Monday 9 August 2010

Little Birmingham

There's widespread coverage in the news of the murder in Pakistan of a couple from Birmingham, Gul and Begum Wazir. The BBC version states that the couple were killed in Salehana, "sometimes referred to as Little Birmingham because of its strong ties with the Pakistani community in the West Midlands." Well, that's interesting, I thought, and I proceeded to do a Google search. And guess what? A search on Salehana brings up no results except for 150 versions of this news story, plus a few people's surnames. Wherever this story originated, that journalist was given a spelling but didn't check it. Now, spellings of Pakistani placenames are variable, to be sure, but it's far from helpful to use a spelling that no-one can find on the internet.

So, how did I find the village? Luckily other news sites gave the name of the district* (Nowshera) and I was able to find this site which handily lists all the villages there. Scrolling down the list I found Saleh Khana. Bingo! The Wikipedia entry for the village is wonderful, and I've done a screencap in case they rewrite it now in a more mature manner...

No comments:

Post a Comment