Dear Diary,
My name is Chaudhry Mohammad McSarwar. I am a proud son of Scotland, and I am stuck in a third-world country having lost my British nationality. This is an appeal to the international community to help retrieve me. I need 900 pounds to reapply for my passport, and I am taking donations at SarwarDown.com. You see, in the Middle Ages the McSarwars were a small merchant clan operating cash-and-carry stores across the Scottish highlands. At which no liquor was sold.
Then my great grandfather William McSarwar fought and won in the Scottish war of independence on the side of the English. The queen rewarded our family with some land in a village near Glasgow called Toba Tek Singh, and bestowed upon our men the royal title of Chaudhry.
A hundred years later, I was born in the same village and entered the wholesale business in line with Scottish-Arain tradition. But the McSarwars, now a landowning clan and swelling in numbers, who wore a special kind of kilt called a dhoti, were beginning to have political aspirations of their own.
I first became an MP in Glasgow in 1997, though I was suspended for two years as the election committee tried to figure out who exactly I’d paid to win. I was reinstated in 1999. After which no liquor was sold.
I was close to Tony Blair. He once told me I looked like a bald Sunil Gavaskar. He also told me that to make progress as a politician I would have to demonstrate the ability to govern one of the former British colonies. Like the Punjab.
When I left British politics in 2010 I honoured my Arain roots by letting my son take over my seat. After overseas fundraising for PML-N during the 2013 elections, I was offered a governorship. Unfortunately the role of governor had changed since the British Raj. Firstly, this Punjab was much smaller than the one on my map, charted by my uncle Chaudhry Ferguson in 1938.
Secondly, I had nothing to do. The Sharifs wouldn’t consult me on anything. They wouldn’t even give me money to buy office stationery. I wanted to put the ‘govern’ back in governor, but it looked more like I’d be putting the ‘go’ instead.
President Mamnoon Hussain called me once and suggested a support group for neglected office holders. At which no liquor would be sold.
He said nobody called him to check if he was even alive. The press didn’t talk to him, the politicians didn’t talk to him, even his friends and family didn’t talk to him. He started seeing his face on the back of rickshaws over captions like, “If anyone finds this man please call the following number.”
He had considered desperate measures, such as giving away blank presidential pardons, but then he realised he didn’t even have the keys to his own office.
I told him I too had been trying to resign for a year, but nobody would meet me to take the resignation. Nawaz’s secretary always said he was busy. Once I was sitting right in front of Nawaz and he had his secretary call to tell me that he was busy. When the party had a meeting they would intentionally text me the wrong address. Sometimes I ended up in MQM meetings, sometimes PTI and PAT meetings in London.
Finally, they locked me out of the Governor House. I tried to get in by scaling the back wall but the sentry caught me and made me stand for hours in the sun holding my ears.
I had to pay rent for a house in DHA. The kind where some liquor was sold.
