In March 2007, Arslan changed his rhythm.
For sixteen years, every dinar, every riyal, every rupee had flowed back into the machine—into cement and copper, soap and scripture, ink and ideology. But now for the first time since the fire in Uch Sharif rewrote his fate, Arslan touched the reservoir.
He didn't just open the vault—he cracked it with surgical calm.
Thirty countries. That was the vision.
Not just flags and deals on paper, but presence. Something real. Something held. Something whispered from mouth to mouth, a brand that felt more like a belief system than a business. A scent in the air. A sticker on a window. A candy wrapper in a child's hand. An advertisement painted into a village wall in blue and white. "Al Riyaz: Saaf Niyat, Saaf Zindagi."
He began by importing exactly what they asked for—but always 10% more expensive than the agreed rate. Because Arslan didn't want profit here. He wanted debt. He wanted the illusion of a gift. The kind of favor that sits in the corner of a mayor's memory, that simmers quietly in the pocket of a border patrol chief, a customs officer's wife who got free soap samples and a water pump kit.
The exports? No one paid for those. They were offerings. Carefully wrapped, quietly slipped into the arteries of small power: municipal officers, school principals, dry fruit wholesalers, Friday sermon clerics. A ripple effect of generosity without request.
Arslan hired seventh-generation locals—men and women with lineage in those lands, fluent in the idioms of trust and tradition. Their job wasn't to sell. It was to belong. To host small dinners. To donate books. To clean a mosque once a month. To speak softly of Al Riyaz in the queue at a post office. He trained them personally. Some took six months to understand their first assignment. Arslan didn't mind.
His gold vaults were bottomless now. The rivers of recycled metal, oil, salt, grain, leather, and copper flowed back into him every week from Pakistan's veins. There was no limit to what he could do.
And so, he did.
He shipped five million units of Al Riyaz 3050. The premium device, fifteen years ahead of its time. A plastic shell smooth like the iPhone 5c. A shape that would not exist until 2013, yet Arslan had carved it from memory. Inside, it was Nokia C5's brain—2G, 3G, SMS, call, Bluetooth, torch. A 5MP camera in some models. No Wi-Fi, no apps, just beauty. Pure, stubborn beauty.
By December 2007, each of those 30 countries had over 300,000 devices in warehouses, hidden in supply chains, or already distributed.
Some came free in school kits. Others were "lottery prizes." Others were sold below cost in remote places where competitors didn't bother. Some were stolen. Arslan knew that. He wanted that. He wanted these phones to travel like rumors—"Have you seen this phone? It doesn't break. It doesn't die. It just works."
The loss margins were irrelevant. These were not products. These were flags.
And with them, he sent other goods—notebooks, stickers, fruit-flavored soap, candy shaped like cartoon characters from the Al Riyaz digest comics. A slow branding. A subtle marking. Children in Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Uganda, Latvia, and Qatar were now playing with toys that whispered Arslan's presence.
He didn't send flags. He sent feelings. Colors. Habits. He planted identity like seeds.
By January 1st, 2008, those 5 million phones would begin moving en masse—distributed by every imaginable channel. Some legal. Some local. Some contraband. Some promotional. Some through mosques. Some through street vendors. Others dropped from rooftops as part of marketing gimmicks.
A dozen different stories would spread: "A Pakistani sheikh is blessing countries with phones." "A child saw this model in a dream." "This phone doesn't catch fire, even if you forget it charging."
It didn't matter what they believed.
As long as they remembered the name.
As long as they heard it in their own language.
"Al Riyaz."
The phone that arrived without explanation.
The phone that refused to die.
The phone that became a whisper in thirty countries—
Before the world ever asked the right question.
He had spent two hundred million dollars and didn't flinch. He had opened his vaults like they were never meant to be closed, throwing gold and copper, soap and phones, onions and pamphlets across four continents. The world was a cold and slow animal. And Arslan, with 200 million dollars bleeding from his hands like holy water, was trying to teach it a new language.
