“Can anyone explain the composition of the welcome committee?” “Welcome committee for what occasion? I don’t know of any foreign dignitary…”

“To welcome the return of the Gold Medalist Arshad Nadeem.”

“Well, it had The Visionary Ahsan Iqbal and the Non-Elected yet still a member of the inner core, unlike Shahid Khaqan Abbasi…”

“The Visionary has a lot of time these days, apparently the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, a Shehbaz Sharif confidante, is producing all the paperwork and instead of a vision that spans from fifteen to twenty years down the line, a time period that would require a Sheikh Hasina at the helm as not even a military dictator has ruled this country for that long…”

“Maybe we need to invite the Sheikha here…”

“In the Sub-Continent we don’t refer to female heirs of Sheikhs as Sheikhas, that’s only in Arab countries and the Sheikhas in Arab countries are wives or mothers or maybe daughters of a Sheikh with no executive authority….”

“Right OK sorry, but my point was as no one in the world is willing to offer sanctuary to Sheikh Hasina, perhaps we can offer it in return for how to rule long and…”

“Stop it. Anyway, so The Visionary has a lot of time on his hands and not much to do while Saad Rafiq, as you know, lost the elections and so is available.”

“Shouldn’t the Punjab Chief Minister, Notification Maryam Nawaz (NMN) have been at the airport?”

“She has announced a 10 crore rupee reward to him.”

“From the taxpayers’ money or her own wealth, which I have it on good authority is a crore more than Punjab’s own revenue for the year?”

“I don’t know besides The Sharifs do not, I repeat do not, welcome Pakistanis who have done the nation proud. They invite them for food instead, which is what happened.”

“Where was Nawaz Sharif? I mean, considering that he has been going to tandoors with NMN, surely he could have welcomed Arshad Nadeem…”

“I am not sure where he is, but someone told me he is in Murree.”

“Where is NMN?”

“Well she normally spends as much time as she possibly can with daddy, but in her defense all I can say is that the fault for not welcoming Nadeem Ashraf lay with her dratted tailor who she had instructed to complete the uniform of a gold medal winning Olympian, and he could not meet the deadline.”

“Don’t they usually wear shorts?”

“Nah, not the javelin throwers.”

“Right.”

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024