A Secret Success

Farhad Motazedian likes pizza, which is good because his shop makes as many as 80 pies a day. He arrived in Britain four years ago from Iran — claiming political asylum after getting caught up in antigovernment demonstrations — and ended up in Leicester, an industrial city 150 km north of London. For 15 months he shared a small room with two chain smokers in a run-down hotel that housed some 400 other asylum seekers. An experienced and energetic materials engineer, he wasn't permitted to have a job while the authorities considered his case, so he volunteered to work for free...