April 1999
Arslan sat with his back straight, sandals off, a string of black prayer beads slipping gently through his fingers. He didn't blink too often—just enough to look devout. A child too composed for his age. Dressed in white, shawl draped like a whisper, voice trained in the art of being forgettable.
Behind him, the set glittered in televised divinity: velvet drapes, a fake mihrab carved into cheap wood, and artificial roses blooming in plastic vases under studio lights.
"And with us today," the host was saying with syrup in his tone, "is the man Pakistan calls 'Rehmat ka Saaya,' Malik Riyaz Sahab of the Al-Riyaz Foundation. And the boy some say was seen in a dream by an aalim of Medina—his grandson, Arslan."
The camera panned.
Riyaz nodded, solemn, composed. White hair combed back. His face oiled, shaped, rehearsed. The image of saintly patriarchy. His ring glinted—a ruby, gifted by a molvi whose career he'd saved.
Arslan looked up only when asked.
"And beta, what would you like to say to the other children watching you today?"
He smiled like dawn.
> "To listen to your elders. To serve your deen. And… to eat only halal snacks."
The audience laughed gently. It was perfect. The show was recorded two weeks earlier, edited carefully. Even the adhan that interrupted halfway through was scheduled.
At the bottom of the screen, the sponsor banner rolled:
> "This Ramadan, wash your soul—and your clothes—with Al-Riyaz Washing Powder."
---
In Uch Sharif, behind an old colonial courthouse now turned Al-Riyaz media center, fax machines screeched and hissed like tired ghosts.
Each one bore the logo burned into its plastic shell. Inside, two men worked 12-hour shifts—sweating under dim bulbs, lips blackened with chaalia and pa'an, cross-checking slip numbers. Every message was a transaction:
> Sent: 5,000 rupees.
From: Hafiz Kamran, Branch #044,
To: Sister Rukhsana, Branch #019, Chichawatni.
Slips were printed and stamped with a custom seal. Stored in triplicate. Paper was cheap—bought in bales from Faisalabad. Ink was bought in drums from Karachi.
The man behind this system didn't believe in banks.
He believed in command.
---
By mid-1999, every Al-Riyaz madrasa-school had three roles:
1. Education
2. Canteen Sales
3. Unofficial Remittance Branch
Villagers who once had to walk hours to tehsils now simply walked to the nearest Al-Riyaz branch.
They'd hand cash to the man on duty. He'd note the recipient's name, branch code, and phone number. The money was then "sent" through fax—instantly.
The receiving branch would:
Print a slip.
Call the recipient's home via landline.
Wait for verification code (memorized by the sender).
Release the money.
No fees. No delays. No ledger trails. Only Al-Riyaz slips and a steel drawer under lock.
It was run not by bankers—but by ex-seminary students trained by Arslan's team. Barely literate in numbers. Exceptionally loyal in faith.
Each region had a two-man rotation from the Department of Balance—a shadow unit reporting only to Riyaz.
Arslan called it "Iqtisadi Amanah"—economic guardianship.
---
The Gold Loans had evolved into rituals.
Every Friday, right after the khutbah, a team would spread out velvet cloths in mosque courtyards. They set up discreet tables. Unfolded ledgers. Laid out small scales.
People came in clusters.
> "My son is getting married."
"I need a hand-pump for the farm."
"My girl's dowry is incomplete."
"There's no roof over our heads."
And they were given gold—measured by tola, wrapped in soft linen, and marked with a wax seal.
The only rule: Return in gold.
The catch: The loan lasted up to two years.
The truth: Gold always rose in value.
So when they returned it—Arslan profited. Quietly. Silently. Ethically.
People praised Riyaz like a saint.
---
Meanwhile, back in the Bahawalpur estate, Arslan reviewed the files from the Media Influence Department—one of the seventy head offices that reported to Riyaz but were truly operated under his silent hand.
> Fifty percent of local media (radio, magazines, women's digests, school journals, cassette dramas) now carried content or advertising provided by Al-Riyaz.
Seventeen cartoon episodes produced under "Maqool Moti" series.
Forty-three pamphlets distributed monthly in women's gatherings.
Thirty puppet show groups currently in rotation.
Two religious magazines completely ghostwritten by Arslan himself, under the names of elderly molvis who had been given monthly pensions and told to stay quiet.
