batmannow
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2008
- Messages
- 18,830
- Reaction score
- -19
- Country
- Location
so thats what playboy think its a fact go and checkout British media
so thats what playboy think its a fact go and checkout British media
ever head of KIM BAKER probably not, now listen what she says about tiger?
IMRAN was a playboy, sure he was but he was a quality man, handsome, deadly attarctive, without any gril going press, after his bed?
but what this noora allu, has?
From “The Taliban Shuffle” by Kim Barker (published by Doubleday):
“Why?” Sharif asked. “Was he too boring for you? Not fun enough?”
“Um. No. It just didn’t work out.”
“Oh. I cannot believe you do not have a friend,” Sharif countered.
“No. Nope. I don’t. I did.”
“Do you want me to find one for you?” Sharif asked.
To recap: The militants were gaining strength along the border with Afghanistan and staging increasingly bold attacks in the country’s cities. The famed Khyber Pass, linking Pakistan and Afghanistan, was now too dangerous to drive. The country appeared as unmoored and directionless as a headless chicken. And here was Sharif, offering to find me a friend. Thank God the leaders of Pakistan had their priorities straight.
“Sure. Why not?” I said.
The thought of being fixed up on a date by the former prime minister of Pakistan, one of the most powerful men in the country and, at certain points, the world, proved irresistible. It had true train-wreck potential.
“What qualities are you looking for in a friend?” he asked.
“Tall. Funny. Smart.”
I envisioned a blind date at a restaurant in Lahore over kebabs and watermelon juice with one of Sharif’s sidekicks, some man with a mustache, Sharif lurking in the background as chaperone.
“Hmmm. Tall may be tough. You are very tall, and most Pakistanis are not.” Sharif stood, walked past the banquet table toward the windows, and looked out over the capital. He pondered, before turning back toward me.
“What do you mean by smart?” he asked. “You know. Smart. Quick. Clever.”
“Oh, clever.” He nodded, thought for a second. “But you do not want cunning. You definitely do not want a cunning friend.”
He looked out the window. It seemed to me that he was thinking of Bhutto’s widower, Zardari, his onetime ally and now rival, a man universally considered cunning at business who many felt had outsmarted Sharif in their recent political tango.
“No. Who wants cunning?”
“Anything else?” he asked. “What about his appearance?”
“I don’t really care. Not fat. Athletic.”
We shook hands, and I left. In all my strange interviews with Sharif, that definitely was the strangest.
……
“The next night, Samad drove some friends and me to a dinner inside the diplomatic enclave. My phone beeped with a text message from a number with a British international code.
“Hello, Kim, I arrived London yesterday. Congratulations on AZ becoming the new president, how is he doing and how have the people taken it? I am working on the project we discussed and will have the result soon. Best wishes and warm regards.”
I had no idea who sent the message. My brother? Sean? No, this sender clearly knew me from Pakistan. And what was the project? What had I discussed? I read the text message to my friends, and we pondered the sender. Then, finally, I remembered reading that Nawaz Sharif had flown to London so that his sick wife could have some tests.
“Is this Nawaz?” I replied.
“You are correct,” he responded.
The project. That was funny. Everyone in the car, even the man from the U.S. embassy, agreed that I needed to see this through. And I thought—well, we all did—how hilarious it would be if Sharif actually found an option that worked.
……
“I flew to India to write some stories. Nawaz Sharif asked for my number there. He needed to talk about something important, outside Pakistan. One early evening, he called from London. Sharif wondered whether I would be back in Pakistan before Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday at the end of Ramadan. Maybe, I told him. He planned to go to Pakistan for a day, and then to Saudi Arabia for four days.
“I am working on the project,” he said.
“Day and night, I’m sure,” I replied.
Sharif said the real reason he was calling was to warn me that the phones were tapped in Pakistan.
“Be very careful,” he said. “Your phones are tapped. My phones are tapped. Do you know a man named Rehman Malik? He is giving the orders to do this, maybe at the behest of Mr. Zardari.”
Everyone knew Rehman Malik, a slightly menacing figure who was the acting interior minister of Pakistan. He was known for making random word associations in press conferences and being unable to utter a coherent sentence. He also had slightly purple hair.
“Is this new?” I asked. “Hasn’t it always been this way?
