His palace is crumbling. His fields lie fallow. His mountains are sinking. The sea has broken the dikes and flooded the country. He’s let it all go to rack and ruin... His soldiers don’t want to fight... You can see the result: towns razed to the ground, burnt-out swimming pools, abandoned bistros. The young are leaving their homeland in hordes...- Eugene Ionesco, Exit The King

Pakistan is a country in trouble. Apparently, the previous "President" of that Muslim state had disgraced the executive office to such an extent that even our Bubba from Arkansas was able to play himself off, when compared to that tyrannical Pakistani personage, in a relatively sanctimonious and ethically superior fashion. The buzz emanating from foreign news bureaus and Western capitals seems to imply that this profligate, avaricious former despot had plundered the Pakistani public coffers to such an extent that the country was, for all intents and purposes, economically raped. To trump that, this recently toppled despot had left the Southeast Asian nation so physically destitute and ravaged that he decided to fight a war, over a Himalayan glacier, with an indescribably more powerful country (India), just to displace internal hostilities concerning his abominable reign of power.

Of course, to most Americans, the latest "injuries" that mankind received in his WWF "wrestling" tilt with the rejuvenated Hulkster take precedence over yet another case of civil strife in a perpetual basketcase of a Third World kleptocracy. Of course, our grandfathers stormed the beach at Normandy, just to preserve that God-given American prerogative to utter cultural vapidity and callous disregard to foreign affairs. But this Pakistani struggle for the leadership, wherein the former pseudo-President was just ousted by the Army’s top general (who derives his legitimacy to rule from god-knows-what clique of four-star generals), certainly resonates with this scribe.

It turns out that the son of Pakistani’s newest leader is a disarmingly charming, bright, affable young man. (To those of you pulling through phat bong rips while attempting to digest this article, a little recap: Pakistan just had a coup. The former "President" was ousted, nominally, by the commander-in-chief of Pakistani’s armed forces, who maintains a power base from as yet-unknown factions of Pakistani society.) I actually work with this nice, unassuming character when I intern back home during the summer and winter. Okay, so "work" entails shuffling past the perfectly anonymous cubicle of this son of the newest Pakistani leader, as I invariably gravitate towards the office water-cooler. I doubt that a single syllable of conversation has ever transpired between myself and the progeny of Pakistani’s current potentate, but each of us knows that the other exists.

He knows that I’m a despicable, contemptible intern, and that, as wage slave, I solely exist to fill out my time-card. Conversely, I know that he’s close enough to the pinnacle of our organization to never even think about filling out a time-card. But I also know that the newspaper-reading population of the world can read about every single one of his father’s exploits, no matter how mundane, in trying to revive the Pakistani nation’s sagging fortunes. And of course, I know that the rest of the office knows that his father is the general who wrested control of Pakistani executive authority from out of the hands of Pakistan’s previous leader. And it goes without saying that he knows that the rest of the office knows what his father does for a living, for lack of less crude a phrasing.

Needless to say, all of these lurid, titillating workplace psychodynamics once didn’t mean diddlysquat to me. Sure, when I first showed up to work, I heard that this guy was the son of an important Pakistani general. Yet that was only a small nugget of idle gossip, pertaining to a much larger, more general indoctrination that I received into the uniquely-enriching world of blithe workplace blather. But then this fellow posted up an invitation to his wedding, a wedding which every last worker affiliated with the organization, from the loftiest corporate chieftain to, well, namely myself, was invited to. The wedding was in Pakistan. At that point, though, my line of thinking solely consisted of a few thoughts along the lines of "oh, so this guy has some money in his family. Well, they did say that his father was an important general anyway."

Then Pakistan tested their first atomic bomb. Or, more precisely, as all of "civilized" Christianity’s learned periodicals so sensitively and astutely pointed out, Islam got its first nuclear bomb. So those wacky Mohammedeans now had the ability to toss a few thermonuclear devices into the mix, along with their already potent and formidable religious jihad. (No one ever said I wasn’t jaded and cynical.)

But the general’s son still remained his normal, agreeable, exceedingly pleasant self around the office. The guy was unflappable! He knew, right then and there, that we knew that, half a world away, his father had the proverbial finger pressed to the button that could dispatch untold millions of the Indian nation to their doom. It was some super-heavy, funky Freudian mojo, baby! Yet the threat of an imminent nuclear apocalypse involving Pakistan and India subsided, eventually.

So now I’m back at Pomona, sleepwalking through yet another interminable semester replete with frivolity and idleness, when it comes out that Pakistan has just had a coup. What’s going to happen when I return to my internship this winter vacation? Will there be a sign at the nice young Pakistani man’s desk declaring "sorry, I had to attend to some family matters back home- my father’s shaky provisional government needed some propping up?!?" The situation is fraught with tense anticipation, certainly. If anyone knows what’s going on in Pakistan right now, on an hour-by-hour basis, it’s probably the son of the man who just deposed Pakistan’s last president. But in all likelihood, things will be the same back at the office. The son of Pakistan’s newest leader will be furiously typing away at his computer, and I’ll slink by several times during the course of the day, under the pretext of going to refill my cup at the water-cooler. But the psychological drama will have been inexorably, palpably, deliciously heightened. Nevertheless, not a solitary word will be spoken between the two of us, and I will be infinitely saddened, knowing that I’ll never have the chance to know the son of Pakistan’s new leader as anything other than the son of Pakistan’s new leader.