Scene: A large, distastefully done bedroom. French windows overlook a tiled patio, beyond which we can see a swimming pool. A sleepy dachshund sits by the pool. A child swims in it.

Amjad G. Aldrich and Shagufta Bysshe Shelley sit on the mauve, velvet two-seater, facing a faux fireplace. They both look sullen.

Shagufta: But aren’t you meant to be the quintessential diplomat? Why won’t they listen to you? Why can’t you convince them?

Amjad: Some confabularities do not transliterate themselves extemporaneously no matter how convivial their circumambulations. Mitigators, especially the foreign sort, disabuse the locum’s interjections at the very outset. It is an obstreperous endeavour at the best of times, my darling.

Shagufta: Half my life has been spent trying to figure out what you’re saying.

A diplomat’s Tharoorish eloquence crashes against his wife’s singular demand: a summer in Lisbonia…

Amjad: Likewise. I’m exhausted by mine own exclamatory declarations at such times.

Shagufta: Timmy is so looking forward to Lisbonia. You know, half his classmates have already spent a couple of summers there. How do you think that makes poor Timzy feel? Have you no feelings for the feelings of your former business partners’ ex-wife’s third youngest stepson? My brood is very important to me, Amjad. You should know this by now. You can’t deprive us of this. Just because you were depraved as a child does not mean that I and the Timster must be similarly depraved of a summer in Lisbonia!

Amjad: Depravity, dear heart, is not the same…

Shagufta: Please, Amjad! For once in your life, don’t try and hide behind your failures! Your shortcomings are getting on my nerves now.

Amjad: Allow me to regurgitate the banality of my earlier supposition. We must realise that, as human spirits, it is incumbent upon us to adhere to verifications upon which celestial laws, divine ordinances and temporal statutes have been sublimated, so that we, as a civilisation, can not only progress but also become evidentiary progenitors for the generations that are forthcoming. But from whence and to what aim? That is an answer only time can reveal at the opportune moment.

And that is precisely why I had already instigated Plan B into action before any additional foreclosure could pursue and rain on our parade.

Shagufta: And how, may I ask, have you done that?

Amjad: Last night, before flying into Aitchisonia-upon-Chenab, I dispatched an electronic epistle to Jimmy Jirga and sought his venerational indulgences to ensure a triumphal result in this affair.

Shagufta: The heights of your buffoonery never cease to amaze me. Oh, my foolish Mr Aldrich! You are the most clueless state official in Cliftonia. Didn’t you hear Jimmy has been disappeared?

Amjad: Disappeared?

Shagufta: Yes!

Amjad: You mean Jimmy Jirga?

Shagufta: No, I mean Jimmy Choo-ha. Of course, I mean Jimmy Jirga, you ignorant hyena!

Amjad: But why was he arrested?

Shagufta: He wasn’t arrested, he was disappeared! When was the last time you heard of anyone getting arrested? The good, old days when people were served papers before being taken into custody are long gone. Or didn’t you notice?

Amjad: But what about habeas corpus?

Shagufta: His corpus don’t need to be habeased no mo, yo! As Puff Timmy would say.

Amjad: Mon Dieu!

Shagufta: Why can’t you just say, ‘My God!’ like normal brown people!

Amjad: I’m gobsmacked… utterly, viscerally, indubitably gutted.

Shagufta: Anyway, he’s probably on his way to El Salvador by now.

Amjad: They’ve shipped him out of Aitchisonia-upon-Chenab all the way to El Salvador?

Shagufta: No wonder your diplomatic tour was such a disaster. You’re even more clueless than Alicia Silverstone! He was ‘randomly’ picked up and disappeared when he was visiting Washington DC, by your political rockstar and hero Doland J Dot Trump’s ICEY goons!

Amjad: But… but… but…

Shagufta: That’s exactly what you are, honey!

Amjad: It’s the global deep state slash establishment unabashedly using its tentacles to vilify and vituperate the Doland! The people around him are dragging him down like St Morrissey’s 10-tonne truck! Fie! Fie! Fie!

Shagufta: Again, why couldn’t you have just used the right ‘F’ word for once like everybody else?

Amjad: What, pray tell, does one do at a juncture such as this? Who does one reach out to now, that dear old Jimmy has suddenly vanished into thin air?

Shagufta: I don’t care! Find a connection. And I warn you. Do not come back with your usual excuses.

Amjad: What ever do you mean, dear heart?

Shagufta: You know exactly what I mean! It’s always something or the other… If it’s not some climate change disaster keeping the officials occupied, then it’s some genocide taking place somewhere or some random global pandemic! I want to be in Portugal right after our Christmas break in Gstaad, so you better sort it all out now! Get your important celebrity friends to help us out… Call Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift or Malala or Umer Sheikh! I don’t care who! Just get me and Timzy to Lisbonia!
[The curtain falls.]

Farid Alvie was born. He currently lives.
He’s on Instagram @faridalvie

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 6th, 2025