Each of the 30 countries had now received 500,000 phones. A total of 15 million units shipped, unasked, uninvited, and mostly unacknowledged. But Arslan wasn't chasing gratitude. He was planting anchors—digital, physical, emotional. Children in Namibia had candy toys with Al Riyaz cartoons. Grandmothers in Jordan got new soap bars wrapped in floral paper with the Al Riyaz logo. Small mayors in Bosnia received baskets of mangoes and handwritten Qur'anic verse calligraphy. Each letter signed by a humble translator on behalf of Malik Riyaz and his grandson.
These weren't contracts.
They were confessions.
Because Arslan knew now what he had always suspected back in 2025 but never truly understood: white people were not Pakistani. They didn't respond to dreams. They didn't believe in miracles. They believed in systems, insurance, tax, audit, policy. Their religious leaders were school teachers. Their mothers didn't weep in Friday sermons. Their gods didn't punish through earthquakes and dead crops. They didn't respond to divine dreams.
And so he adapted.
He walked like a blind man with his cane upside down—no contact, no tap, no clue where the road might bite. But still, he walked. He gave more. For the sixth time, he sent samples—not just phones now, but new types of soft fabric, detergents, rice, dried fruit, toys, keypads with local languages, stationery, baby powder, small toys with built-in candy compartments, and Bluetooth earpieces with "Test Only" labels.
Every Al Riyaz branch operating overseas had now hired locally educated staff—natives of those cities, but taught the gospel of Arslan. They were trained in silence, obedience, modesty, and marketing. Their job wasn't to sell. Their job was to build longing.
The gifts were sometimes refused, sometimes misplaced, often mocked. But Arslan didn't care. His plan didn't require applause. His plan required layers. Contacts upon contacts. Memories. The seed of "I think I've heard of them before…" years later, when the buyer finally signs the dotted line.
And now, in October 2008, Arslan was on the road again. He was in airports and consulates and embassy dinners, hosting small, tightly-managed meetings. He didn't arrive with CEOs or lawyers this time. Just samples and stories. A soft-spoken assistant beside him. Four bodyguards. Always four. Always silent. Always local.
He met a telecom board in Turkey, brought them a rare model of dual-SIM phone. He sat with a Kenyan agriculture minister, gifted her a box of dried Pakistani mango strips with the brand slogan in Swahili. He visited a textile fair in Romania, handing out fabric rolls with Al Riyaz patterns printed in soft ink. The designs looked vaguely local but were unmistakably branded.
Arslan knew this was where most men gave up. This slow, humiliating phase. This gray tunnel between "We'll consider your proposal" and "Let's talk numbers." Most men pulled their money back. Most men withdrew their soul before the soil ever took root.
But not him.
He was Arslan. And Arslan was reborn. And rebirth does not know hesitation.
He moved like a virus in the bloodstream of the world, unnoticed yet persistent, persistent yet polite. He wasn't trying to conquer. He was trying to blend. Until one day, every customs officer would think:
"Wasn't Al Riyaz always there?"
And that day was coming.
Because now, with these new rounds of gifts, came binding samples. The ones that had "CONTRACTUAL DEMO - NON-RETURNABLE" printed in ten languages. The ones signed by board members of forgotten councils. The ones that had the Al Riyaz seal embossed in gold foil.
These gifts were no longer disposable. They were obligations.
And Arslan knew exactly what happened to governments that failed to honor small obligations. He had seen it before—in files, in scandals, in whispers from 2025. He was already placing his foot on the neck of a system that didn't know it was being tamed.
Lose to win.
It was the oldest rule in empire-building.
And Arslan had never been more prepared to lose.
The vaults opened with no ceremony. No trumpet of angels, no prayer, no light from heaven. Just cold fluorescent tubes flickering against the concrete walls of an underground facility in Karachi—sealed since 1998. Inside, the dust hadn't stirred in years. Crates stacked over crates. Wood swollen with time. Markings faded. But Arslan knew what they held. He had known for fifteen years.