And then came the incoming faxes—reports from gold transactions, branch health, complaints, whisper campaigns, missing ledgers, land disputes, molvi behavior checks.
He'd go through them all with tea and a steel nib pen, making margin notes.
> "Replace Imran in Bhakar. Too curious."
"Send toys to Kot Addu branch. Low morale."
"Increase sugar supply to Mirpur. High footfall."
"Summon Bilal. Suspected bribery."
Arslan did not bark orders. He scribbled truth.
---
Riyaz was now on stamps.
That's when it got real.
In August, the Pakistan Post released a limited run of "Religious Philanthropists". Riyaz was featured alongside three other names nobody remembered.
Arslan watched the launch event from his private room. He didn't need to be there. He'd written the speech Riyaz gave. He'd picked the verse that opened it.
He smiled.
Then went back to calculating how much of southern Punjab's postal infrastructure could be bought in the next ten years.
---
The land network was now 9% of Pakistan.
Dotted with trees Arslan had ordered planted in 1995.
Partitioned with rows of jamun, mango, and grape vines.
Barren plots turned to gardens, then depots, then potential housing societies.
Empty fields used for Friday food distributions, Eid animal sales, and free schooling tests.
He called them "Reservoirs of Expansion."
One day they'd be filled with homes, roads, bazaars. For now—they were reputation banks.
---
To the villagers, Al-Riyaz was a miracle.
Your child went to school there.
You prayed there.
You bought snacks there.
You watched puppet shows there.
You sent money through it.
You got loans through it.
You collected stickers and sermons from it.
You even died there—and were buried in its graveyards.
And everything bore the same round logo:
A praying boy, backlit by divine light.
Sometimes, when it rained hard, children said they saw that same boy in the clouds.
---
Back in Bahawalpur, Riyaz sipped his green tea and told Arslan:
> "People think we're businessmen."
Arslan smiled, still flipping through the fax reports.
> "No," he said softly.
"We're architects."
---
October 1999
The desert was gold that week.
Dry winds moved across the cracked skin of southern Balochistan, lifting dust like prayer smoke. Trucks roared on half-made roads, their backs heavy with soap, salt, flour, and gasoline, their fronts painted with verses and slogans from Al-Riyaz. Even the most godless roads now bore his signature.
Arslan stood barefoot on the edge of a gas station under construction. No tiles yet. No glass on the office. Just pillars and a flag. A white one. A boy's silhouette stitched on it. A brand mistaken for a belief.
Riyaz stood beside him, wiping sweat from his forehead with a starched handkerchief.
> "Too much sun here."
Arslan didn't respond. He was watching the welders.
Sparks flew. Heat roared. Concrete mixed in a tin drum. The Al-Riyaz Petrol Depot would open next week. Ten more were being finalized across Sindh, twenty in Punjab, five in KP, and one—just one—in the upper reaches of Gilgit.
> "It has to happen this year," Arslan said. "Next year, everything changes."
He was twelve when he saw the tremble begin. Fourteen now. Time already licking at the edges of certainty.
The country would change. The world would wake up. Too many things coming too fast: internet, private television, cheap Chinese imports, mobile phones.
Arslan didn't want to ride the wave.
He wanted to build the beach.
---
By November, the entire southern railway cargo network had unofficial partnerships with Al-Riyaz.
Flour sacks branded with prayers moved from Sadiqabad to Swat.
Soap embossed with pious slogans was sold in bazaars from Larkana to Layyah.
Matchboxes printed with cartoon characters were collected by children too young to read.
Footwear stamped "Mu'min Soles" sold for cheap, promised purity and comfort.
Rice bags with a silhouette and ayah were stacked in every village.
The madmen of ideology never suspected him.
Because they never looked past Riyaz.
---
Education had gone to war.
In 1997, there were 200 madrasa+school hybrids.
Now in 1999, there were 680 branches across the country. Each one:
Built next to a masjid.
With a tuck shop, garden, and remittance window.
Housing classrooms by morning, faith by noon, commerce by evening.
Every child wore Al-Riyaz uniforms.
Every blackboard had chalk that bore the seal.
Every teacher was paid in cash, food rations, and health stipends.
The curriculum was state-approved. But the storybooks weren't.
Inside classrooms, young boys and girls flipped through books written by "anonymous saints", filled with morality fables, dream-wisdom, sugar-coated loyalty to the Foundation, and every now and then—a cartoon.
