An Irishman's Diary

A word of praise for the Sharif family of Preston in England, whose inventiveness and resourcefulness should be an inspiration…

A word of praise for the Sharif family of Preston in England, whose inventiveness and resourcefulness should be an inspiration to us all; but most of all, we should honour Zulfiqar Sharif, whose determination to be rich is almost a model of its kind. It is a great shame that his mentor, his father Mohammed, has been called to answer before the Great Court which awaits us all.

But no matter. He has gone to his eternal reward, and in his case this means being the patron saint of that huge growth industry, Compensation Inc. Solicitors striving so heroically in the service of Compensation Inc should have a photograph of St Mohammed in all their offices. He is an inspiration to them and his clients, the sort of fellow who has the managers of dole offices and insurance companies waking up screaming in the middle of the night. He masterminded insurance and employment frauds which netted his family over £3 million.

Compensation

It was not easy being a member of his family. Bloody hard, in fact. In the space of four months, while driving his car he apparently ran over seven members of his family, obliging them all to limp off looking for compensation. Which they got, steered and guided by his daughter Parveen, who conducted the correspondence with insurance companies and dole offices, and who furthered her claims by making all her pitiful public appearances in a wheelchair, poor Parveen, although actually in excellent health.

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But her thespian dedication was as nothing compared to her brother Zulfiqar, who for 15 years pretended to be a mentally damaged and incontinent mute as a result of "injuries" which occurred in a "street attack". Mimicking mental retardation is at worst boring and tiresome; mimicking muteness the same; but mimicking incontinence is not mimicry at all. It's the real thing.

Although, this wasn't the case consistently. For the first ten days of his trial for insurance fraud, his incontinence was not too much in evidence. But as the case against him grew worse, so too did his need for nappies, which he used copiously, just to prove to the court that, yes indeed, he couldn't control his ones and twosies. Delightful. Will the accused please not stand.

Zulfiqar was not the only member of his family to have found himself professionally silent; muteness seemed to stalk them almost as much as their dad did in his car. Razia Ahmed claimed to have lost the power of speech (even though the court saw her on video singing and laughing - a lesson to all aspiring litigants: destroy home movies). For her trouble, she got three years, as did her sister Yasmin, as did their brother Arif, as did the their hero (and mine) Zulfiqar; though I do hope I never have to share a prison cell with him.

Distress call

Funny things, these calls of nature. Zulfiqar used them - to the infinite distress of Preston Crown Court - to convince people he was brain-damaged. An unnamed Chinese lady used one such call to enlarge her family, though that was not her intention. Being a male, I am not too familiar with the procedures involved in giving birth, but apparently they are not dissimilar to those involved in moving one's bowels. Which makes one wonder why more new-born babies are not inadvertently plopped into the lavatory.

EChinese trains - apparently - do not have lavatories in the normal sense. They simply have squat toilets over holes above the tracks, clickety click, clickety click. A little unnerving, I should have thought, and not great for accuracy. But maybe you get used to it. Practice makes perfect, etc. So the pregnant migrant worker who squatted over the high-speed hole thundering across China, was presumably in no doubt of the outcome. What came out was not number twosies at all, but a baby, which she managed to catch before it slipped onto the tracks below. She ripped off the umbilical cord, but babies being greasy little devils, her new-born slipped from her hands and out of the hole below.

Swift separation

Now I mustn't put young pregnant women off. It need not always end like this. Indeed, it usually doesn't. In Holles Street, named after the noise of pregnant women, or the Rotunda, from their shape, babies hardly ever fall onto railway tracks moments after birth. But on this occasion it did: the swiftest separation of mother and baby in obstetric history. Three railway workers saw the infant lying on the railway tracks, and they were rushing to his rescue when along comes China's answer to Thomas the Tank Engine, and runs right over the little blighter. So of course, the workers hid their eyes, expecting to see macedoine of tot in the wake of the departing choo-choo.

But this baby was not born in order to get into the Guinness Books of Records as the youngest ever rail-fatality. Far from being dead, he was alive, though perhaps a little displeased at his welcome to this world; as who wouldn't be? But his injuries were no more than slight bruising and a small cut on the head needing three stitches. Still, any injury must mean post-traumatic stress disorder. Time for compensation. I wonder who he should sue. Maybe he would seek the advice of Zulfiqar Sharif, care of Her Majesty's Prisons. After all, they're both in nappies.