“Well, yes. But it has gotten worse in the past two or three months.”
So true. He had a solution—he would buy me a new phone. And give me a new number, but a number so precious that I could only give it to my very close friends, who had to get new phones and numbers as well. Very tempting, but I told him no. He was, after all, the former prime minister of Pakistan. I couldn’t accept any gifts from him.
“Sounds complicated. It’s not necessary. And you can’t buy me a phone.” He said I needed to be careful. We ended our conversation, and he promised to work on the project.
“Don’t be—what is it you say? Don’t be naughty,” he said before hanging up.
Naughty? Who said that? The conversation was slightly worrying. I thought of Sharif as a Punjabi matchmaker determined to find me a man, not as anyone who talked naughty to me.
……
“I planned a trip to Afghanistan, where the politics were much less murky, where the suicide bombers were much less effective, to write about alleged negotiations with the Taliban. That’s why I had to see Nawaz Sharif again.
Emissaries from the Afghan government and former Taliban bigwigs had flown to Saudi Arabia for the feasts that marked the end of Ramadan. But they had another goal. Afghan officials had been hoping that the influential Saudi royal family would moderate negotiations between their battered government and the resurgent militants. Sharif, in Saudi Arabia at the time, was rumored to have been at those meetings. That made sense. He was close to the Saudi king. He had supported the Afghan Taliban, when the regime was in power. I called Sharif and told him why I wanted to see him.
“Most welcome, Kim,” he said. “Anytime.”
We arranged for a lunch on a Saturday in October—I was due to fly to Kabul two days later. Samad and I decided to drive the five hours from Islamabad to Raiwind instead of flying. Samad showed up on time, but I overslept, having been up late the night before. I hopped out of bed and rifled through my Islamic clothes for something suitable because I liked to dress conservatively when interviewing Pakistani politicians. I yanked out a red knee-length top from India that had dancing couples embroidered on it. Potentially ridiculous, but the nicest clean one I had. We left Islamabad.
“You’re gonna have to hurry, Samad,” I said. “Possible?”
“Kim, possible,” he said. It always cracked me up when I got him to say that.
We made good time south, but got lost at some point on the narrow roads to Raiwind. Sharif sent out an escort vehicle with flashing lights to meet us. We breezed through security—we actually didn’t even slow down—and I forced Samad to stop in the middle of the long driveway leading up to Sharif’s palace. I had forgotten to comb my hair or put on any makeup. I turned the rearview mirror toward me, smoothed down my messy hair with my hands, and put on some lipstick. Twenty seconds. “Good enough,” I pronounced my effort, and flipped the mirror back to Samad.
We reached the imposing driveway. Sharif actually waited in front of his massive front doors for me, wearing a blue suit, slightly snug around his waist. He clasped his hands in front of his belt. It was clear that our meeting was important. Sharif was surrounded by several lackeys, who all smiled tight-lipped before looking down at the ground. I jumped out of the car, sweaty after the ride, panicked because I was late. I shook Nawaz’s hand—he had soft fingers, manicured nails, baby-like skin that had probably never seen a callous.
“Hello, Kim,” he said. “Hey, Nawaz. Sorry I’m late.”
In the sitting room, I immediately turned on my tape recorder and rattled off questions. Was Sharif at the negotiations? What was happening? He denied being at any meetings, despite press reports to the contrary. I pushed him. He denied everything. I wondered why he let me drive all this way, if he planned to tell me nothing. At least I’d get free food.
He looked at my tape recorder and asked me to turn it off. Eventually I obliged. Then Sharif brought up his real reason for inviting me to lunch.
“Kim. I have come up with two possible friends for you.”
At last. “Who?Hewaited a second, looked
toward the ceiling, then seemingly picked the top name from his subconscious. “The first is Mr. Z.”Thwas disapinting. Sharif definitely was not taking this project seriously. “Zardari? No way. That will never happen,” I said.
At last. “Who?Hewaited a second, looked
so thats what playboy think its a fact go and checkout British media
so thats what playboy think its a fact go and checkout British media
toward the ceiling, then seemingly picked the top name from his subconscious. “The first is Mr. Z.”Thwas disapinting. Sharif definitely was not taking this project seriously. “Zardari? No way. That will never happen,” I said.
