Dear Diary,

I am utterly despondent. Despondent with a capital DES! How can people even live here anymore? Everywhere I look, I see them. They have come here from everywhere… like rats off sinking ships… horrible, petty bourgeoisie vessels, carrying cargo that’s even more fetid than the carriers themselves… half sunk and barely able to make it to these shores, which they are now hell-bent upon despoiling with their presence. I mean who really wants to live near Mrs Agha, let alone in her? Canadia is no longer what it used to be.

I, for one, can never live here. But then I can’t live anywhere but Cliftonia, and they might call me a scoundrel (and let them, dear diary, let them!) because patriotism is my last refuge, but I love my land from the heart of my bottom! Canadia might have given me a passport, but I don’t spend more than three days in a year here (July 23rd to July 25th) any longer because none of my crowd does anymore. My family has a long history of patriotism and we are proud scoundrels and Cliftonia is in our blood and we just can’t function without her… no, sir, absolutely not!

Incidentally, I went to speak to my immigration lawyer this morning, as I am dying to move to Portugal. Everyone who is anyone is rushing to Lisbonia and its environs these days. Jimmy Jirga, Rebecca de Chandio, even politicians such as National Icon&Hope Nazir Jr and Mian Anwar Awanfeld have bought homes there. I hear the food, the wine, the people and the geography are to die for. A lot cheaper than Spain and a lot less racist, too.

Luckily, I hail from a very fair and lovely warrior tribe on my mother’s side (who were originally from 750 miles west of Central Asia, but who went on to settle in the plains of Gangetica, staying and doing their business there for almost 300 years without mingling even once with the natives, thereby maintaining our complexions) and an even fairer and lovelier tribe on my father’s side (that originated 15 miles east of the Garden of Eden itself, thus setting us apart from everyone for all times to come, including bank holidays!). Who knew our complexions would provide us with the self confidence (and self-loathing) we so nonchalantly display whenever we drive along the streets of Aitchisonia-upon-Chenab, knowing deep within our bowels that we are, mercifully, not from among the natives, even though we have been here for centuries. 

With Canadia losing its sheen, the Cliftonian elite have a new obsession, but it has one esteemed citizen torn between familiar comforts and doctor’s orders…

In fact, whenever I walk down the quaint by-lanes of Quentin Tarantino in northern Italy, I feel more at one with the Italians than I have ever felt with the browns of Cliftonia. I don’t know why, but it must be a natural, instinctive pull that my soul feels towards my long lost clan members, no? Being mistaken for a Tarantinoite is a lot more socially uplifting than being identified as a citizen of a land known solely for its superior inferiority complex. Nothing gives one more pride (and relief) than standing in a queue, holding a “white” passport at immigration counters around the world.

Canadia has started to lose the shine it once had… now when I stand in line at an airport, every Tom, Dick and Haroon is the wrong colour! It hurts me to see all the hard work my Cliftonian ancestors did to buy me a passport for my 18th birthday only for it to be devalued by the pigment of my imagination! “O Canadia! O Canadia! why you gotta do me like dat, gurl,” as Jimmy Jirga raps so poignantly in his latest album, Cliftonia to Canadia: Where da white people at?

Rebecca says she has a small yet beautifully-designed twelve-bedroom house an hour’s drive from Lisbonia and insists that I, too, buy a place and move there asaply. The houses are not as large and comfortable as the ones we are used to in Cliftonia, she says, but then that’s true for most of the world, which is why I am such a patriotic Cliftonian. Enormous estates, unending supply of domestic staff, no income tax, zero accountability and the glorious feels of being a Cantabian or Oxonite ruler, placed by the Divine to rule over a land of unruly, uncivilised societies, whose men are anything but robots!

Tell me, which country will give me this and more, dear diary, which country? None, but my beloved Cliftonia. I love it so much that I just can’t bear to spend my summers there (because of my doctor’s strict instructions that I not go out in the sun) and the winter months (because of my doctor’s strict instruction that I must Gstaad every winter). So now, I just hope and pray that Lisbonia will be the saviour I’ve been looking for all these many years.

Fair and lovingly yours,
Cliftonia Alig

Farid Alvie was born.
He currently lives.
He’s on X @faridalvie

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 8th, 2024