Amjad Aziz , From zero to Hero

 

   “ Amjad Aziz , From zero to Hero”

       (Owner of Bio-Mondie an organic stores, having revenue of 350 million euros as well as having private jet)

 
It was of March 1983 when seventeen years old Amjad  Aziz Malvy was smuggled on a plane from Islamabad to Istanbul with a fake passport with  some stolen money and a broken heart.
The boy from Jhelum arrived in freezing Paris with nowhere to travel , and spent his first night within the famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery where variety of the world’s most notable personalities, like Frederic Chopin, Wilde and Morrison are
buried.
“For a terrified, homeless boy it was a cold first night, But i had fine company there” he laughs slowly.
At 51, he's lean and athletic and carries around knowledgeable camera, which lies on the table next to him. wearing casual jeans and a black jacket, he sits in one corner of the swanky, dark restaurant he owns during a trendy Parisian neighborhood.
It is hard to tell initially that soft spoken Aziz is that the owner of the posh French establishment with its chic green-house club vibe. He keeps his head bowed as he speaks, he refers humbly to his fortune because the work of God, and to the people around him as “sir.” But as we speak, guests wearing black tie wave at him from their tables, and he's keeping a keen eye around him.
 
“My story starts passionately, of course,” he says.
Back in 1983, he was not able to satisfied a girl whom he loved due to familial differences, then sixteen year old Amjad Aziz had a chance meeting with her that changed his life.
In the depths of despair, he met with Rahman, a neighborhood man from his village who had migrated to Germany and returned to pay a visit. He captivated Aziz along side his stories about Europe.
“He took out a small piece of plastic card and said he took out money  at any time of the day or night using this card,” Amjad says.
In Jhelum, where the local bank often ran out of cash by noon, the thought of an ATM card was revolutionary. apart from Aziz, there are more pressing questions.
In Germany, he asked to someone “can there people only marry for love?”
 
When he got the answer that he needs, he devised up his mind. He was going to attend Germany, to this strange foreign land where people could love freely and marry whoever they wanted.
At the time, Aziz’s father was a officer stationed in Libya under Colonel Gaddafi. shortly after his meeting with Rahman, his father sent home a letter and bank draft along side his life’s savings to start out construction of a house within the town . because the eldest and most literate son, Aziz read the letter aloud to his mother but overlooked the part about the cash .
The next day, he cashed the draft. It amounted to eighty thousand rupees, (approx. $800). a little fortune at the time.
Cash in hand, Aziz returned to Rahman and begged him to hunt out the way to urge him to Frankfurt ( a city of Germany). The arrangements were made, the payments sorted, and a few of weeks later, without a word to his family, Aziz was standing hidden during a corner at Islamabad’s international airport, waiting to be grossed on a plane to Turkey. “It was a late night flight,” he remembers. I stood there within the dark for 2 hours, terrified, expecting the airport official I had paid to return get me.
But the first leg of his journey passed easily. He alight at Istanbul, and made it to his hotel where he came to know that crossing into Europe was not going to be easy. There are hoards of other hopeful immigrants at the small hotel where he was staying, some who had been waiting vainly for years to urge visas and reach Germany. He also discovered he did not have enough money left to buy for subsequent plane ticket onwards to Frankfurt.
Instead, there was a special promotion on a 1 way ticket to Paris. He went for it with a bogus passport and visa in hand. it had been worth an effort .
When the immigration officer at Charles de Gaulle Airport checked his  passport, the badly pasted photograph drop down. He was caught and locked up in an airport small room while his deport  papers were arranged.
“I don’t know for how much time i was skills there in room,” Amjad says. “It could are hours. i won't to be terrified. What was going to happen to me?”
When the senior deportation officer came in to sign off on his paperwork, he paused and verified Aziz.
“He sit in the front of me ,he gazed at  me, just for two seconds,” Amjad says. “Maybe he already knew something about me. I think he just took pity on a scared boy. He didn’t say anything. He only  gave me my passport back and let me enter to France.” “I went to his home and trying to seek out him later but he had died at that time. Even now, every morning once I open my eyes, I see that man’s face. whenever I create a replacement job for somebody , i feel of his kindness.”
Today, because the owner and CEO of France’s second biggest organic products company, Bio Monde, with 192 stores all across the country and an annual revenue of over $350 million, along with high end restaurants in Paris, Dubai and Marrakech, Aziz employs over three thousand people.
He reminisces often about the past. Having spent his last 100 francs on a taxi ride into the town , Aziz was homeless. He slept under bridges, in abandoned cars, in parks and graveyards, hiding from wandering policemen. He approached folks that looked Pakistani, asking about odd jobs around the city to earn enough to survive. He spent late nights working in kitchens, drove buses and trucks, eventually took night classes, and eventually found out a little organic vegetable stall outside a supermarket. This was the start of the corporate that might change his destiny.
“The money does not have value on behalf of me ,” Amjad says. “The only thing now I am pleased with is my sibling's education. My brother may be a PhD micro-biologist from Oxford University . My other brother and sister are PhD’s too. We come from a village where no woman had graduated school for miles, and therefore the only working phone was at the closest international airport.”
He drops  into the tales of past, still shining by the irony of his own story. The young man who once hid from street policemen was now greeted publicly by France’s first policeman and later President, Nicolas Sarkozy. he's now singled out by the country’s presidents and ambassadors, and invited to exclusive gatherings at the presidential palace.
“Some time ago, i used to be invited to an ambassador’s residence for a personal concert,” Aziz reminisces. “When dinner was served, something about their kitchen door swinging was really bothering me. It took me a couple of minutes to understand I’d worked therein kitchen thirty years ago. it had been right after I’d arrived in Paris, and somebody said hired help was needed at an enormous party.” Aziz pauses to breathe and fumbles together with his hands.
“I hade lived life on the opposite side of that door. I had to make a case for myself from the party then . I don’t know why,” he says. “I just lost my appetite.”