the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

CHAPTER 21
LONDON CALLING
A
fter nally being promised a visa that would allow me to return to
Pakistan, I ew 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 gure 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