*Original article written December 2011. 

 

Let me tell you about the coolest person I know.

You know, I've never sat down and told this story. I'm actually getting emotional right now just trying to think of where to start.

I hope you have someone in your life that you can relate all this to. Someone who makes you feel like you can do anything. Someone who actually believes in you. Someone who will always be there for you. I hope for everyone's sake that they have someone as special as this man is to me.

"Coolest" isn't even the right word. The smartest, most loving, most caring, most "wealthy"- in every sense of the word, most truly spiritual, most intelligent person I know. That would be a good start.

 

Doesn't look like much though right? Not exactly what you picture when you read all my compliments? You don’t know him from any movies, you’ve probably never even heard of him. And yet, this is probably the single most influential person in my life outside of whatever you’d call a ‘Higher Power’/The Universe. He's not a musician, he's not an actor, he's not a President, and he never started any religion.

Let’s go back in time.

I’ve written before about how I moved out early, got a job at a Volvo dealership washing cars, sort of lost my mind, headed out East, then ultimately made my ‘peace' with myself and with “God” and moved back to Ontario. That’s probably a good place for this story to start. I'm 17 years old.

While I was at that Volvo dealership I was inundated with work. We moved a lot of cars there. Volvo, Subaru, Suzuki, and used cars as well. One of the busiest car dealerships I’ve ever seen actually. The owner has since passed away at a remarkably young age I might add. Regardless, we were busy. So busy that I couldn’t keep up with my deliveries, with prepping the vehicles to be picked up by their respective owners. So what did we do? We outsourced. We needed a place that we could rely on, that would pick up the cars, detail them and make them look completely perfect, then deliver them back to us so I could do a final once-over on them before they wound up in our customers hands. This is how I met Aziz.

Aziz had moved to Canada from Peshawar province of NWFP (now KPK). He came to Canada in hopes of a better future for his family. He and other brothers, along with their respective wives and young children came as well, with his older brother Jay coming to Canada a few years prior. Aziz has three kids. At that point though, back in the mid-90's, he had only one young boy.

He comes from a middle-class conservative Muslim family, a family a little more well-off than others in Pakistan during their time growing up. Aziz himself was interested in infrastructure building, general construction and contracting. The family business was… business. Not limited to one particular thing. It’s safe to say that Aziz brought that same philosophy with him when he moved.

In Pakistan, Aziz studied business and also became a licensed veterinarian. He did Veterinary Medican and acheived his Masters in Agriculture while he was at University. He worked at Nestle for some time. He had pet monkeys and all sorts of various animals on his property. He went through many different business ventures before ultimately deciding to immigrate to Canada. He delivered milk, he dug roads, he built bridges, and he managed hundreds of employees and had entire families depending solely on his business to eat their every meal. See the irrigation system below? Look it up, he built that.

He had his own cook, his own bodyguards, his own chauffeurs, and his own servants. In Pakistan labour was and still is relatively cheap. And being from a middle-class family, having servants wasn’t actually that big of a deal in Pakistan. He lived in major cities of Pakistan such as Multan, DGKhan, and Lahore, in the province of Punjab. Lora Lai, Musa Khail Dera Bugti in Baluchistan and Karachi in the Sind province. Before moving to Canada he was living in Lahore.

So after moving from Pakistan to Canada, Aziz joined his brother in business at the oil change centre. And then they added another. Then they added on a car clean-up business. And they also added other businesses of common type as the years went on.

I met Aziz through fate. I met Aziz because the promotion I received was a result of the person I replaced getting fired for blatant drug use, and I couldn’t handle the entire workload on my own. I met Aziz because he and his brother wanted our business. We dealt with Aziz and his brother because they did good work, they were punctual, they were respectful, and they were polite. This was the beginning of a life-long friendship, although I didn’t know it at the time. Far from it. I definitely wasn't in the market for an adopted dad at the time. I was a pissed off teenager that left home and wanted to get as far away from my parents as possible.

As you may know, car salesmen can be sort of… different. Not only did I know nothing about Islam when I was 17, I actually thought Aziz was a Hindu. What’s more, the bulk of our time was spent making fun of him behind his back whenever he happened to be making a pick-up or delivery.

“Oh by the many hands of Allahjujubar, here comes Aziz with another slippery car for us to get out that smell of curry from!”

What makes that part hurt even more today is that he is more man than I could ever hope to be, so much so that he doesn’t even care that I was ignorant enough to mock him like that in my teens. I’ve told him what I’m telling you now - and believe me - he feels sorry for how stupid I was. He's far above petty things like racist insults. That, and I love curried anything nowadays.

 

Moving along.

