Stuck
Our former rep to Uncle Sam, the one who was conspired against and laid low via Memogate, has suffered all manner of victimisation since 2012. He’s been in exile for the last four years, living in DC and teaching at various institutes. And now finally, it seems that the powers-that-be are denying him (let’s call him HH, for brevity’s sake) his right to his Pakistani nationhood, ie his passport.
HH had asked for his passport to be renewed but for some mysterious reason, it’s stuck. Apparently, the gent who ministers to our interior is not at fault; the ministry’s position has always been that if a person is legally entitled to a renewal of their papers, he/she will get it. So, HH’s passport was duly verified and officially delivered to our embassy in DC a few months ago, after all the formalities were done, there to be collected by the owner.
Either there’s an inexplicable glitch (read incompetence) in the system or the powers-that-be have decided to deny HH his rights. Which is it?
Rumi rules
A Hollywood biopic about Maulana Jalal al din Rumi, the great 13th century poet from Balkh, is in the offing. The possibility has been mooted that A-list stars Leonardo di Caprio or Robert Downey Jr may be offered the roles of Rumi and Shams Tabrezi. Hardly had the news become public when a hashtag, #RumiWasntWhite, appeared on Twitter and a great many people started letting their opinions be known. Hollywood producer and Iranian-American Darius Kamali chimed in to refute these claims and to say that Rumi and Tabrezi might indeed have been “white” given the common Caucasian ethnic roots of certain Indo-European races, specifically the Aryans who colonised Iran and northern India, now Pakistan. Kamali has mounted a vigorous campaign to in fact let di Caprio and Downey Jr play Rumi and Tabrezi.