of Ahmad's proudest achievements, beyond the fame and growing success of MMA in Pakistan, is having created something that erases, however modestly, Pakistan's social divides. "These two young waiters at a roadside restaurant told me their lives had changed," Ahmad says. "Guys who would usually order them around were now the same people looking up to them and saying, 'This guy fights for my gym.'"<br />Ahmad is now splitting his time between Virginia and Pakistan while courting Pakistani expatriates to help fund his league – and admits to not feeling quite at home in either country. "The TSA held me for seven hours at Reagan airport, but then only questioned me for a couple of minutes," Ahmad says, "I expected it but was still like 'Screw you, I'm a vet.'"</i><br /><br />http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/races-sports/pakistans-fight-club-20140313Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.com