2008 - A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Mohammed Hanif

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

2008

A first novel of the first order—provocative, exuberant, wickedly clever—that reimagines the conspiracies and coincidences leading to the mysterious 1988 plane crash that killed Pakistan’s dictator General Zia ul-Haq.

At the center is Ali Shigri: Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of Fury Squadron. His father, one of Zia’s colonels, committed suicide under suspicious circumstances. Ali is determined to understand what or who pushed his father to such desperation—and to avenge his death.

What he quickly discovers is a snarl of events: Americans in Pakistan, Soviets in Afghanistan, dollars in every hand. But Ali remains patient, determined, a touch world-weary (‘You want freedom and they give you chicken korma’), and unsurprised at finding Zia at every turn. He mounts an elaborate plot for revenge with an ever-changing crew (willing and not) that includes his silk-underwear-and-cologne-wearing roommate; a hash-smoking American lieutenant with questionable motives; the chief of Pakistan’s secret police, who mistakenly believes he’s in cahoots with the CIA; a blind woman imprisoned for fornication; Uncle Starchy, the squadron’s laundryman; and, not least of all, a mango-besotted crow. General Zia—devout Muslim and leering admirer of non-Muslim cleavage—begins every day by asking his chief of security: ‘Who’s trying to kill me?’ and the answer lies in a conspiracy trying its damnedest to happen…Intrigue and subterfuge combine with misstep and luck in this darkly comic book about love, betrayal, tyranny, family—and a world that unexpectedly resembles our own.

Y
ou might have seen me on TV after the crash. The clip is short and everything in it is sun-bleached and slightly faded. It was pulled after the first two bulletins because it seemed to be having an adverse impact on the morale of the country’s armed forces. You can’t see it in the clip but we are walking towards Pak One, which is parked behind the cameraman’s back, in the middle of the runway. The aeroplane is still connected to an auxiliary fuel pump, and surrounded by a group of alert commandos in camouflaged uniforms. With its dull grey fuselage barely off the ground, the plane looks like a beached whale contemplating how to drag itself back to the sea, its snout drooping with the enormity of the task ahead.

The runway is in the middle of Bahawalpur Desert, six hundred miles away from the Arabian Sea. There is nothing between the sun’s white fury and the endless expanse of shimmering sand except a dozen men in khaki uniforms walking towards the plane.

For a brief moment you can see General Zia’s face in the clip, the last recorded memory of a much photographed man. The middle parting in his hair glints under the sun, his unnaturally white teeth flash, his moustache does its customary little dance for the camera, but as the camera pulls out you can tell that he is not smiling. If you watch closely you can probably tell that he is in some discomfort. He is walking the walk of a constipated man.

The man walking on his right is the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphel, whose shiny bald head and carefully groomed moustache give him the air of a respectable homosexual businessman from small-town America. He can be seen flicking an invisible speck of sand from the lapel of his navy-blue blazer. His smart casual look hides a superior diplomatic mind; he is a composer of sharp, incisive memos and has the ability to remain polite in the most hostile exchanges. On General Zia’s left, his former spymaster and the head of Inter Services Intelligence General Akhtar seems weighed down by half a dozen medals on his chest and drags his feet as if he is the only man in the group who knows that they shouldn’t be boarding this plane. His lips are pinched and, even when the sun has boiled everything into submission and drained all colour out of the surroundings, you can see that his normally pale skin has turned a wet yellow. His obituary’ in the next day’s newspapers would describe him as the Silent Soldier and one of the ten men standing between the Free World and the Red Army.

As they approach the red carpet that leads to the Pak One stairway you can see me step forward. You can tell immediately that I am the only one in the frame smiling, but when I salute and start walking towards the aeroplane, my smile vanishes. I know I am saluting a bunch of dead men. But if you are in uniform, you salute. That’s all there is to it.

Later, forensic experts from Lockheed will put the pieces of crashed plane together and simulate scenarios, trying to unlock the mystery of how a superfit Ci3O came tumbling down from the skies only four minutes after take-off. Astrologists will pull out files with their predictions for August 1988, and blame Jupiter for the crash that killed Pakistan’s top army brass as well as the US Ambassador. Leftist intellectuals will toast the end of a cruel dictatorship and evoke historic dialectics in such matters.

But this afternoon, history is taking a long siesta, as it usually does between the end of one war and the beginning of another. More than a hundred thousand Soviet soldiers are preparing to retreat from Afghanistan after being reduced to eating toast smeared with military-issue boot polish, and these men we see in the TV clip are the undisputed victors. They are preparing for peace and, being the cautious men they are, they have come to Bahawalpur to shop for tanks while waiting for the end of the cold war. They have done their day’s work and are taking the plane back home. With their stomachs full, they are running out of small talk; there is the impatience of polite people who do not want to offend each other. It’s only later that people would say,
Look at that dip, look at their tired, reluctant walk, anybody can tell that they were being shepherded to that plane by the invisible hand of death
.

The generals’ families will get full compensation and receive flag-draped coffins with strict instructions not to open them. The pilots’ families will be picked up and thrown into cells with blood-splattered ceilings for a few days and then let go. The US Ambassador’s body will be taken back to Arlington Cemetery and his tombstone would be adorned with a half-elegant cliche. There will be no autopsies, the leads will run dry, investigations will be blocked, there will be cover-ups to cover cover-ups. Third World dictators are always blowing up in strange circumstances but if the brightest star in the US diplomatic service (and that’s what was said about Arnold Raphel at the funeral service in Arlington Cemetery) goes down with eight Pakistani generals, somebody would be expected to kick ass.
Vanity Fair
will commission an investigative piece, the
New York Times
will write two editorials, sons of the deceased will file petitions to the court and then settle for lucrative cabinet posts. It would be said that this was the biggest cover-up in aviation history since the last biggest cover-up.

