I did not read the book (published in 2012) and I am not sure if her account of story is true word by word but even if its 50/60% right, that paints Nawaz Sharif as a REAL tharki
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This time, in a large banquet hall filled with folding chairs and a long
table, Sharif told his aides that he would talk to me alone. At the time, I
barely noticed. We talked about Zardari, but he spoke carefully and said
little of interest, constantly glancing at my tape recorder like it was
radioactive. Eventually, he nodded toward it. “Can you turn that off?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, figuring he wanted to tell me something off the record.
“So. Do you have a friend, Kim?” Sharif asked. I was unsure what he meant.
“I have a lot of friends,” I replied.
“No. Do you have a friend?”
I figured it out.
“You mean a boyfriend?” “Yes.” I looked at Sharif. I had two options—lie, or tell the truth. And because I wanted to see where this line of questioning was going, I told the truth. “I had a boyfriend. We recently broke up.” I nodded my head stupidly, as if to punctuate this thought.
“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.
……
“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?”
He waited a second, looked toward the ceiling, then seemingly picked the top name from his subconscious. “The first is Mr. Z.”
That was disappointing. 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.
……
“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.”
……
“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 PM 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.”
