Even though Islamabad compared to other cities in Pakistan is considered safer but according to one city resident, who witnessed the recent rioting during the anti-Islam film, protests: “Islamabad has become what New York was before Rudy Giuliani.”

When Rudy Giuliani became the Mayor of New York, law and order of the city was collapsing, citizens were not getting civil amenities and the city was being run by gangs and mafias.

These days Islamabad is no different. When things go wrong, who does one turn to: Police, CDA, or the politicians?

There is a complete confusion, as to who is in-charge of the city.

The city needs an administrator, like Rudy Giuliani, not only empowered but also responsible when something goes wrong. And that according to the Islamabad resident can only happen through a local bodies system.

However for the majority of residents in Islamabad, the focus of discussion still revolves around the ephemeral.

At a dinner – recently hosted in Islamabad – most guests are busy gossiping about the prime minister’s brother, Imran Ashraf, hinting towards the possibility of him contesting from Islamabad’s urban constituency, NA 48.

Little is known about the brother, except for the fact that he looks after the “business interests of the family”. Businesses of the Ashraf family have diversified over the years.

One guest at the dinner informs that Imran Ashraf has a thriving transport business in Dubai, where he has employed hundreds of people.

But Imran Ashraf has never been a stranger to Islamabad. While gallivanting between Dubai and Gujar Khan, he has always kept a “base” in the city.

Therefore eyeing Islamabad is only of a natural consequence, especially after his brother is now the reigning prime minister of the country. Although there is one slight problem – NA 48 has already been ‘taken’.

A gentleman by the name of Faisal Sakhi Butt has been campaigning on this seat for the past one year and has already advertised himself as the PPP candidate for NA 48.

How would Faisal Sakhi Butt feel about Imran Ashraf moving into a territory already marked by him?

No need to wonder because as the conversation is going on, in walks Faisal Butt himself.

Suddenly, people, in a typical Islamabad drawing room fashion, stop talking about Imran Ashraf and become immensely interested in Faisal Butt.

One enthusiast even asks Faisal about his election campaign in NA 48. Faisal brimming with confidence predicts that he will “win the elections”.

Ali Qadir Gilani, who works in the media industry, is honest enough to forewarn Faisal: “I hope the elections are in winter, when people have forgotten loadshedding; otherwise don’t expect any sympathy from the voter.”

For people new to the Islamabad scene, they would obviously want to know who Faisal Sakhi Butt is, because no one knew him before 2008.

In 2008, Devin Friedman, an American journalist from New York — Rudy Giuliani’s town — arrived in Islamabad to cover the elections.

At a party — no different than the one in progress —he bumped into Faisal Butt.

On returning to New York, this is how he described him (GQ Magazine, April 2008, New York): “A wealthy young man in a velvet blazer, said to be very close to Benazir’s widower, Zardari. I heard a story about how Faisal became friends with Zardari: He went to Zardari’s corruption trial for days and weeks; they finally spoke — at first just a greeting, then more — and soon Faisal was visiting him in jail.”

It sounds like a fairytale but Zardari-Butt friendship story is no myth.

For people who have visited Faisal’s swank, state-of-the-art office, off Margalla Road, there is an old newspaper clipping framed in his office, testifying to the intimacy he enjoys with the president.

It is a picture of Asif Ali Zardari, when he was freed from jail. In the picture, one can see Mr Zardari walking out of jail and Faisal Butt standing next to him.

A guest at the dinner, who knows more about literature than politics, remarks that it was actually the picture that catapulted Faisal in the limelight.

After that particular newspaper picture — now framed and decorated in Faisal’s office — Faisal became known in Islamabad as “Zardari’s right-hand man”.

The literary guest refers to the picture-perfect-moment as the Madame Bovary moment; referring to the classic French novel “about a small town girl, who wanted to party with the big boys”.

In the novel there is a Ball, in which Madame Bovary ‘by chance’ gets invited, where she rubs shoulders with the nobility. After that she is not the same person. And then takes decisions which become “morally questionable”, and eventually lead to her ruin. To cut a long story short: she gets involved with a nobleman, who eventually dumps her.

According to Islamabad’s drawing room whispers, Zardari and Faisal’s friendship is a thing of the past as the President has gotten wind of some of Faisal’s “morally questionable” activities, which even the honourable members of the judiciary have taken notice.

Faisal’s dream to ‘rule Islamabad’ through a tailor-made task force fizzled when Islamabad High Court shot down the notification of the task force. Instead of taking the decision gracefully, Faisal filed a reference against the honourable judge.

According to a close and dear friend of Faisal this was a wrong decision and it only shows that like Madame Bovary, Faisal might have “fallen into the wrong hands”.

So then is Faisal’s political career a modern day remake of Madame Bovary?

Not according to another guest at the dinner, who disagrees with the entire literary contraption. Looking at all the guests at the dinner – the quality of conversation and how most people are pretending to be what they are not – he remarks: “There is a Madame Bovary that lives in all of us.”