Just a couple of steps to the right on Coney Island Avenue and down a short dark corridor, a long line of men waits impatiently to meet this 34-year-old unmarried woman. It’s tax season, and Bazah Roohi’s accounting, firm Bi Bi Jan, is bustling with business. This workspace, which is almost twice the size of Mr.Choudhary’s insurance storefront, has three small offices and a waiting room. Harsh fluorescent white swaths the walls of the waiting room, which contains a large, black leather couch and several colorful posters. One of them proudly displays the Statue of Liberty, with the New York City skyline and the American flag fading into the background. Another one is a sign, which reads in bold, bright red letters, You had a Choice, and You Chose Us! Thank You!
In one of these offices, Roohi is seated at her desk, intently studying her computer screen. Sitting across from her is a nervous-looking man who stares at Roohi expectantly while wringing his hands under the desk. She looks away from the computer and tells the man, in Urdu, that he will be getting back a $6,300 tax rebate. He is relieved and starts thanking Roohi profusely, as if she is the reason he will be receiving this money. As he gets up to leave, another man is waiting edgily right outside the office, files tucked under his arms.
In Urdu, Bi Bi Jan literally means ‘Madam-life’—a common term connoting both endearment and respect for a woman. The accounting firm is one of the most popular businesses in the neighborhood, having served some 2,000 members of Midwood’s Pakistani community. She admits that sometimes it is difficult for her to believe that she has come this far, on her own.
Roohi, who first arrived in the United States ten years ago, was originally supposed to settle in California, where she wanted to get an advanced degree in marketing. After finishing her MBA from Punjab University in Lahore, Roohi coaxed her mother into letting her go abroad, a serious plea to present to a conservative family like hers. “In the traditional background that I grew up in, my family members did not approve of girls going so far away on their own” explains Roohi, “but I don’t know why, when I tried, it didn’t take me that long to convince them to let me go.” Roohi’s father had passed away in a car accident when she was 15, after which her mother raised Roohi, an only child. Roohi’s unrelenting insistence had slowly made her mother more open to her future education and career plans, though till the very last minute she begged Roohi to stay.
Before heading to the West Coast, Roohi decided to make a stop in New York to visit some family friends who lived on Kings Highway, in a lively neighborhood where recent Russian and Chinese immigrants live alongside Sephardic Jews. “After getting there, I just didn’t leave!” says Roohi, laughing. It was too late to apply for school for the coming year, so Roohi decided to pursue studies later and find a job in New York in the meantime. She soon found a job posting in one of the local newspapers for a temporary office assistant position at a small accounting firm, and was hired promptly after she applied. Here Roohi received a crash course in the American tax system. “First I found it terribly difficult, as I had never done anything like it before. The Pakistani tax system is so different. I would look at this—” she picks up a standard 1040 tax form from the desk in front of her, “and start panicking.
“But when I got the hang of it, I loved it,” Roohi continues. “It was like a mathematical puzzle for me, and solving it became fun.” Roohi had been temping for two months when the general manager of the firm threatened to quit right before tax season if he wasn’t given a raise. Roohi’s boss decided to get rid of him and promote Roohi to the position. She stayed at the firm for another couple of months, until she decided that she had learned enough to start her own tiny practice. At this point Roohi moved out of her relative’s house, rented a cheap apartment in the same area, and started her own one-woman accounting firm from her living room.
Roohi began her accounting career in this country by doing people’s taxes for free, and asking them to tell their friends and relatives about her services. She would knock on doors in immigrant neighborhoods in Queens—another important hub for the South-Asian community in New York—introduce herself, and offer her services. “My best customers were cab drivers,” she recalls, “They are always talking to each other on their little devices, and if I would do their taxes and they were happy with my work they would recommend me to each other.” Even today, almost every Pakistani cab driver in New York City has heard of Roohi and her accounting firm, if he isn’t already her customer.
Roohi was so desperate for work that she would personally deliver the completed tax forms to clients’ houses until late in to the night. “Since there weren’t many conservative Pakistanis living in my neighborhood on Kings Highway, there was nobody to criticize me if I was coming back alone at 2 in the morning,” she remembers. “It was good because I was a hard worker then, and needed that kind of freedom to establish myself.” She soon opened her first real office, in Manhattan near Herald Square, and started charging for her services. “ It was one-fourth the size of this one,” she adds with a smile. She soon realized that getting an office in that location was not a wise decision because most of her cab and limo driver clients could not find parking in the area. “They would call me from their cell-phones and I would run downstairs and pick up their tax forms while they waited in their cars and then run back upstairs a million times a day.”