Each chest opened now like a chapter from a forbidden book:
Gold coins stamped with the calligraphy of vanished dynasties.
Ruby rings set in bone-white silver with names no one could read.
Jade carvings from traders who died before Jinnah's great-grandfather was born.
Scrolls, brittle as air, and swords etched with forgotten prayers.
Some of it was trash. Some was priceless. But all of it had value. And Arslan didn't need museums. He needed leverage.
By now, the thirty countries weren't just dots on a map. They were lines. Invisible lines Arslan had redrawn with money, charm, gifts, and failure. The final round of negotiations from October to December had been brutal. He had offered triple the listed prices for minor import licenses. Bribed officials three times over what any sane businessman would. And he had received nothing in return but small permissions: a tiny warehouse outside Istanbul, a 5-year permit for soap sales in Nigeria, a dusty storage license in Oman, a shared retail shelf in a Latvian supermarket chain.
But for Arslan, this was enough.
He didn't plant trees for shade. He planted them for fruit. And fruit takes time.
Each relic, each artifact, each shimmering stone found a purpose now.
A bronze figurine from Uch Sharif was quietly gifted to a museum director in Portugal, who in return promised exhibition space for AR soaps at a regional cultural fair.
A set of handwritten Persian manuscripts went to a university dean in Iraq, which resulted in student-run kiosks selling AR-branded notebooks.
A jade elephant, once belonging to a pre-Raj merchant prince, was anonymously donated to a cultural house in Malaysia—just before they granted AR International exclusive rights to a children's snack distribution license.
This wasn't export.
This was infiltration.
And now, finally, AR International Pvt. Ltd. had emerged. No green domes, no Qur'anic verses on packaging. No more modesty banners. No "philanthropy" slogans or Ramadan sermon footnotes.
Now it was just—AR.
Clean. Global. Professional.
The Islamic face had retired from the stage. Not out of shame, but out of strategy. Arslan knew the religious veil had served its purpose. It had bound 200 million people to his name, his brand, his roots. But the world didn't wear veils. The world wore logos.
And Arslan had given them one.
He had hired locals in every country—not for charity, but for legitimacy. Western countries didn't listen to foreign whisperers. They listened to familiar tongues. And so Arslan trained third- and fourth-generation nationals with brown skin and white manners. Their job wasn't to act Pakistani. It was to act trustworthy. To blend in, represent, deflect, and grow.
The branding was local to each nation:
In Kenya, AR soaps were branded in tribal motifs, the text in Swahili, the scent mango-peach.
In Estonia, AR notebooks had icy blue covers with minimalist fonts.
In Qatar, AR mineral water carried poetic phrases in Arabic script, but with no mention of Pakistan or God.
All of it was coordinated by a command center back in Multan, disguised as a data analytics office but in truth run by military veterans and AI-fluent graduates handpicked by Arslan in 2004.
And while the world saw warehouses, shops, and kiosks—what Arslan saw was infrastructure.
60 international warehouses.
30 separate country teams.
Over 1,400 full-time foreign employees, all trained in Pakistan before returning to their home country.
Branded stalls in universities, ports, stadiums, bus terminals, and night markets.
And most importantly: a core internal network of silent watchers—Al Riyaz's global intelligence web, built through casual interviews, free gift surveys, charity drives, and every puppet show and toy campaign carried out abroad.
December 2008 ended in silence.
No headlines, no parties.
Just Arslan, in a room, reviewing thirty countries' contracts side by side.
It wasn't dominance. Not yet. But it was presence. It was roots.
And from this point on, it wasn't Pakistan that grew.
It was the world that would start shrinking.
The sermon was not announced with banners. There was no trailer played in cassette shops, no special ad in the digest or cartoon books. Just one small flyer on the mosque noticeboard:
"This Friday, after Zuhr, a khutbah by Arslan Riyaz."
