Thanks to all those ridiculous urban legends about organ harvesting, this is probably going to sound rather far-fetched, but there is actually a very plausible reason for my refusal to apologise to Rowley for calling the man a tief.
In 1999, during that dark period in our country’s history when chutney was ascendant and I was leader of the opposition, I travelled to a foreign country to attend to a business matter. My hosts, not realising that I was a former head of state, put me up in a three-star hotel whose third star looked as though it had been drawn in with a crayon. The lobby of the establishment was seething with sweaty businessmen and scantily clad women, and when I complained to the manager about the strands of hair I found on the pillow of my allegedly freshly-made bed, he told me that extra hair wasn’t included in the cost of the room and he’d have to add it to my bill. Had my visit to that country not been for only a couple of nights I would certainly have moved to a less unsavoury place, and it was not often, either, even in those lean opposition years, that I had the chance to be experience life among the people in that manner. So I stayed.
On my first night at the hotel, my host called to inform me that his gout was acting up so he wouldn’t be able to join me for dinner. He wanted to send “a companion” to dine with me, but I politely declined the kind offer, opting instead for a room service meal in the confines of my dingy room with the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour for company.
After dinner I shook the strands of hair off my pillow, turned the pillowcase inside out, discovered more hairs on that side as well, then finally gave up and settled into bed. As the foreign country was in a time zone several hours ahead of Trinidad and Tobago, however, I was unable to fall asleep, and after tossing and turning in bed for an hour, I decided to go downstairs for a drink.
At that hour the hotel bar was deserted, save for a woman sitting alone at a table in a far corner. I took a seat at the bar and ordered a rum and coke. As I sipped my drink, I noticed the woman at the table rise from her seat and walk across the bar to the ladies’ room. She emerged a few minutes later, but instead of returning to her table she came and sat at the bar, on the barstool next to the one next to mine. She ordered a drink. After a few moments she glanced across at me and said, “You look older than on TV show.” I sighed. When were people going to stop mistaking me for Jaleel White? The woman was so embarrassed at having confused me with the actor who played Steve Urkel that she insisted on buying me a drink. As the first rum and coke had had little effect and as even Jesus consorted with prostitutes, I accepted. The woman babbled something to the bartender in the local language and he prepared another rum and coke and slid it across the counter in my direction. “Cheers,” I said, and raised my glass.
That’s the last thing I remember about that night.
The next morning I woke up in the bathtub of my hotel room, submerged to my neck in ice. My glasses were nowhere to be seen, but I could just make out a note taped to the bathroom mirror instructing me not to move or to call the local emergency number. Next to the bathtub, however, was a side table with a phone on it, so I called the number anyway. A man answered. When I told him what had happened, he instructed me to feel behind my head. “Is there a tube protruding from the back of your skull?” he said. And sure enough, there was. The man told me not to move and that the paramedics would arrive shortly.
After treating me for acute hypothermia, the paramedics explained that I had been victim of a crime that was becoming all too common in the country: the portion of my brain responsible for the ability to apologise had been harvested by organ traffickers, along with my median eminence. “Right now your hypothalamus is probably boarding a flight to south-east Asia, on its way to its new owner,” said the head paramedic.
And that is why Rowley ain’t getting no apology from me.