NAWAZ SHARIFS CHARACTER, EYEBROWS RAISED ? SUO MOTTO DEMANDED ON ARTICLES 62 & 63 ON THE CHARACTER OF NAWAZ SHARIF WHO HAS BEEN PORTRAYED AS ASKING HER TO BE A GIRL FRIEND OF ZARDARI, and on rejection he presents himself. This has been DISCLOSED IN A BOOK WRITTEN BY KIM BARKER OF A LEADING INTERNATIONAL NEWSPAPER, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE. THE CONTENT: The Book publishes: Nawaz Sharifs Scandel With Kim Barker Once the interview was finished, Sharif looked at me. “Can you ask your translator to leave?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.” My translator looked at me with a worried forehead wrinkle. “It’s OK,” I said. He left. Sharif then looked at my tape recorder. “Can you turn that off?” I obliged. “I have to go,” I said. “I have to write a story.” He ignored me. “I have bought you an iPhone,” he said. He ignored me. “I have bought you an iPhone,” he said. “I can’t take it.” “Why not? It is a gift.” “No. It’s completely unethical, you’re a source.” “But we are friends, right?” I had forgotten how Sharif twisted the word “friend.” “Sure, we’re friendly, but you’re still the former prime minister of Pakistan and I can’t take an iPhone from you,” I said. “But we are friends,” he countered. “I don’t accept that. I told you I was buying you an iPhone.” “I told you I couldn’t take it. And we’re not those kind of friends.” He tried a new tactic. “Oh, I see. Your translator is here, and you do not want him to see me give you an iPhone. That could be embarrassing for you.” Exasperated, I agreed. “Sure. That’s it.” He then offered to meet me the next day, at a friend’s apartment in Lahore, to give me the iPhone and have tea. No, I said. I was going to Faridkot. Sharif finally came to the point. “Kim. I am sorry I was not able to find you a friend. I tried, but I failed.” He shook his head, looked genuinely sad about the failure of the project. “That’s OK,” I said. “Really. I don’t really want a friend right now. I am perfectly happy without a friend. I want to be friendless.” He paused. And then, finally, the tiger of Punjab pounced. “I would like to be your friend.” I didn’t even let him get the words out. “No. Absolutely not. Not going to happen.” “Hear me out.” He held his hand toward me to silence my negations as he made his pitch. He could have said anything—that he was a purported billionaire who had built my favorite road in Pakistan, that he could buy me a power plant or build me a nuclear weapon. But he opted for honesty. “I know, I’m not as tall as you’d like,” Sharif explained. “I’m not as fit as you’d like. I’m fat, and I’m old. But I would still like to be your friend.” “No,” I said. “No way.” “No,” I said. “No way.” He then offered me a job running his hospital, a job I was eminently unqualified to perform. “It’s a huge hospital,” he said. “You’d be very good at it.” He said he would only become prime minister again if I were his secretary. I thought about it for a few seconds—after all, I would probably soon be out of a job. But no. The new position’s various positions would not be worth it. Eventually, I got out of the tiger’s grip, but only by promising that I would consider his offer. Otherwise, he wouldn’t let me leave. I jumped into the car, pulled out my tape recorder, and recited our conversation. Samad shook his head. My translator put his head in his hands. “I’m embarrassed for my country,” he said. After that, I knew I could never see Sharif again. I was not happy about this—I liked Sharif. In the back of my mind, maybe I had hoped he would come through with a possible friend, or that we could have kept up our banter, without an iPhone lurking in the closet. But now I saw him as just another sad case, a recycled has-been who squandered his country’s adulation and hope, who thought hitting on a foreign journalist was a smart move. Which it clearly wasn’t. amazon/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=kim+barker
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 08:31:18 +0000
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