That One Goated Internship

I had been applying for internships throughout the year.

Most of them ghosted me without saying anything. Some rejected me without even opening my CV. After a while, I started wondering whether my CV was being reviewed by humans at all, or whether there was simply a small shredder somewhere in an office that had been assigned my name.

Every few days, I would send another application. No reply. Another one. No reply. Another one. At this point, even “Dear Applicant, unfortunately…” would have felt like a love letter. So, I thought the Career Placement Office of my law school might help.

That lasted until I got a reality check. Apparently, in order to get a placement, you were supposed to be in the good books of the supervisor. Unfortunately, I had somehow managed to be in the opposite collection. I don't know why he hated me. I still don't. Maybe my face offended him. Maybe I was involved in a conspiracy against him. Maybe I had failed the entrance exam for becoming one of his favourites.

Whatever the reason, the placement office and I parted ways before our relationship could even begin. So, I turned to LinkedIn. LinkedIn seemed promising. I opened it looking for internships and found three things in abundance: people announcing promotions, people announcing that they had “embraced new challenges,” and people apparently one motivational quote away from becoming Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. There were very few hiring posts. There were more flexing posts. And then there were more flexing posts.

Every second person was either standing in front of a glass building or holding a certificate with the expression of someone who had just negotiated a merger worth $4.9 billion.

Then, somewhere between “Humbled to announce” and “Excited to embark on this new journey,” I found a hiring post. I stared at it. I thought, Same thing is going to happen again. I applied anyway.

The next day, I got a call for an interview. That was unexpected. The office was even more unexpected. I had imagined a typical corporate-looking office: glass doors, white walls, people carrying laptops, someone permanently drinking coffee, and at least one person saying “Let's circle back” every fifteen minutes.

Instead, I walked into what felt like the headquarters of a family that had been rich since the British were still deciding where to put their railway tracks. The entire place had an old-money atmosphere. I don't know what exactly created it. Maybe the furniture. Maybe the walls. Maybe the people. Maybe the fact that everything looked like it had existed before I was born and had no intention of explaining itself. For a moment, I genuinely felt transported to the early 1950s.

In my imagination, I had a Cuban cigar between my fingers, a glass of whiskey with some water in it beside me, and the entire legal establishment waiting for my next move. I was no longer a law student. I was Thomas Shelby. The only problem was that I didn't have a Shelby-sized bank account, a Shelby-sized office, or, for that matter, a Shelby-sized understanding of what was happening. Reality was that I was simply an intern looking for a chair.

I went into the Managing Partner's room. His Senior Associate was sitting there too. I looked at both of them and immediately assumed this was going to be a heavy-duty interview.

I imagined questions about jurisprudence, constitutional theory, legal philosophy, statutory interpretation and Judicial Review, perhaps something so difficult that I would leave the room and quietly reconsider every decision that had brought me to law school.

Instead, they greeted me cheerfully. I sat down. They asked me a few questions. Then the Managing Partner picked up my CV. He looked at it. He put it down. He smiled. For one horrible second, I thought:

He's laughing after seeing the name of my law school.

Then he said:

“Your dean used to teach me Jurisprudence.”

And just like that, the interview disappeared. What followed was not an interview. It was a historical documentary. He started telling me stories about his time in law school, about his teachers, about his experiences, about things that had happened years before I was even remotely qualified to exist as a person. I sat there listening, slightly stunned. At one point, I genuinely wondered:

Was this supposed to be an interview or a reunion?

Eventually, he told me I could start either that day or the next. I chose tomorrow. Not because I had plans. Not because I needed to prepare. Not because I suddenly remembered an important appointment. I had simply not emotionally prepared myself for the possibility that I would actually get selected. My brain needed time. My body had arrived at the internship. My brain was still processing the acceptance.

My first day there was quite unique. I was introduced to the Senior Associate, and within a short while, I got hit by his ultra-XD humor. That man was so good at it that Richard Pryor might have sat across from him with a notebook and said, “Brother, teach me.”

