British city gives an immigrant son a new title

It's a long way from the hot plains of provincial Pakistan to the damp urban sprawl of northwest England.

But for Mohammed Afzal Khan, the real journey did not begin until after he'd arrived in 1970s Britain as a bewildered 12-year-old who spoke no English, and had few friends and little clue about the culture he was entering.

Three decades later, Mr. Khan capped an extraordinary odyssey from humble obscurity to high office when he became the first Asian lord mayor of Manchester.

The new mayor, who has been described as an "Asian Dick Whittington" (Britain's Horatio Alger), is gracious enough to admit that his improbable ascent says more about Manchester than the man. It was, he says in a phone interview, the "greatness of the city" and the "celebration of diversity" that made it all possible.

Yet much was also due to his own determination to better himself and ignore any snide, racially tinged discouragement. Now Khan agrees that his achievement could well inspire Britain's 2 million-plus individuals of south Asian origin, who still resent their underrepresentation in the upper echelons of British society.

Twenty percent of Manchester's 400,000 citizens are nonwhite. Now they have a role model in city hall.

"Here I am from a humble background, uprooted from one culture to another culture and still able to progress," he says. "I never thought I would be Lord Mayor of such a great magnificent city; no one in my family thought that.

"As humans, we all have tremendous potential," he continues. "It's harnessing that potential and having a goal which is important, and that's what we all need to do."

The potential was hard to spot when Khan left his hometown of Jhelum, a trading backwater between Lahore and Islamabad, in 1971.

Khan's family was part of the initial wave of Asian migrants seeking to improve their prospects among the textile mills of Lancashire.

For the older generation, the transition was tough, the linguistic and professional barriers high. But for a Pakistani boy suddenly thrust into the hurly burly of Mansfield's high school, the culture shock was debilitating. His English was so poor that he didn't even bother with exams. Further education was out of reach.

Instead, he did what many Pakistani immigrants did: quit school as soon as possible to seek work in one of the cotton mills.

Khan toiled for more than three years as a laborer and then a weaver at the mill in the town of Brierfield. But unlike some of his colleagues, he suspected there was something better out there.

One night in the late 1970s, clocking off from work following another long night shift, he began the trudge out of the valley toward his home.

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