---
The card collection war had begun.
In Lahore, a boy named Danish stabbed his cousin with a compass over a rare "Imandar Izzat" card—a limited edition from the Qasas Cards series hidden inside matchboxes.
Arslan had invented the series after studying Pokémon's rise in Japan and Panini sticker collections from Italy. But he made it religious, local, addictive.
Each cartoon came with:
A virtue ("Sabr Sultan", "Haya Hero", "Aqal ki Aapa").
A short hadith or ayah.
A code redeemable for tiny toys at Al-Riyaz tuck shops.
Children who couldn't read could still trade.
And they did. Wildly. In villages and cities. It was sugar-wrapped indoctrination and the entire country was hooked.
---
The art of buying power had become a science.
In Peshawar, they met the future Minister of Religious Affairs and gifted his daughter a custom set of dolls in hijabs—each named after a Quranic virtue.
In Karachi, they paid for 30 borewells and let the credit go to a prominent MPA from Lyari.
In Islamabad, Riyaz shook hands with Shahid Hameed again—this time not for television, but for something more permanent: a quiet joint memorandum of cooperation between the Al-Riyaz Foundation and Pakistan's Ministry of Welfare.
It wasn't public. But it was binding.
Money flowed quietly. Dreams, fabricated. Land, promised.
Arslan ensured that each politician who mattered had been seen in a dream—doing something noble. And they believed it. Because it was flattering. And powerful people are weak before flattery cloaked in God's name.
---
By December 1999, Al-Riyaz was no longer a foundation.
It was the spine of the country.
25,000+ employees, not counting rotating labor.
90 factories, 70 media outlets, and a distribution network wider than any private company.
680 madrasa-schools, 300 public gardens, 150 tuck shops, 60 depots, and a network of landlines and fax centers used as banking shadows.
Every product branded.
Every Friday sermon reinforced.
Every minor scandal buried.
He even had five scent factories now—producing attar oils, prayer fragrances, and soaps. Every molvi who dared speak against Al-Riyaz smelled like it.
---
In Bahawalpur, Arslan sat on the floor of his room, cross-legged, surrounded by files.
Market reports.
Cartel negotiations.
Reports on molvis who were asking too many questions.
Construction updates.
Education expansion charts.
He used his divine dreams sparingly now. A few per month. Always targeted.
Cricket matches.
Lotto numbers.
Livestock futures.
Rumors of upcoming floods.
Which politician would win a seat.
Each one produced millions in liquidity. And none of it went into his name.
Every rupee was poured back into the system:
Seed planting in Thal desert.
Palm saplings from Oman.
A salt mine project.
Fuel extraction in Dera Bugti.
Textile looms in Multan.
Tin-roof toy factories near Vehari.
---
At Jumma, an elder stood up and said:
> "Where the state failed, Al-Riyaz stood."
And the congregation clapped.
Riyaz smiled humbly.
Arslan stood behind him, hands folded, head bowed, looking like an angel painted by a blind man.
He knew what was coming. The world would change soon.
But he was already the world.
The morning of Eid-ul-Fitr, February 2000, broke open like a wound stitched with gold thread.
Fog still clung to the base of the Margalla Hills, reluctant to part from the quiet power that had gathered below them. And in the great green plain of Islamabad National Grounds, where the elite came to pray once a year, the rows had already formed—neat, pressed, holy.
Riyaz stood before them, in white shalwar kameez, black waistcoat, his hair combed flat, his posture military straight. His voice was the azaan today.
His hands were the takbir.
His presence was the gravity.
Behind him: a thousand bodies wrapped in cotton and wealth. Businessmen, generals, judges, bureaucrats, ministers, party heads, columnists, lobbyists, the true parliament of Pakistan—none of them elected by the people. All of them shaped by Riyaz's cheques and silence.
And right in the front row, centered like punctuation between commas of legacy:
Arslan.
A boy in a clean grey kurta, eyes lowered, prayer beads twirling in rhythm with his heartbeat. Everyone around him had heard the name. Some thought he was a miracle child, others a Qatari heir, and a few insiders even whispered he was the hidden saint behind the snack revolution.
Only Riyaz knew the truth.
That he was a lion in sheep's wool.
---
After the prayer, the world broke into protocol.