I was then introduced to their Junior Associate. He appeared to have two primary responsibilities: sitting at his table with a cup of coffee and telling us stories about himself. He told us how he had entered legal practice. How he was managing his side business. How well he was doing. How good he was at practically everything. If you listened long enough, you could almost hear the Suits theme playing somewhere in the background. In short, he was Harvey Specter in his own imagination.

Then came the office manager. He was exceptionally good at scrolling through his phone. Sometimes he was funny. Sometimes he was relaxed. And whenever someone gave him work, he transformed. Not gradually. Not emotionally. Physically. The phone would disappear. The face would change. The atmosphere would shift. Angry Bird had entered the building.

We used to go to court, conduct research, work together and, somehow, have a lot of fun while doing all of it. Then one day, my exam dates arrived. I looked at them. They looked back at me. My internship and my exams had finally entered into a custody battle. I wasn't ready to leave the office, but my exams were not interested in my emotional attachment to the place. So, I took leave and started studying.

When my exams were finally over, I returned. But the office I came back to wasn't quite the office I had left. The Junior Associate had left because of his side business. And then came the new recruits. The first was Abdullah Cheema. He was deeply interested in literature. Deeply. Actually, “literature sexual” might have been more accurate. My first impression of him was that he was a bit egoistic and didn't talk much. I was wrong. Very wrong.

The second was Abdullah Ishfaq, Cheema's junior from law school. From what I understood, he was also slightly confused about life, what to do, what the next step should be, and where everything was supposed to go. Naturally, we clicked. There was, however, one significant problem.

His name was Abdullah. My name was Abdullah. And Cheema's name was Abdullah. Three Abdullah’s. One office. One vocabulary. And absolutely no naming strategy.

Whenever the Managing Partner or Senior Associate shouted:

“ABDULLAH!”

all three of us would immediately look at one another. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. We simply waited for the other two to reveal themselves. It was like watching three suspects in a police lineup hoping the detective would accidentally point at somebody else. At some point, we should have stopped being called Abdullahs altogether. We should have been The Three Musketeers. Except instead of swords, we had case files. Instead of horses, we had bikes. And instead of fighting villains, we were fighting the far more serious question of:

Which Abdullah was just called?

We used to go to court, observe our seniors, have tea breaks, and discuss law, politics, literature and almost everything else that could possibly fit into a conversation. The office had slowly stopped feeling like an internship. It felt like a strange little world of its own. And at the Centre of that world was the Managing Partner.

I remember how good he was when it came to arguing cases. His arguments were structured with such precision that even now, I can remember certain parts almost word for word. Whenever we were preparing a case, he would call us into his room. Then came the process. The facts. The law. The exceptions. The possible arguments. The counterarguments. And whatever else could possibly go wrong. By the time he finished explaining a case, you didn't just know what the law said. You knew what the law could say, what the other side might say, what you might say back, and what might happen if everyone suddenly decided to say something completely different.

I hadn't experienced anything like that before. And once the work was finished, the files would close. The tea would arrive. And the conversation would begin. The man had lived approximately fourteen different lives. He was a retired army officer, a retired civil servant, an English professor, a retired Provincial Secretary of Law and Parliamentary Affairs, a law lecturer, a practicing lawyer—and many other things.

At some point, I stopped asking what his profession was. I started wondering what profession he had not tried. He knew about law. He knew about literature. He knew about music. He knew about art. He knew about life.

And then, one day, he introduced us to a word that briefly made me question whether I was still studying law. We were sitting in his room while he was discussing something. Then he said it.

FLAUCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION.

I heard the word. I looked at the others. They looked at me. Nobody reacted. Not because we understood it. Because we were waiting for somebody else to understand it first. I genuinely thought it was scientific. Perhaps biological. Perhaps chemical. Perhaps the name of an extinct species that had been discovered somewhere in Harvard or Oxford.

I sat there thinking:

What does this have to do with what we're discussing?

Then I remembered he had a master's degree in English literature. Everything suddenly made sense. Or rather—nothing made sense. But I accepted it.