So there was a lot of work to be done. Cars needed cleaning and souls needed mending. Over the 2 ½ years that I worked for the dealership, Aziz and I got to talking. I got to trying some of the food he had brought for the staff. I warmed up to him. So much so that he asked me if I wanted to work for him on the side, which is what I wound up doing. I’d work 7am - 6pm Monday to Saturday at the dealership, and then I’d work weekends for Aziz for cash on the side, cleaning the same vehicles that I'd then deliver throughout the week. Sometimes we’d clean five a day. On average it was a few every weekend. He started me out at $25 per car. I could completely detail a car in 3-4 hours, so that wasn’t so bad for a 17 year old I figured. 

Interesting side note, I was audited by the Canadian Government after my first year of doing taxes. 

Obviously there are entire parts of my teens and early 20’s where I was "doing my own thing"; partying, playing in bands, travelling, drinking, “living”… but I never broke contact with Aziz. I always somehow wound up back working with him. We never lost touch. No matter where in the World he or I was.

When I got married at 21 he was my best man. If I ever get married again, he will be my best man.

I know everything about Aziz. And whatever I don’t know, it’s not for lack of trying, it’s because he is smarter than I am and likes to keep some things to himself. He took me under his wing as an adopted son when I was 17. My birth parents divorced and live in separate cities. He has been like a Dad to me ever since we met. I learned some Urdu so I could try to impress him. I nick-named him “Abu-bai” (Father-brother). He calls me his son. He actually gave me the nick-name "Adams'', if you wanted to know where that came from. My interest in religion lead me to endlessly questioning him and his brother about Islam for years on end. Poor guys. He took me to a mosque every Friday for a year during 2001. And thanks to that, I now know quite a few Muslims.

Aziz is like a Pakistani Bruce Wayne. He is so much more than meets the eye it is unreal. He obviously speaks more than one language, he is highly educated, well traveled, and one of the most kind-hearted people I know. He gives to people who don't deserve it and keeps his word to his own hurt.

I was rooting through one of our desks once, probably 10 years ago, and found a few of his passports lying around. A few. Fully stamped. From all over the World. And when I asked him about it, he just smiled. He never goes out of his way to brag to you. He doesn’t tell you that he is smarter than you. He doesn’t need to prove to you that he’s been more places than you.

One time we were at a Canadian Tire, shopping for a toolbox for one of our contractors. The girl at the register hands him back Canadian Tire Money and he says, “what’s this?” So there’s the cashier trying to explain to some Pakistani what Canadian Tire Money is, and he's playing stupid and asks, “so I am a millionaire now then?” to which she didn’t know what to say other than to start over and try to explain the whole concept again. When we were in the parking lot I asked him why he had played stupid, why put the girl on? Why confirm people’s racist ideas of Pakistanis? He'd probably been in Canada longer than the cashier had been alive, he knew what Canadian Tire Money was. He said to me, “Adam, I’m looking for that spark, I’m looking for intelligence.” He blew my mind. He still does. I could tell you stories like that for days.

• His wife made me Pakistani food pretty much every day for two years because they knew I loved it.
• He visited me while I was in the hospital last year and made sure to take care of anything I needed while I was unable to be at work.
• Before we both quit smoking, he'd special order his brand from Pakistan. I don't know if he knows this, but I was the reason why he was always running out so fast.
• Last year he paid for my trip to California to reunite with my American family.
• He writes roofing quotes in my name because he is well aware how racist some people can be.
• Before my Grandmother passed away he strongly advized me to go visit her, she died two weeks later, and I am very thankful that I was able to say goodbye to her.
• I'm typing this on a computer that he gave me, wearing boots he ordered me from his friends factory, staying warm in a winter jacket he used to wear.

 

We started two businesses together that still operate today; a carpet cleaning company, and the tire shop (which some of you reading this will know about). We run a duct and furnace cleaning business, a roofing business, the same car detailing business I've already mentioned, and a few others that I won't mention. Up until a few weeks ago we were operating the only Auto Trader outpost in the area since 2008. And vehicles? He has an entire fleet. He has given more money to more charities than anyone I know. He has done real philanthropic work, not the kind you see on TV, but the real kind. Like going to a widow’s house and having it renovated for her and then having one of his staff cut her lawn all summer, rake leaves all Fall, and shovel snow all winter. He has given people vehicles, visited and bailed people out of jail, arranged entire marriages and funerals, singlehandedly supported families, housed friends in need, and has always been available 24/7 to those whom he loves. As a matter of fact, he's at a wedding in Pakistan right now, and I just got off the phone with him two hours ago here, which would have made it 3am there. I knew he was sleeping. He knew I knew. He still answered, and we still had a great chat. And I’ve done the same for him.

So if he’s in Pakistan, then who’s running his businesses right now you ask? The same person who always takes care of his interests when he’s away. The same person who owes him more than he cares to admit. The same person who will be taking care of Aziz and his family until he has no strength left in his body to do so, and maybe after. The same person who for the last fifteen years has looked up to Aziz as a father figure, a true friend, a mentor and a teacher.

 

 

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