Abdul Karim

Johnny

Glasgow

1947–93

Abdul Karim was born in Rawalpindi, India (now Pakistan) in 1920. In late 1947, in response to the partition of India, Karim migrated from Pakistan to Britain. His first place of settlement was Belfast, where he worked for a few weeks before moving to Glasgow in January 1948.

Upon arriving in Glasgow, Karim became a pedlar and sold clothes door-to-door. In a 1984 interview with the Daily Mail, Karim stated that he saw an opportunity to sell clothes to those who lived in Scotland's remote islands, where visiting shops was very difficult.

Every eight weeks, after receiving new supplies, Karim would leave his wife and children in Glasgow and take the train to Oban, before catching a ferry to the Hebrides. He would frequently visit customers in places such as the Isle of Barra, Islay and Gigha, and was known for cycling across the islands. The locals nicknamed him ‘Johnny’, since they could not pronounce his name.

Karim’s experiences as a pedlar in the Hebrides, as well as his customers’ feelings about his work, were featured in a BBC documentary titled ‘They Call Me Johnny’ (1968). He remembered his first customers, two elderly sisters from the Isle of Barra who accommodated Abdul when they heard he was staying at the expensive McLeod Hotel. He soon found long-term accommodation with a landlady named Flora on the Isle of Barra, where he lived for twenty years. He said that Flora would, at times, make him chapatis and would often eat Pakistani food with him. Karim described his customers as ‘very kind people. I feel like they’re my own people, like family members’.

He continued his work as a pedlar in the Hebrides for at least thirty-three years. Abdul died in 1993, aged 73.