Salehkhana in Press

Following is the section from a book "The Grand Trunk Road: From Delhi to the Khyber Pass" written by Tim Smith and Irna Qureshi (Amazon Link), the book was published in Jan 2011.  Tim mentioned about Salehkhana as:



"... Then we were tipped off about a village called Saleh Khana, made famous in migration terms by its men running canteens for the locals that were recruited into the British Army’s lower ranks. This became the village tradition, to the extent that when the British invaded the Falklands, the canteen workers were from Saleh Khana!

image 1: British Pakistani holidaying in Saleh Khana
 with family members © Photograph Tim Smith

Though a small Pakistani village, Saleh Khana has a bank on every corner, to receive remittances from the community now settled in Smethwick and Dudley. The main shop is stocked with bottled water and cornflakes, ready for the comparatively well-off holidaying Brits. We met countless women with British spouses, waiting for their visa applications to be processed, and dreaming of their new lives in the Midlands. The mansion-like houses, built with UK savings were hard to miss. Saleh Khana’s links with Britain today are clearly visible. No wonder then that the locals still regard Britain as a land of opportunity, and the reason that Tim’s presence created great excitement.
My most in-depth interviews were those that involved speaking to several members of the same family. In the village of Saleh Khana near Peshawar in Pakistan, I met a British born Pakistani who was enjoying a family holiday (image 1). Following his interview, he introduced me to his father and uncle. Interviewing several generations of the same family was very insightful and produced a much more rounded picture of their migration experience.

An elderly chap, bearded, stooped, walking stick in hand, shoved a tatty envelope towards my colleague:

Image 2: Elderly gentleman holding photo of himself as a young man
 with a colleague from his
army days © Photograph Tim Smith

“I served with the British Army but I don’t get a pension. Look at this paperwork. Can you sort it out?” he implored. A well-presented Englishman, emerging from an air conditioned car, with driver and assistant (me!: Irna Qureshi ) in tow, could only mean one thing in Saleh Khana! They thought Tim was from the British Embassy in Islamabad, sent to issue visas and resolve pension problems. Since Tim didn’t speak the local lingo, it was up to me to relay the bad news to the crowd...."

Tim Smith also recorded audio during the trip, since the interviewee accent can hardly be picked up, thereofore the transcript is given along with the audio. To get to the actual source you can click here

Audio Transcript:There is a village near our village in Cherat which is very important. It is called Saleh Khana and you will hardly see any young boy there, because they are all in England. Saleh Khana the entire village, only the old or the women are there in the village.  See, it’s a very hard village like my village was. People either go into the army or if the education is not there then they do this army canteen. Today traditionally Saleh Khana people are suppliers of army canteens. They were running the canteens for the army – cooking, making chapatti, curry, selling tea. They were supplying to the troops, not to the officers because the officers would eat in the officers’ mess, but the British troops would come and eat. The troops were actually local Indians and Pakistanis but the ranks were of course British. So they would have these canteens for them. And the Saleh Khana people picked up this profession and they carried it on, so much so that when Falklands was invaded by the British, the canteen people were from Saleh Khana! And the Saleh Khana people were also in Northern Ireland during the troubled times running canteens for the British troops there as well.