Monday, January 15, 2007

The Visiting President !! (Part 4)

When the date of the visit was due, anyone who had anything to do with politics looked with contempt at Dr.Fareed's constant hopping between the two Presidents as he played the roles of the translator and the jovial companion. They all pitied the man whom they knew will be thrown out of the government, the moment the visiting President leaves the country, because he bet all his money on the wrong President. He focused solely on the past that will eventually cease to exist and ignored the inevitable and upcoming future. During the side talks of political gossip, everyone wondered how this man, who was gifted with such wit, was not able to read the present correctly and, thus, make the right decisions. "That is typical of humans when they consider themselves invincible. He is, after all, a human. He can not win everything. Soon he will fall and the daggers will be pointed at him from every direction. He has forgotten that President Junior has a fatal sting ! He is heartless ! There will come a day when the country will miss the good old days when his father was alive. At least he had a sense of humour. Dr.Fareed will never know what hit him." Dr.Fareed was never hit. On the contrary, he reached the climax of his ascent on the very first day of the visit by that nostalgic tour he had prepared for the visiting President and his wife that filled the major country's citizens with joy when the pictures of the couple hugging each other on a Nile boat, led by Dr.Fareed himself, were published, in which Dr.Fareed was smiling not only out of his success in stabilizing the relationship between both countries, guaranteeing the greatest amount of financial aids to the country, silencing the ignorant voices of the opposition and the human rights organisations but also out of his miraculous success in pumping a seemingly-impossible love back into the hearts of the old couple. The removal of Itidal's dancing section from the welcome ceremony was officially announced, in order to prevent the reappearance of any tension between the visiting President and his wife, and was replaced by a modest folklore dancing section and a song performed by the President's Children Chorus; a group that has become to the entertainment business as the President's personal bodyguards are to the rest of the army. Whenever the visiting President would leave the ceremony to go to the toilet, the President would remind him jokingly how he warned him, during dinner, about the country's national delicacy; the Felafel, that the visiting President immediately ordered the moment he sat at the dinner table. Dr.Fareed did not abide by the rules of honest translation when the President said : " You asked for it. I told you that your stomach is not up for it". Instead, he translated it into a much gentler phrase: "The President wants to know if you would like us to behead the Felafel guy". The visiting President laughed as he walked to the toilet accompanied by his bodyguards and Dr.Fareed who insisted on having the privilege. Nobody could have expected that the three times in which the visiting President went to the toliet, each lasting for about seven to ten minutes, had nothing to do with the Felafel but with Itidal who performed for him, on the specially-prepared toilet floor, while he insisted on thrusting his head between her breasts that the days have helped increase in length, width and depth. Similarly, nobody expected that it was this diabolical idea of Dr.Fareed's that was enough to make him deserve the finest of the major country's medals a few months later. On the second and final day of the visit, and during the farewell press conference, Dr.Fareed's adversaries nearly danced with joy when they saw the President's son ignore Dr.Fareed's hand when he went to greet him. It was obvious that Dr.Fareed was living the last of his happy days and that tomorrow the country will witness the departure of both the visiting President's airplane from the country's airport and Dr.Fareed's name from the country's political scene. They looked at Fareed, without the Doctor now, with despise as he was trying to describe the scene as a joke from the President's son and they were surprised at his ability to control his fear and horror from an event that would have led anyone else to immediately pee in his pants and grovel at the President's son's feet asking for forgiveness. Nobody thought that Dr.Fareed's laughter was not fake but actually emerging from the bottom of his heart. If they knew, it would have been they who would grovel at Dr.Fareed's feet asking for forgiveness for all the times they spent mocking him. In the middle of the visiting President's speech came the surprise that not even President Senior saw coming. Everyone expected that the visiting President would commence his speech by praising the country's President for his wise leadership of the enormous reformation plans and everyone expected that he will praise the state of democracy in the country that has become a model to be followed in the entire region but nobody expected that the visiting President's speech would explode into a tirade of criticism on the opposition's newspapers that refuse to accept the presence of the President's son in the political arena claiming that his father is preparing him for succession. Silence prevailed as the audience saw the visiting President reveal, from within the stack of papers he had in front of him, a big golden folder which he waved in front of everyone saying : " My dear friend Dr.Fareed has sent me a folder containing the achievements that your Excellency's son has helped in accomplishment which are achievements that do not only concern reforms within the ruling Party or important theoretical and strategic discussions but extend to field visits to several parts of the country. I was very touched by the warm welcome he had received from the simple citizens of this country. I have read a summary of the ideas that your Excellency's son has suggested, gratefully translated by my friend Dr.Fareed of course, and I clearly see that you, your Excellency, are the main source of inspiration for your son and I would like to make it clear how I am proud of him and at the same time astonished how he is sometimes underestimated. I myself have not been blessed by the gift of having a son of my own but I assure you that if I had a son like your Excellency's, I would not spare moment till I see him comfortably seated on my country's throne". Nobody had not yet awoken from the intensity of the blow when Dr.Fareed, the only sober person in the audience now, suddenly stood up applauding loudly and, with eyes full of love and affection, stared at the President's son who could not yet conceive what he had just heard and was thinking about the embarrassing situation he might be put in if the visiting President asked him to elaborate on any of those ideas that that phony Fareed wrote. When the entire hall was loud with applaud witnessing country's President wipe a tear off his cheeks, crossing the chairs to hug and kiss his son and presenting him to the visiting President to do the same, President Junior's mind was busy in self-reprimand when he saw tears of joy flow from Dr.Fareed's eyes who was crying like a mother on her only son's graduation day. President Junior, that nickname will no longer be made fun of now that he has received this unprecedented international certificate of approval, could not believe how he did not see the amount of love that Dr.Fareed secretly had for him and how enormous his loss would have been if he had listened to the advice of those ungrateful enemies of Dr.Fareed. The visiting President was busy trying to devise a method by which he can take Itidal back to his country without the knowledge of his wife. The President was waiting for the end of the ceremony to pat Dr.Fareed on the back with his usual "You son of a...How did you do it ?". The only person in the crowd who was not thinking about the tremendous event that had just occurred was Dr.Fareed himself, not only because he had previously envisioned everything in his imagination but because he was busy thinking about what he had to prepare for the next golden folder.
The End

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