> "Sahib, will you join us for brunch?" "We're organizing a delegation to Dubai next week." "There's a textile policy proposal your Foundation might want to glance at."
Riyaz nodded. Smiled. Spoke little.
Arslan held his grandfather's hand as they exited through the guarded VIP route. Ten black Toyota Land Cruisers, all marked under different shell companies, waited like mechanical rottweilers in a neat line.
They didn't wave to the cameras.
They didn't need to.
The Pakistani press was already theirs.
---
Two years ago, Arslan had begun infiltrating print journalism—not by owning outlets, but by sponsoring the education of journalists' children, giving funds to dying local weeklies, buying paper mills, and providing free printing to government-approved narratives.
Now in February 2000, at least 40% of Pakistan's most circulated papers relied on Al-Riyaz subsidies—officially or unofficially.
A small media wing inside the Bahawalpur haveli had become a 24-hour newsroom, pumping out digest articles, sermons, cartoons, educational pieces, parables for radio, and "inspirational dream narratives" from Riyaz's lips.
Most of them written by Arslan himself.
---
The army?
They were already family.
Back in 1992, when the Al-Riyaz expansion was a flicker of foundation stones and cement, Riyaz had summoned his old comrades—five retired army men, all loyal, all useful, all without scandal.
He seeded them into:
Recruitment agencies
Building inspector departments
Import/export warehouses
Local police stations
Food and health licensing boards
Each one kept their uniforms close and their egos closer. But they bowed to Riyaz. Because behind him stood a tidal wave of money and miracles.
Since 1996, the army had been receiving:
Quarterly construction grants for school projects.
Prayer rugs and soaps for mess halls.
Free fuel at select Al-Riyaz petrol stations.
And most importantly: Silence where silence was required.
They didn't ask questions.
They made room for trucks.
They cleared lands.
They allowed prayer schools to bloom on cantonment edges.
---
Meanwhile, the justice system? Bought through generosity.
Lawyers gifted branded watches, invited to "networking Umrah" trips funded by anonymous zakat donors.
Judges honored during Ramadan with plaques and "service to religion" medals.
Clerks offered home appliances, bikes, and silent medical support for sick family members.
Even the traffic police, underfunded and brutalized, now wore Al-Riyaz embroidered gloves, handed out for "safety and hygiene" during Eid.
Every ministry, every corridor, every office that once snubbed Riyaz now opened like a Quran on a Friday afternoon—eager to be read and recited.
---
Back at the Bahawalpur haveli, as the afternoon heat mellowed into stillness, Arslan sat alone.
Files open.
Charts spread.
D-25.
He had twenty-five years of certainty left. Twenty-five years of pre-known events, cricket scores, currency crashes, government collapses, real estate booms, death dates, births of major players, droughts, earthquakes, technological leaps, stock shifts, and ideological trends.
And he was burning through them like a man possessed.
The plan had shifted:
No more small factories—now, industrial estates.
No more snack brands—now, food empires with vertical integration.
No more madrasa schools—now, knowledge cities that mixed faith, ethics, and vocational work.
No more media infiltration—now, media construction: TV stations, shortwave radio, digest empires.
Every barren land in Uch Sharif and Rahim Yar Khan was now a garden or a future university. Trees planted in neat rows: Kikkar, Neem, Moringa, and fruits native and foreign.
Imported date seeds from Iran, grapes from Turpan, guava from Lucknow, mango from Egypt. Each hectare a self-sustained bio-block. Each field a legacy bunker for food sovereignty.
---
There was now an entire ministry-sized division within the Foundation solely dedicated to faith product monopolies:
Turban textiles produced only by Al-Riyaz-certified women's collectives.
Prayer beads carved in workshops in Skardu, dyed with organic rosewood from Sindh.
Ittar oils produced in seven variants, sold with QR-code-like collectibles.
Prayer caps with stitching that matched cartoon characters and virtues.
Every masjid that wanted upgrades came to Riyaz.
Every molvi that wanted more donations wrote to the Foundation.
Every Friday prayer echoed with thanks to the benefactor who never appeared—but who was said to dream miracles and deliver quietly.
---
In Islamabad, the President of Pakistan remarked during a closed meeting:
> "It's strange. The only non-political entity in this country with more ground support than us… doesn't even attend a single rally."
And the Interior Minister replied:
> "That's because he's already in every home."