The only witness to that televised walk, the only one to have walked that walk, would be completely ignored.

Because if you missed that clip, you probably missed me. Like history itself. I was the one who got away.

What they found in the wreckage of the plane were not bodies, not serene-faced martyrs, as the army claimed, not the slightly damaged, disfigured men not photogenic enough to be shown to the TV cameras or to their families.
Remains
. They found
remains
. Bits of flesh splattered on the broken aeroplane parts, charred bones sticking to mangled metal, severed limbs and faces melted into blobs of pink meat. Nobody can ever say that the coffin that was buried in Arlington Cemetery didn’t carry bits of General Zia’s remains and what lies buried in Shah Faisal mosque in Islamabad are not some of the remains of the State Department’s brightest star. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that my remains weren’t in either of those coffins.

Yes, sir, I was the one who got away.

The name Shigri didn’t figure in the terms of reference, the investigators from the FBI ignored me and I never had to sit under a naked bulb and explain the circumstances that led to me being present at the scene of the incident. I didn’t even figure in the stories concocted to cover up the truth. Even the conspiracy theories which saw an unidentified flying object colliding with the presidential plane, or deranged eyewitnesses who saw a surface-to-air missile being fired from a lone donkey’s back didn’t bother to spin any yarns about the boy in uniform with one hand on the scabbard of his sword, stepping forward, saluting, then smiling and walking away. I was the only one who boarded that plane and survived.

Even got a lift back home.

If you did see the clip you might have wondered what this boy with mountain features is doing in the desert, why he is surrounded by four-star generals, why he is smiling. It’s because I have had my punishment. As Obaid would have said, there is poetry in committing a crime after you have served your sentence. I do not have much interest in poetry but punishment before a crime does have a certain sing-song quality to it. The guilty commit the crime, the innocent are punished. That’s the world we live in.

My punishment had started exactly two months and seventeen days before the crash when I woke up at reveille and without opening my eyes reached out to pull back Obaid’s blanket, a habit picked up from four years of sharing the same room with him. It was the only way to wake him up. My hand caressed an empty bed. I rubbed my eyes. The bed was freshly made, a starched white sheet tucked over a grey wool blanket, like a Hindu widow in mourning. Obaid was gone and the buggers would obviously suspect me.

You can blame our men in uniform for anything, but you can never blame them for being imaginative.

Record of Absentees without Leave or Disappearances without Justifiable Causes

Appendix 1

Statement by Junior Under Officer Ali Shigri, Pak N°898245

Subject:

Investigation into the circumstances in which Cadet Obaid-ul-llah went AWOL

Location where statement was recorded:

Cell N°2, Main Guardroom, Cadets’ Mess, PAF Academy

I, junior under officer Ali Shigri, son of the late Colonel Quli Shigri, do hereby solemnly affirm and declare that, at the reveille on the morning of 31 May 1988, I was the duty officer. I arrived at 0630 hours sharp to inspect Fury Squadron. As I was inspecting the second row, I realised that the sash on my sword belt was loose. I tried to tighten it. The sash came off in my hand. I ran towards my barracks to get a replacement and shouted at Cadet Atiq to take charge. I ordered the squadron to mark time. I could not find my spare sash in my own cupboard; I noticed that Cadet Obaid’s cupboard was open. His sash was lying where it is supposed to be, on the first shelf, right-hand corner, behind his golden-braided peaked cap. Because I was in a hurry I didn’t notice anything unlawful in the cupboard. I did, however, notice that the poem on the inside of the door of his cupboard was missing. I do not have much interest in poetry but since Obaid was my dorm mate I knew that every month he liked to post a new poem in his cupboard but always removed it before the weekly cupboard inspection. Since the Academy’s Standard Operating Procedures do not touch upon the subject of posting poetry in dorm cupboards I had not reported this matter earlier. I arrived back at 0643 to find that the entire squadron was in Indian position. I immediately told them to stand up and come to attention and reminded Cadet Atiq that the Indian position was unlawful as a punishment and as’ an acting squadron commander he should have known the rules. Later, I recommended Cadet Atiq for a red strip, copy of which can be provided as an appendix to this appendix.

I didn’t have the time for a roll call at this point as we had only seventeen minutes left before it was time to report to the parade ground. Instead of marching Fury Squadron to the mess hall, I ordered them to move on the double. Although I was wearing my sword for that day’s silent drill practice and was not supposed to move on the double, I ran with the last file, holding the scabbard six inches from my body. Second Officer in Command saw us from his Yamaha and slowed down when passing us. I ordered the squadron to salute but 2
nd
OIC did not return my salute and made a joke about my sword and two legs. The joke cannot be reproduced in this statement but I mention this fact because some doubts were raised in the interrogation about whether I accompanied the squadron at all.

I gave Fury Squadron four minutes for breakfast and I myself waited on the steps leading to the dining hall. During this time I stood at ease and in my head went through the commands for the day’s drill. This is an exercise that Drill Instructor on Secondment, Lieutenant Bannon, has taught me. Although there are no verbal commands in the silent drill, the commander’s inner voice must remain at strength 5. It should obviously not be audible to the person standing next to him. I was still practising my silent cadence when the squadron began to assemble outside the dining hall. I carried out a quick inspection of the squadron and caught one first-termer with a slice of French toast in his uniform shirt pocket. I stuffed the toast into his mouth and ordered him to start front-rolling and keep pace with the squadron as I marched them to the parade square.