| It was a niggling question, at the tail end of an interview given by the caretaker Prime Minister Mr. Moeen Qureshi to members of the foreign press corps at Islamabad and broadcast on 3 September. |
| ‘Will you stand for election as President? One of them asked. Perhaps the time allotted for the interview had already elapsed, perhaps the question itself had come a little too hurriedly for the Prime Minister to take fuller notice of it, perhaps the querist - a Pakistani accredited presumably to a foreign paper – had unwittingly introduced as unformed idea, a possibility heavy with implications for the Prime Minister to do anything other cap it swiftly with a peremptory ‘No after which he rose abruptly from the soft cream-coloured sofa and brought the interview and its transmission to an end. [EXTRACT] |
Published in THE NATION (Sept. 1993, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN (1994). |
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