Adil Najam

We know that Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari prefer Dubai as a ‘neutral’ meeting ground. Last week Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani and his entourage, including Information Minister Sherry Rehman, made a very public stop-over in Dubai to meet Asif Ali Zardari and family and (presumably) discuss important policy issues. Now, one reads that national security chief and de facto Interior Minister, Rahman Malik, is rushing to Dubai to discuss even more important policy matters.

One doubts that these are just “routine” meetings. One expects that there are many other important political meetings that one does not even hear about. Deservedly or not, this leaves one wondering whether Dubai, and not Islamabad, is the new center of Pakistan politics.

Junaid N. Sahibzada

It just happened to be a co-incidence that I met Benjamin Gilmour, a Sydney paramedic by profession and a movie maker by passion.

A friend of mine had sent me an email telling me of some one who had visited Pakistan and fell in love with the culture and people of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Turns out that the someone was Benjamin Gilmour.

The movie is called Son of a Lion and it brushes aside all stereotypes of Pathans and narrates the story of an ordinary village boy who is born into a family of gun manufacturers but wants to give up working as a gun manufacturer and pursue his formal education. The movie stars local characters and local actors. The story revolves around a young boy from the town of Darra Adam Khel, whose father is a gun manufacturer by profession. The father of the boy wants his son to follow in his foot steps and also become a gun manufacturer, however, the boy is interested in getting a decent education.

Owais Mughal