Editor's note: As part of its recently published special report on Albany's Central Avenue, the Times Union featured a profile of Mohammed Hossain, one of the suspects arrested Thursday during an FBI raid of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany. Here is the text of that story.
Mohammed Hossain's journey to owning Little Italy pizzeria began in an unlikely place: Bangladesh.
Hossain and his wife, Mossamat, emigrated with their 1-year-old son, Abuhamza, from Bangladesh in 1985 in search of opportunity to lift themselves out of grinding poverty.
Their native tongue is Bengali and they arrived in this country knowing little English. Hossain worked as a dishwasher in diners, where he learned Greek and English. He gradually moved up to a position in the kitchen, with throwing pizzas being part of his repertoire. Nine years of saving allowed the family to rent a small storefront and open a pizzeria he called Little Italy in 1994. Adapting the menu to the neighborhood, they added fried chicken, hamburgers, beef patties, gyros and sweet potato pie. They eventually bought the building and moved into an apartment above the pizzeria with their five children.
When the kids -- who attend Annur Islamic School in Schenectady -- aren't using booths in the pizzeria as study tables, they do small jobs for their parents.
Except for a brief post-Sept. 11 backlash, business has grown steadily, and the couple has bought at public auction and fixed up income properties off Central Avenue.
''I'm proud to be an American,'' Hossain says. ''When I was in high school in Bangladesh, I looked at a map of America and I dreamed of coming to this great land. Since I've been here, opportunity has kissed my feet. Hard work has done the rest.''
Hossain has one regret he hopes to rectify soon.
''I'd like to sell the pizza shop and the houses and let my wife go back to college to get her Ph.D.,'' he says. She arrived in this country with a graduate degree in sociology but couldn't find work in that field, he explains.
''I feel guilty every day of my life,'' Hossain says. ''She has a master's degree and she works all day in a pizza shop. She should be out helping someone. Or teaching. I want to give her the chance to continue her education.''