63 years Perveen Sarwar, 63, wife of Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar was only 6 years old when her father Ghulam brought her with her mother and three brothers from Pakistan to Lossiemouth.

Ghulam had chosen the Moray Firth fishing town because it reminded him of his waterside village home in India. He came in UK with £10 in his pocket and a rented room. He sold goods door to door, until he established a successful grocery business in the town.

Perveen has warm memories of her childhood in Lossiemouth, arriving with no English to the embrace of neighbours, who walked her to school and taught her to ride her bike in the park. Her mother Azmat made her friends curries and they called her “mum”.

Perveen was the only Asian girl

at her school and sobbed the first time she was called a n****r. But her father told her to save her tears for a harder road ahead, to hold her head high and remember she was equal to all.

Mohammad was Perveen’s first cousin and they met when she visited Pakistan with her family. She was 17 and drawn to his maturity. When their parents saw there was a mutual affection, a marriage was arranged.

Perveen bring her fiancé to Scotland in 1976 and they were married in the July. After the wedding, the couple moved to Mohammad’s home, a council flat in Glasgow ’s Maryhill.

It was Perveen’s £2500 savings which gave Mohammad the starter cash for what would become a £200million cash and carry empire. With her money and a loan, they bought a debt-ridden, rat-infested store in Maryhill Road.

She rolled up her sleeves and helped turn the business around. Perveen said: “I tell men, whatever you spend on educating your sons, spend more on your daughters’