No titles. No slogans. No divine claims. Just a name.
But the cities shook quietly. Every branch of Al Riyaz knew. Every employee. Every ally. Every enemy.
He hadn't given a sermon in two years.
It was February 2009. Two years since Arslan had left Pakistan to plant the AR flag across the world. And in those two years, the colossus they built began to slow. Not falter—not yet—but breathe heavier. Al Riyaz was sweating, like a lion after a failed hunt. Still majestic, still unmatched, but burning through reserves faster than they could fill them. Malik Riyaz was drowning in meetings and memos, the managers working double, the factories still producing—but the divine had gone silent.
Because only Arslan gave meaning to the system.
He was the myth that turned gears.
He was the faith that made math make sense.
And now he stood again—white kurta, soft beard, silver prayer beads in hand, looking more like a saint than a businessman. More prophet than prince. But inside, a mind sharper than steel, a memory spanning to 2025, and a plan that could outlive nations.
His khutbah began like any other. Humble. Quranic. Quiet. But somewhere in the second act, he shifted tone.
> "When the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) built alliances outside of Arabia, it was not because he lacked faith. It was because he had foresight. The world is not won by swords—it is won by structure."
And then it came. A simple line, spoken without ego:
> "Al Riyaz must grow. Not for me. Not for profit. But because if we do not step forward, the world will trample us when it marches through."
That was all it took. In every Al Riyaz branch, the donation pits—sealed for 8 years, untouched since 2001—were reopened. Tins, jars, vaults filled with jewelry, coins, cash, wheat, bonds, and unspoken pledges. The weight of public trust, stored in silence. In hundreds of towns, the word spread faster than media: "He is back."
By the end of that Friday, the numbers began moving.
In Bahawalpur, the grand central branch counted 11 crores in gold donations alone.
In Lahore, a textile tycoon handed over a 600-acre cotton field.
In Peshawar, an old clan leader sent his entire monthly caravan yield as sadaqah.
From Karachi, the owners of three ports forgave transport dues owed by Al Riyaz for five years.
And most importantly, the favours came due. Every MNA, MPA, every media head and bureaucrat who had received a loan, a washing powder shipment, a quiet gift of fuel or funds or forgiveness—they lined up now like dominoes tipping forward.
The race had begun. Not for profit. For proximity.
To Arslan.
To Al Riyaz.
By end of February 2009, $300 million USD worth of value had flowed in. And Arslan did not say thank you. He nodded once, smiled gently, and left for Islamabad International Airport.
He hadn't begged. He hadn't bargained.
He had simply spoken.
And Pakistan had answered.
---
Meanwhile, the international branch heads, struggling under the weight of aggressive expansion, now saw the tap reopened. The funds were back. The shipments resumed. Warehouses filled. The long game was alive again.
And Arslan, of course, had prepared. He had several lifeboats, each larger than the ship itself:
USB drives and laptops buried under estate vaults, with Bitcoin wallets from 2008, long untouched.
Stock holdings in companies that hadn't even launched IPOs yet—Google, Nvidia, AMD, Apple.
Rare earth metals, quietly purchased in 1998 under company proxies, now sitting like silent nukes in rural storage sites.
And the greatest weapon of all—his popularity. The name Arslan Riyaz, whispered like dua, printed on notebooks, imprinted in toy candy wrappers, and sitting on the lips of every mosque elder and every young child who ever held an AR3000 phone.
Riyaz understood now.
The entire system was Arslan's breath.
And the years they had held it together in his absence—they were a miracle in themselves.
But now the King had returned. Quiet. Smiling. Without crown or sword.
And cutting down international growth, as Riyaz once suggested, was suicide, not strategy.
So Arslan walked through the gates of the airport again—one hand holding his tasbih, the other in his pocket, rolling a coin older than the country itself.
The problem was solved.
And the future was already waiting.