“What’s wrong with Mr. Zardari?” Sharif asked. “Do you not find him attractive?”
Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, was slightly shorter than me and sported slicked-back hair and a mustache, which he was accused of dying black right after his wife was killed, right before his first press conference. On many levels, I did not find Zardari attractive. I would have preferred celibacy. But that wasn’t the point. Perhaps I could use this as a teaching moment.
“He is the president of Pakistan. I am a journalist. That would never happen.”
“He is single.” Very true—but I didn’t think that was a good enough reason. “I can call him for you,” Sharif insisted. I’m fairly certain he was joking.
“I’m sure he has more important things to deal with,” I replied.
“OK. No Mr. Z. The second option, I will discuss with you later,” he said. That did not sound promising.
We adjourned our meeting for lunch in the dining room, where two places were set at a long wooden table that appeared to seat seventy. We sat in the middle of the table, facing each other over a large display of fake orange flowers. The food was brought out in a dozen courses of silver dishes—deep-fried prawns, mutton stew, deep-fried fish, bread, a mayonnaise salad with a few vegetables for color, chicken curry, lamb. Dish after dish, each carried by waiters in traditional white outfits with long dark gray vests. Like the good Punjabi that Sharif was, he kept pushing food on me. “Have more prawns. You like prawns, right?” He insisted on seconds and thirds. It felt like a make-believe meal. I didn’t know which fork to use, not that it mattered in a culture where it was fine to eat with your hands, but the combination of the wealth, the empty seats, and the unspoken tiger in the room made me want to run screaming from the table. I needed to get out of there.
“I have to go.”
“First, come for a walk with me outside, around the grounds. I want to show you Raiwind.”
“No. I have to go. I have to go to Afghanistan tomorrow.”
Sharif ignored that white lie and started to talk about where he wanted to take me. “I would like to take you for a ride in the country, and take you for lunch at a restaurant in Lahore, but because of my position, I cannot.”
“That’s OK. I have to go.” “I am still planning to buy you a phone. Which do you like Nokia, iPhone?”
So now he knew what a BlackBerry was. But I would not bend. “You can’t buy me a phone,” I said.
“Why not?” “You’re the former prime minister of Pakistan. No.”
“Which do you like?” He kept pressing, wouldn’t let it go. BlackBerry, Nokia, iPhone, over and over. That scene from The Wizard of Oz started running through my head: Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
“BlackBerry, Nokia, or iPhone, Kim?”
“The iPhone,” I said, because I already had a Nokia and a BlackBerry. “But I still can’t take one from you.”
As we left, Samad insisted on getting our picture taken with Sharif. Samad was a Bhutto man, which meant he should have been a Zardari man, but increasingly, like many of Bhutto’s followers in Pakistan, Samad had grown disenchanted with Zardari. And increasingly, Samad liked Sharif. Everyone liked Sharif. Behind the scenes, the tiger of Punjab was growing very powerful. His decision to break with Zardari over the issue of restoring the judges had proved to be smart. As Zardari’s government floundered and flip-flopped, Sharif looked more and more like an elder statesman. Regardless, I told my boss it was no longer a good idea for me to see Sharif. He was married, older, rich, and powerful. As a pleasant-looking, pedigree-lacking American with hair issues, I was an extremely unlikely paramour. But Sharif had ended our visit with a dangling proposition—the mysterious identity of a second potential friend. I decided to stick to a tapped-phone relationship.
……
“And I knew, with plenty of reservations, that I needed to go to Lahore because of Nawaz Sharif. If anyone knew the right Faridkot, he would. That Friday, Pakistan seemed to have launched its typical crackdown on the charity—in other words, lots of noise, little action. A charity billboard in the heart of Lahore proclaimed: “We can sacrifice our lives to preserve the holiness of the Prophet.”
