Wyoming. It's known for bison, it's national parks, and it's cowboy culture. Wyoming is a beautiful state. I love this state.
It's the least populous state in the U.S. It's probably not the place you think of as having a thriving immigrant community. But in Sheridan, Wyoming, population some 18,000, I discovered the beginnings of one of the oldest Pakistani communities in America.
Obviously in Wyoming there's not a lot of Pakistani, if they're Pakistani, we're related to them. There's not even a statue dedicated to a Pakistani man. known as Hot Tamale Lute, whose descendants created a business empire. My dad always said, if you give something, don't worry about it, you always get it back.
But the Pakistani community in Wyoming has faced discrimination too, especially when it comes to their faith. They burned Quran, couple of Qurans, you know, in protest. So why are there Pakistanis in Wyoming?
And what brought them to the American West? The story of Pakistani America is more than a century old. But as a Pakistani American myself, I was fascinated to learn that our history in this country had roots in the foothills of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains. And this statue is a symbol of that history, and a testament to one of the longest-standing Pakistani communities in the U.S.
This statue is of my dad, Hahtamalilui, or his name was Zarif Khan. Zarif Khan came to the U.S. in 1907, 40 years before Pakistan became a country. as part of the first wave of South Asian immigration into the United States. And he's probably the first immigrant from that part of the world to settle in Wyoming. So he clearly has a spatula with a hamburger and the bun with some pickles.
It says Hamburger Louie. Why did they call him Hamburger Louie? Well, because when he was pushing the cart at the time, he was known for his hamburgers and tamales. And later, when he had the restaurant, he had chili also.
It was called Louie's. And then people just gave him the name Hot Tamale and Hamburger Louie, you know. Unfortunately, the building that had Louie's restaurant was demolished. But Zarif Jr. still remembers it. You can order your hamburger with onion pickles and mustard.
But if you ask for ketchup, he'd get mad. He don't want to ruin a hamburger with ketchup. South Asian men start immigrating to California and the Pacific Northwest near the turn of the 20th century.
to work in the farming, logging, and railroad industries. While about 85% of the immigrants from South Asia were Sikh, and most of the remaining 10-15% were Muslim, they were all incorrectly considered Hindus by Americans. The new South Asian laborers soon became targets of hate-filled rhetoric.
They were viewed as the problem, and that rhetoric sometimes turned into actual violence. In 1907, South Asians were victims of mob violence, and hundreds of them were detained in what's now known as the Bellingham Riots. That same year, a 12-year-old named Zarif Khan came to Washington State. Came alone, you know, with no relatives, nothing. Worked on the ships and came to Seattle.
And he worked on the West Coast there. He traveled to Montana. He was in South Dakota, Deadwood for a while. And then they said, somebody told him there was a railroad coming through Sheridan.
So he decided to move over here. Around the time that Louis arrived to Wyoming, Native American communities in the West were being displaced by white settlers. They also faced routine discrimination.
But at Louie's, Native Americans were always welcome. He was one of the first persons to serve American Natives. Back then, they weren't allowed in to be served.
He didn't care who they were. You know, everybody has to eat. And as Louie kept serving up his hamburgers and tamales, it became the stuff of legend. There was a rancher that told me that they lived in KC, that's 70 miles away. They'd come Sheridan every Saturday to have Hamburger Louie burgers and then take a bunch home with them.
They said you never had a hamburger until you ate his hamburger. But at this time in America, anti-Asian sentiment was high. In 1917, the U.S. completely banned immigration from South Asia by creating the Asiatic Barred Zone. And in 1923, the Supreme Court ruled that only whites and African Americans could become citizens.
My dad claimed that he was white. Because people in Afghanistan, and we live close to the Afghanistan border, are more light-complected and stuff, so he thought of himself white, I think, just to become an American citizen. The government said Asians weren't white, and stripped Louie of his U.S. citizenship in 1926, just a year after he'd gotten it.
Louie remained in Sheridan as an immigrant. Even though he didn't know how to read or write, he made good investments in the stock market. Louis gained enough wealth that he became known for his philanthropy, like when he helped out American soldiers in World War II. He sent cigarettes, candy bars, other things that they needed.
Louis'generosity was well known in church. He would see people and if they didn't have money and my dad said, boy what do you want? He didn't ask him for money he said, give me next time, catch me next time.
