2008 - A Case of Exploding Mangoes (17 page)

A television producer with an eye for detail walked up to the Information Minister and pointed to the banner that was to serve as the backdrop for the ceremony.

President’s Rehabilitation Programme for Windows
, it read.

The Information Minister knew from experience that a spelling error could ruin General Zia’s day and his own career. General Zia photocopied the newspaper articles, even those praising him, and sent them back to the editors with a thank-you note and the typos circled in red. The Information Minister placed himself strategically in front of the banner and refused to budge during the entire ceremony. This was probably the first and the last time that the Information Minister was not seen in the official TV footage in his usual place and in his usual mood; he had always stood behind his boss with his neck straining above General Zia’s shoulders and always grinned with such fervour that it seemed the nation’s survival depended on his cheerful mood.

“Pray for Pakistan’s prosperous future and my health,” General Zia said to a seventy-five-year-old widow, a shrivelled apple of a woman, a deserving veteran of these ceremonies and hence the first one in the queue. “Pakistan is very prosperous,” she said, waving the envelope in his face. Then she pinched his cheeks with both her hands. “And you are as healthy as a young ox. May Allah destroy all your enemies.”

General Zia’s teeth flashed, his moustache did a little twist and he put his right hand on his heart and patted the old woman’s shoulder with his left. “I am what I am because of your prayers.”

General Zia, occupied for the last few days with the security alert triggered by Jonah’s verse, felt at peace for the first time in ages. He looked at the long queue of women with their heads covered, with eyes full of hope, and realised they were his saviour angels, his last line of defence.

Brigadier TM stood out of frame and bristled at the way these women were disobeying his instructions. But the camera was rolling and Brigadier TM had enough television manners to stay out of the picture, control his anger and focus on the end of the queue where a catfight seemed to be in progress.

Most of the women in the queue knew why it was taking the President so long to hand out a few hundred rupees. The President was in a talkative mood, enquiring after the health of each woman, patiently listening to their long-winded answers and asking them to pray for his health. The one hour and thirty minutes scheduled for the ceremony were about to run out and more than half the women were still waiting in the queue. The Information Minister thought of stepping forward and asking the President if, with his permission, he could distribute the rest of the envelopes, but then he remembered the misspelt word he was covering and decided to stay put. Brigadier TM looked at his watch, looked at the President chattering away with the women, and decided that the President’s schedule was not his problem.

The First Lady wasn’t getting the sisterly support she had expected from the other women in the queue. “Begums like her bring us a bad name,” the woman in front of the First Lady whispered to the woman ahead of her, making sure that the First Lady could hear. “Look at all the gold this cow is wearing,” the woman said, raising her voice. “Her husband probably died trying to keep her decked out in all that finery.”

The First Lady pulled her dupatta even further over her head. She tightened it across her chest in a belated attempt to hide her necklace.

Then she realised that to these women she must appear a fraud, a rich begum pretending to be a widow coming to feed off the official charity.

“My husband is not dead,” she said, raising her voice to the point where ten women in front of her could hear. The women turned round and looked at her. “But I have left him. And here, you can have these.” She removed her earrings and unhooked her necklace and pressed them both into the reluctant hands of two women standing in front of her.

The whisper travelled along the queue that a woman at the back was distributing gold.

General Zia’s right eye noticed the pandemonium at the back of the queue. With his left eye he sought out the Information Minister. He wanted to find out what was happening, but the minister was standing in front of the backdrop as if guarding the last bunker on a front line under attack.

An incredibly young woman, barely out of her twenties, shunned the envelope extended towards her by Zia, and instead removed the dupatta from her head and unfurled it like a banner before the camera.

Free Blind Zainab
, it read.

General Zia shuffled back, Brigadier TM rushed forward with his right hand ready to draw his gun. The television cameras cut to a close-up of the shouting woman.

“I am not a widow,” she was shouting over and over again. “I don’t want your money. I want you to immediately release that poor blind woman.”

“We have set up special schools for the blind people. I have started a special fund for the special people,” General Zia mumbled.

“I don’t want your charity. I want justice for Zainab, blind Zainab. Is it her fault that she can’t recognise her attackers?”

General Zia glanced back and his right eyebrow asked the Information Minister where the hell he had got this widow. The Information Minister stood his ground; imagining the camera was taking his close-up, his mouth broke into a grin. He shook his head, and composed a picture caption for tomorrow’s papers:
The President sharing a light moment with the Information Minister
.

Brigadier TM could stand disorder at one end of the queue, but now there were women wagging fingers and shouting at both ends, those furthest from him cursing the last woman in the queue and this one right in front of him defying presidential protocol. He took out his revolver and moved towards the cameraman.

“Stop filming.”

“This is good, lively footage,” the cameraman said, his eye still glued to the camera. Then he felt something hard poking his ribs and switched off the camera.