I sent my translator into the group’s mosque because I wasn’t allowed. There, flanked by three armed guards, the founder of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lash preached to about ten thousand men. His bluster was typical Islamic militant stuff—about sacrifice, about Eid al-Adha, the upcoming religious festival where devout Muslims would sacrifice an animal and give part of it to the poor. The holiday honored Ibrahim, or as Jews and Christians knew him, Abraham. “Sacrifice is not just to slaughter animals in the name of God,” the founder said. “Sacrifice also means leaving your country in the name of God. It means sacrificing your life in the name of God.” His meaning seemed fairly clear.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the charity tried to rewrite history. He said the founder was barely involved with Lash—despite founding it—and insisted Lash was now based in India. The spokesman also drew a vague line in the sand, more like a smudge—he said the charity talked about jihad, but did not set up any training camps for jihad. The man who ran the ISI when Lash was founded denied having anything to do with the group. “Such blatant lies,” he told me, adding later that Jamaat-ud-Dawa was “a good lot of people.”
These men seemed convinced of their magical powers, of their ability to wave a wand and erase a reporter’s memory. This obfuscation was not even up to Pakistan’s usual level. With a heavy heart, I knew I needed to see Nawaz Sharif. I figured I might be able to get something out of him that he didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to tell me—as former prime minister, he’d certainly be told what was happening, but because he wasn’t a government official, he wouldn’t necessarily know that he was supposed to keep the information quiet. But this time, I planned to bring my translator along, a male chaperone.
Samad drove our teamout to Raiwind. I sat in the back of the car, writing up my story about the charity on my computer, trying not to think about what Sharif might try to pull this visit. Eventually, we walked inside Sharif’s palace.
Sharif looked at my translator, then me, clearly confused. He invited us both into his computer room, where we sat on a couch. Sharif sat on a chair, near a desk. When he answered my questions, he stared at my translator. My translator, embarrassed to be there, stared at the ground. Sharif told me the right Faridkot—the one in Okara district, just a couple of hours from Lahore. He gave me the phone number for the provincial police chief. He told me what Indian and Pakistani authorities had told him about the lone surviving militant.
For us, this was big news—a senior Pakistani confirming what the government had publicly denied: The attackers were from Pakistan. “This boy says, ‘I belong to Okara, and I left my home some years ago,’ ” Sharif said, adding that he had been told that the young man would come home for a few days every six months or a year. “He cut off his links with his parents,” Sharif also told me. “The relationship between him and his parents was not good. Then he disappeared.”
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.
“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. “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.”
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.
The next morning, Samad drove us to Faridkot. As soon as we pulled into town, dozens of men in cream-colored salwar kameezes flanked our car. One identified himself as the mayor—he denied all knowledge of the surviving militant and his parents. Other Pakistani journalists showed up—we had all found out about the same time that this was the Mumbai assailant’s hometown, a dusty village of ten thousand people in small brick houses along brick and dirt paths. My translator said many of the cream-attired men here were ISI. Another journalist recognized an ISI commander. Their job: to deny everything and get rid of us.
……
“I packed up my belongings and got ready to fly home. The day I planned to execute my exit strategy, my phone rang. And the caller was the other eccentric older man who had dominated my time, from the other side of the border. Nawaz Sharif. His timing was always impeccable.
“Is this Kim?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, shoving Afghan tourism guides from the 1970s into a suitcase. I was hesitant, unsure of what he wanted.
“So. It’s been a long time,” he said, awkwardly. “What are your plans to come to Pakistan?”
“Actually, I’m moving back to the U.S. New York, in fact. I’m leaving in a few hours.”
“Oh, congratulations. I will have to come see you when I’m in New York,” he said.
“That would be great,” I replied.
“We’re still friends, right?” he asked, tentatively.
“Always,” I said.
“We’ll stay friends, right?” he said.
“Sure.”
We said goodbye. I had about the same level of intention of being friends with Nawaz Sharif as I did with Sam Zell.
“Yes,” I said, shoving Afghan tourism guides from the 1970s into a suitcase. I was hesitant, unsure of what he wanted.
“So. It’s been a long time,” he said, awkwardly. “What are your plans to come to Pakistan?”
“Actually, I’m moving back to the U.S. New York, in fact. I’m leaving in a few hours.”
“Oh, congratulations. I will have to come see you when I’m in New York,” he said.
“That would be great,” I replied.
“We’re still friends, right?” he asked, tentatively.
“Always,” I said.
“We’ll stay friends, right?” he said.
“Sure.”
We said goodbye. I had about the same level of intention of being friends with Nawaz Sharif as I did with Sam Zell.
then why she left him and now she is with another man
