“Hear ye, hear ye…”
“Yes I can hear you loud and clear.”
“I am not speaking to you…”
“Technically when you say hear ye, hear ye…”
“You, sir, have been knocked out technically and…and loosely speaking…”
“Loosely speaking is not the antonym of technically.”
“Maybe not in your book but it certainly is in mine — anyway hear ye, hear ye all pirs and pirnies…”
“Well, one pir is here, that Shah Mehmud Qureshi, and one pirni ain’t I hear.”
“Who are you referring to?”
“The Third Wife left for Dubai quite a few weeks ago and…”
“That’s where many, many Russian oligarchs and…”
“I reckon the choice was based on the fact that Dubai immigration authorities understand full purdah and the city houses a sister I believe and a close friend and…”
“Please leave the woman out of politics! I mean she was a shadowy figure in The Khan’s tenure, shadowy because no one but no one recognized her without protocol – not even those who looked after Baba Farid’s shrine where she visited regularly for decades and…”
“OK so what did you want to say when you said hear ye hear ye all pirs and pirnies?”
“Right, I wanted to urge them to abandon their fixation on the letter ain — 24th letter of the Urdu alphabet — and instead lend their support to the letter a…”
“Whatever for? I mean….”
“Gill the Fish was chief of staff and it’s the chief of army staff — the addition is an a not ain and…”
“Don’t be facetious. I reckon the issue arose because there is no ain in Shehbaz Gill. Now had it been and Usman or an Umar or an…”
“Imran?”
“Hmmmm.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022