There was another incident I still remember. One day, while we were at the High Court, I was looking for a place to smoke with very low footfall. I couldn't find one. Eventually, I found a spot where I thought my face wouldn't be visible. That sentence should already tell you what happened next. I lit the cigarette. I looked around. Nobody. Perfect. Then the Managing Partner walked past. His eyes were apparently equipped with CCTV technology. He spotted me immediately. My heart stopped. I thought:

That's it.

I was already preparing myself for the lecture. He looked at me. I looked at him. There was a brief silence. Then he asked:

“Are you smoking weed or something?”

Of all the possible questions in the English language, this was the one I had least prepared for. For a moment, I didn't know whether to laugh, confess, disappear or simply become part of the wall. My soul briefly left my body. It probably came back later.

Eventually, I received an offer from another place. And that was when leaving suddenly became much harder than I had expected. I had done several internships before. I knew what internships were supposed to be. You go somewhere. You work. You learn. You leave. Simple.

This one had somehow refused to follow the instructions. I didn't want to leave. I knew that if I went elsewhere, I might never find another place quite like this one. Still, eventually, I concluded my internship. And only after leaving did I properly understand how much I was going to miss it.

I missed the associates who had never treated me like an intern. They treated me like their own buddy. They didn't look down on me. They didn't make me feel inferior. They didn't make me feel like the youngest person in the room who had to earn the right to speak. I made blunders. Plenty of them. Enough to build a small case file. But they never made a big deal out of them.

I still miss the Senior Associate's humor. I miss the way he used to take us places. I miss the way he would mingle with us. I even miss the way he once fought with me because I accidentally paid for the tea. Apparently, allowing an intern to pay for tea was itself a professional violation. I still remember asking him silly questions about statutes and watching him patiently explain the law to me as though my question had not just arrived from another dimension. And I remember how hard I tried to get some bad information about one of my law teachers, who had apparently been his Junior Associate back in the day. Every attempt ended the same way. I would ask. He would look at me. He would give me a dead stare. And then—nothing. Not a word. Not a smile. Not even a hint. I could probably have asked him for the nuclear launch codes and received the same response.

Then there was the office manager. The main character. One minute, he would be sitting peacefully, scrolling through his phone. Then someone would give him work. And suddenly, the temperature of the room would drop. His phone would disappear. His eyebrows would move. His entire personality would undergo a hostile takeover.

Angry Bird had returned.

But beneath all the jokes, all the tea, all the court visits, all the arguments and all the absurdity, there was something I carried away from that office that mattered far more than any of it.

The Managing Partner once gave us a piece of advice. He said the goal shouldn't simply be to practice law. It shouldn't be about chasing a particular profession just because that is what everyone expects. The goal should be to do what you truly desire.

It was one sentence. That's all. But sometimes one sentence arrives at the right moment and quietly rearranges the furniture in your head. That one changed my perspective. Looking back, I don't think I could have asked for a more meaningful internship. I don't know if I'll ever find another place like it. Honestly, I don't think I will. And perhaps that is what makes it special. Because I didn't just leave an office. I left a little world. A world of courtrooms and tea breaks. Of arguments and literature. Of absurd questions and even more absurd vocabulary. Of an office manager who could transform into Angry Bird at the sight of work. Of a Senior Associate whose humor could probably qualify as a separate field of study. Of a Managing Partner who could discuss law, literature, music, art and life before casually dropping flauccina... whatever that was into the conversation. And, of course, three Abdullahs who would all turn their heads whenever somebody shouted their name.

I went there looking for an internship. I left with friendships, memories, lessons and a different understanding of what practicing law could feel like. The funny thing is, when you're inside a good experience, you rarely recognize it as one. You are too busy laughing. Too busy learning. Too busy drinking tea and arguing about things that seemed important at the time. You realize later. Usually after you leave.

And when I think about that place now, I don't remember the internship certificate. I remember the people. I remember the jokes. I remember the tea. I remember the courts. I remember the three Abdullah’s turning their heads. And somewhere in the middle of all those memories is a younger version of me who walked into that office expecting another internship and accidentally found the best one he'd ever had.