And in Pakistan he sent money to build three mosques. He was really proud of being Pakistani. But everybody if you asked in Sheridan where was my dad from they'd say, he's from Turkey, he's from Greek, he's from Afghanistan. But they never said Pakistan. Louis got American citizenship when he applied again in 1954, and this time it wasn't taken away.
He married later on in life and brought his wife Fatma to the States, where they raised a family of six. Zarif continued to travel back and forth to Pakistan to see family, and it was during one of these trips that he was murdered by a jealous relative. His death made front page news in Wyoming, Colorado, and South Dakota, and his influence has reverberated to the 21st century.
Louis'life story made it into a detailed New Yorker profile in 2016. That led to the creation of this statue two years later. And there's even a musical about his life. Everybody has history, everybody's got a past, and everybody's family comes from somewhere. But, you know, not everybody gets a statue of somebody they're related to. Not everybody gets to hear or get their story out there from their family.
When I asked around in Sheridan, people still remembered Louis and his hamburgers more than 50 years after his death. Best hamburger in the world. Most of it came down your arms.
While Louis might have been the first Pakistani in the state, it's because of his wife Fatima that the Khans of Wyoming have a thriving family business. After Louis'death, Fatima brought over her brother Fareed, and they started working in the hotel business. She bought this hotel, a small hotel, and she wanted me to manage it.
So I went over there and managed it for about three and a half years. Fareed and his wife Bibi have been living in the US since the 70s, but they're still very Pakistani. Do you want tea?
Yes. It's a yogurt drink. Yeah.
I'll get you some. Thank you. It's good. You take the butter out and whatever's left over, then I'm going to probably make a ghee out of it, you know.
As more relatives came in the 80s and had children, the Khan family and the business empire grew. Some of the Khan family moved from Sheridan to Gillette, about 100 miles away. And then they started buying and building hotels throughout Wyoming.
So how many Khans live in the Rockies now? I'd say easily you can say a couple hundred or more. Freet and Bebe currently own 11 hotels, and the extended Khan family owns a few dozen more.
I made money in every one of them. In fact, we found out that the hotel we were staying at in Sheridan was owned by the Khan family, too. Now the Khans own hotels not just in Wyoming, but in Colorado, Montana, and South Dakota.
We all manage hotels. We're all in the hotel industry. My brother, my dad, all of our relatives, my uncles, my cousins, my dad's cousins. Most of our family has something to do with hotels or hospitality.
While the Khan family has a proud history in Wyoming, things haven't always been easy. For some of the children, there was bullying at a young age. They would call them rag-hairs or something like that.
They would go to you, go ride a camel or something like that. And there was also some trouble when the Khan family was trying to build this mosque, named after Fareed and Fatima's sister. It's just the third mosque in the state of Wyoming, and the only one for hundreds of miles in any direction. They burned Quran, couple of Qurans in protest, about five or six people, but their bunch of town people came against it in protest against those people. The Khan say that most of the people in town backed their efforts to build the mosque and that not all Wyomingites held anti-Muslim views.
We had support from the mayor and local people. They said they know the Khan, they've been living here for a long time and doing business here with everyone. I attended a Friday prayer at the mosque where all the worshipers turned out to be members of the Khan family.
It's just kind of harsh to see most people thinking that every single Muslim has to be some type of threat to the community. We're just normal, peaceful people. After traveling to this part of the country for the first time, I was taken aback by the beauty of the landscape.
And I could see why Zarif Khan all those years ago would have chosen to settle down in Wyoming. Wyoming is a beautiful state. You can come anytime, you can see beautiful places open, clean air, fresh air.
And after speaking to so many members of the Khan family, I learned that they're fiercely proud to be from Wyoming. And we're Wyomingites in every way. There's not a place I can go that people don't talk to you. Like, if you go to some of the bigger cities, people are scared and they don't talk to you.
They go, I wonder what they want from us, you know. It's no gimmick. People are down to earth.
And it's peaceful. You can leave your keys in your car. People don't even lock their houses here. In Sheridan, it's very Western.
And that's what they're known for. It's like their Western hospitality. Everybody is just very friendly and they want you to be here. They want you to stay.
Like they encourage people to come out here, but people don't realize. They just think, oh, Wyoming, there's nothing there. There's there's people here.
You know, there's activities here. I mean, it's a nice place. And as third and fourth generation of Hans grow up in Wyoming, it seems that this will. always be home. And to think, it all started with one man selling hamburgers in a small town in the American West.