“So how goes it!” “How what goes?” “The conspiracy theory. The Third Wife is out, and I am not sure if she actually conversed with The Man Who Must Remain Nameless and Faceless, but she was in the same room as him as a co-accused in a court case, but she came out without uttering a word while The Sisters met him and addressed a press conference…”

“Ah, so you are referring to the theory that she has been freed because her influence as the spiritual guide of The Man who Must Remain Nameless and Faceless transcends all other influences…”

“Be the other influences based on logic or ground realities or…”

“You do not understand the power of the letter ain, the twenty-fourth letter of the Urdu alphabet…”

“Which has gained greater relevance for the country – we are on the twenty-fourth International Monetary Fund programme, and on the net I read the following, 24 is an even composite number, a highly complex number, an abundant number, a practical number and a congruent number. 24 is also part of the only non-trivial solution pair to the cannonball problem, and the kissing number in 4-dimensional space. An icositetragon is a regular polygon with 24 sides.”

“Well, I didn’t understand any of that!”

“That’s because you are non-spiritual.”

“Hey, my name is Xubair, and need I add X is the twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet.”

“I thought it was spelt with a Z.”

“It can be by the unwise, which explains why Muhammad Zubair landed up in the boondocks.”

“I reckon he landed in the boondocks because he dropped his dad’s last name Umar, with an ain.”

“Yeah, but his brother kept Umar as his last name and I reckon any last name that starts with an ain has limited luck.”

“Makes sense, and you know there are many names that start with the 24th letter of the Urdu alphabet and I know of only a handful of names that start with an x, and those too, are not Muslim names and so the conclusion is that…”

“You are shallow, anyway, The Third Wife was silent, so do you reckon that she was given a shut-up call by The Man Who Must Remain Nameless and Faceless?”

“Sounds about right, I heard that to retain or sustain being anyone’s murshad requires daily contact and…”

“Oh shush.”

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024