This story is part of Asian American Bustle, an occasional series publishing during Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Navin Butt flips through her photo album and sees a picture of her daughter smiling in front of the Irving apartment her family lived in almost three decades ago.
Behind her daughter is a flower bush her husband planted. The red petals are as vivid as her memories of those days, when she and hundreds of people of South Asian descent lived at the Wingren Village apartments.
The children at the complex just north of Texas State Highway 183 and east of North MacArthur Boulevard referred to neighbors as “uncles” and “aunties.” They considered each other brothers and sisters and were there for each other during times of need, according to nearly a dozen former residents of the complex. Together, they would build a community that became part of the foundation of the South Asian American enclave in Irving.
“When it was Ramadan, we rented one apartment and we used to break fast together, pray together,” she told The Dallas Morning News. “Kids would play together, you know?”
“Navin auntie” — as the kids called her — jests that she was the principal of Wingren Village.
“I could scold any kid if they were doing something wrong, and their parents would not mind,” she said.
Her family left Pakistan in 1981 and, after living in Chicago, moved to Irving in 1983, when the South Asian community in North Texas was a fraction of what it is today.
More than 31,000 people who identify as Pakistani live in Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. A high concentration of the population resides in or near Irving, data showed.
“We wanted our daughter to be in the United States but to know her culture, her religion, her language,” Navin said about living in Irving. “The roots are always there.”
A village built by friendships
Navin’s husband, Mohammed Humayoun Butt, said living at Wingren Village was a “precious time.”
“All the aunties and uncles in the evening, they come out — aunties on one side, uncles on the other, sit there, talk, bond together,” he said. “That was the main attraction of that place: bonding together.”
Not many Pakistani families lived in Irving in the mid-1980s, but word of Wingren Village spread by the mid-1990s, Humayoun said. As the complex started attracting more South Asian families (mostly Pakistani but also including some of Bangladeshi and Indian descent), some residents of Wingren Village started grocery stores and other services nearby.
His best friend, Mir Euque U-Kiu, was like the mayor of Wingren Village, he remembered.
He, U-Kiu and about a dozen other families who were living at the complex in the mid-1990s wanted a space for the local Muslim families to worship. They raised money for rent — at first a house, and later a retail space — so people could have a place for their prayers. They also supported and volunteered at some of the area’s earliest mosques, including the Barkaat-ul-Quran and the Islamic Center of Irving, each of which is within a 10-minute drive from Wingren Village.
There was a closeness at the apartment complex that’s hard to replicate, Humayoun said. Along with those fond memories there are painful ones, too, he said.
He and U-Kiu were playing a game of chess, as they often would, when U-Kiu mentioned that he “had a lot of acidity.” He would fall ill a short time later.
“Something called cancer. We were not aware of that disease at that time,” Humayoun said.
Facing tragedy together
Surriya U-Kiu left Pakistan in 1987 for the U.S. with her husband.
She said her spouse, Mir Euque U-Kiu, wanted a community where South Asian families who are Muslim, like his, could find some semblance of the home they left for better opportunity. He would invite South Asian immigrant families, even those he had recently met, to move to Wingren Village, Surriya said.
Gradually, she saw more and more families move into the apartment complex. Her husband seemed to be in his element; she could sense his excitement to build something bigger than himself.
“After work, all my friends and I used to sit on the stairs, and the kids would be playing outside — cricket and all kinds of things,” she said.
One of her husband’s proudest moments, she recalled, was a time he organized a party to celebrate Eid for the families at the complex. For a night, he and few of the other uncles of Wingren Village rented an apartment unit, played music and invited families to bring different dishes.
“That was one of the last gatherings we had as a happy gathering,” Surriya said.
The day Surriya learned of her husband’s cancer diagnosis was the day of their wedding anniversary, she recalled. The next several months felt like they went by “so fast,” she said.
She had little chance to process what her future would be, how her three daughters would grow up. When he died in August 1994, it felt like all of Wingren Village mourned, she said. For several days, despite the Texas summer heat, families laid out white cloth in front of Surriya’s apartment and prayed outside as Surriya and her daughters grieved.
“It was a very tough time. I was only 32 or 33 at that time,” she said. “To be honest, I was scared. That was so sudden, you know?”
Her parents wanted her to return to Pakistan — her father told her to consider her daughters. But she had made a promise to her husband that she was not willing to break. In the presence of his parents and her brother, U-Kiu requested that his three daughters be raised in the U.S. to have “the best of East and West.”
“No. I have to fight,” she recalls telling herself.
The aunties and uncles of Wingren Village made sure she wasn’t alone in that fight.
Before U-Kiu died, Surriya had worked at a South Asian grocery store. About a year after his death, she went to community college for a continuing education program, and later, got a job at American Airlines. People at Wingren Village helped her with child care, and she made extra cash by taking children at the apartment complex to school in her station wagon. Contributing to the community’s needs gave her a sense of purpose, Surriya said.
“During that time if I was not in that community, maybe I would have left, you know? But they gave me the support,” she said.
Fazal Mahmood was U-Kiu and Surriya’s upstairs neighbor when he moved to the Wingren apartments in 1992.
“I have good memories of U-Kiu — my brother. I have very good memories. I miss him, he was a very nice guy,” Fazal said. “Surriya is my sister.”
He described U-Kiu as a leader, and as painful as his death was, it inspired others at the apartment complex to continue his vision for a close-knit community, he said. Even after Fazal moved to Mesquite in 1999, he’d visit Wingren Village every Saturday, he said.
In the early-to-mid 2000s, many Pakistani American families who lived in the complex started moving out and buying or renting single-family homes as they built up wealth.
Navin and Surriya’s families moved out of Wingren Village, but still live in Irving. They meet during Ramadan and other family gatherings.
Reconnecting with old roots
Navin and several others who lived at Wingren Village — including her daughter Natasha and Surriya’s daughter, Aisha — visited the complex in February with The News.
Natasha points out a hill she would ride her bicycle down every summer. Aisha talks about the fear of learning how to swim at the apartment pool. The pay phone everyone used to make overseas calls is still behind the laundry room.
“Mom, don’t touch that,” Natasha warns as her mother reaches for the receiver.
In the corner of her eye, something catches Navin’s attention.
“The rose tree is still there?” she says. The leaves have all but withered away and the plant is almost unrecognizable, but it’s still there; the roots are still holding firm.
Hearing Natasha and Aisha laugh and share memories in front of her old Wingren Village apartment unit, Navin feels grateful.
“Alhamdulillah, we’re all connected still,” she says.
