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«Microsoft gave Calibri to me as a gift when I visited Bill Gates» – Maryam Nawaz

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An open letter to my fellow Pakistanis!

When you’re wrongfully blamed of having fabricated documents, you can only wonder when and why your countrymen decided to turn against you. I find myself in a state of utter shock. I am sick of providing clarifications but I also have strong ethics and am willing to do anything for justice. I am sure this clarification won’t contradict any of my previous statements that you might have heard on TV as I am working very hard to be consistent with my words. So here goes.

Microsoft gave Calibri to me as a gift when I visited Bill Gates. The font was designed in honor of my visit and they insisted on naming it Maryam but I thought that would be slightly pretentious so I asked them to name it something more decent- more in line with the rest of the font names. Apparently, they said they had never met a woman of my caliber and so they went with the name Calibri and that was that. From then on, all my documents were written in this font.

People who are jealous of me or who simply want to watch innocents suffer are saying that the font was made public way after my document was made. Well, this is where they get really stupid. Shouldn’t it be obvious that a font that was made for me and dedicated to me would also be made available to me first? It’s really surprising that no one believes me.

Calibri is very close to my heart. It is the font I used to write the letters to send to Papa Nawaz when he was suffering from the Metro disease. The doctors said it was contagious. Whoever catches it goes into a strange rage where they feel a strong impulse to build metro bus systems instead of dealing with more pressing issues. I personally didn’t find this disease that harmful but oh well.

Calibri is also the language I used in my letters to President Modi. It was his special request. He was really eager to see the font that Bill Gates dedicated to me because apparently, he had always aspired to reach such a level that Bill would consider him worthy of a font. I guess Modi lacked the caliber. Not everyone gets a font dedicated to him or her. I don’t want to sound narcissistic but my honesty is what swept the Microsoft guys off their feet. Bill asked me whether Microsoft was better or apple. He asked me to pick between him and Steve Jobs. Well, obviously I said, Jobs. Jobs was a man of great caliber.

Bill Gates was so stunned at my honesty that he exclaimed that he had never met a more honest woman. He clarified that he said a woman and not a person because for him the most honest person he had ever met was my father Nawaz. I didn’t mind because even for me, Papa is at the top of the honesty pyramid along with Hassan and Husain. Those two, unfortunately, didn’t get a chance to meet Bill as they were busy strolling around Mayfair wishing they could one day afford a flat in that posh area.

Maybe if they had visited Bill with me, we could have had three fonts belonging to our family. I’d suggest naming them Sadiq and Amin in addition to Calibri. I admit the two names are a bit different but my brothers weren’t born to fit in.

Anyway, I am obviously very fond of Calibri but whenever I’m making any document I feel the urge to use Comic Sans MS as the body font. Papa tells me to use Calibri since its more “decent” and also because Bill uncle got it made it especially for me. But come on, one gets tired of seeing the same font everywhere. Now I’m being accused of showing fake documents. They are talking about some criminal offense thing. I can’t believe they are trying to drag Calibri into all this. It’s really just a font that has been with me through thick and thin. I just hope I don’t get jailed. I didn’t do anything wrong.

Yours truly,

Bahadur beti Maryam

Note: In case if you haven’t figured out yet, this is a satirical piece written by a common Pakistani…

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