Brigadier TM had the protesting woman removed and the ceremony started again, this time without the television camera. General Zia’s movements became mechanical, he barely looked at the women when they stepped forward to receive their envelopes. He even ignored their blessings. If his enemies had infiltrated his saviour angels, he was thinking, how could he trust anyone?

By the time the last woman in the queue stepped forward to receive her envelope, General Zia was already turning towards his Information Minister. He wanted to give him a piece of his mind. General Zia extended the envelope towards the woman without looking at her; the woman held his hand and pressed a small metallic ring into it. He only turned to look when he heard the sound of glass breaking.

His wife was standing there striking her glass-bangled wrists against each other, something that women only did when they heard the news of their husband’s death.

Later she would listen patiently as General Zia blamed his enemies in the press, pleaded national interest and invoked their thirty-eight years together. He would say everything the First Lady had thought he would. She would agree to continue to do her ceremonial duties as the First Lady, she would appear at the state ceremonies and she would entertain other first ladies, but only after kicking him out of their bedroom.

But here at this moment, she only said one thing before walking off. “Add my name to that list of widows. You are dead for me.”

T
he soldier escorting me back from the torture chamber unties my hands, doesn’t bother to remove my blindfold, holds my neck down with one hand, puts his boot on my buttocks and shoves me into a room. I land face down, my tongue tastes sand. The door that shuts behind me is small. I am relieved to notice that I am not in the bathroom where I spent the night. I fumble with the rag covering my eyes, the knot is too tight. I yank it down and it hangs around my neck like a poor man’s dog collar. My eyes blink and blink again but don’t register anything. I open them wide, I narrow them. I don’t see a thing. Have I gone completely blind? I stand still, scared to move my hands and feet, scared to find myself in a grave. I breathe, and the air smells of a duvet that has spent a night out in a monsoon, but it’s better than last night’s stench. Tentatively, I move my right hand, stretch out my arm. It doesn’t touch anything. I stretch out my left hand; it flails in a vacuum. I stretch my arms to the front, to the back, I make a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn with my arms outstretched, they don’t come in contact with anything. I keep my hand in front of me and walk, counting my steps. Ten steps and my hand scrapes a brick surface. I run my hand over the slim, flat bricks that the Mughals used to build this fort. Conclusion: I am still in the Fort. I am in a part of the Fort which is not an extension built by the army. I move left. Twelve steps and I run into another specimen of Mughal masonry. I knock on the wall, and as I should have known, there is only the dead sound of my knuckles against a historical monument.

I am not in a grave. I have ample space, I can breathe. I am in a luxury-sized dungeon. My eyes adjust to the dark, but they still can’t see anything. The darkness just grows darker. It’s the kind of darkness which is ancient, manufactured by the sadistic imagination of the Mughals. Those buggers may have lost their empire but they knew how to build dungeons. I go down on my knees and embark on a crawling tour of my abode. The sand is real sand, beneath it the floor, endless cold slabs of stone. Anyone planning to dig a tunnel here would need to hire a mining company. In this monument to sixteenth-century architectural values, the only concession to modern times is a plastic bucket in a corner that I butt my head against. It probably hasn’t been used in a long time, but the stale smell that emanates from it makes it absolutely clear that I shouldn’t expect any visits to a loo.

I sit with my back to the wall and shut my eyes, hoping the darkness will get less dark, the way it does in a cinema. I open them again. This place is no cinema. I can’t even muster any imaginary shadows.

Minutes pass, hours pass. How should I know how long I have been here? If I stay still I’ll lose my eyesight or parts of my brains and probably the use of my limbs. I jump up in panic. On your feet, Mr Shigri, get busy. I command myself to run. I run on the spot for a while, my body warms up. I keep my mouth shut and concentrate on breathing through my nose. Not a good choice of exercise, as I realise I am breathing in sand from the floor which has begun to fly in the air. I stop. I put my hands behind my neck and sit on my toes and start doing frantic squats. I do five hundred and without a pause jump in the air and land with my hands on the sand, body parallel to the ground. One hundred push-ups; a thin film of perspiration is covering my body, and an inner glow brings a smile to my face. As I sit back with my back to the wall I think that Obaid could probably write an article about this, send it to
Reader’s Digest
and fulfil his dream of getting one hundred dollars in the mail: ‘Aerobics for Solitary Prisoners’.

I started my brief career as a swordsman by practising on a bed sheet. I hung the sheet over the curtain in my dorm and marked a circle roughly at the height where my target’s face would be. I stood with my back to the bed sheet and tried to pierce it from all possible angles, from above my shoulder, with my left hand, with backhand swipes. After one hour the sheet was in shreds and the circle more or less intact, mocking my swordsmanship. The next day, as Obaid got ready to go out for the weekend, I pretended that I had a fever. Obaid came to my bed, put his hand on my forehead and nodded his head in mock concern. “It’s probably just a headache,” he said, pulling a face, disappointed at the prospect of having to watch
The Guns of Navarone
without me.

“I am not a city boy like you. I am from the mountains where only women get headaches,” I said, irritated at my own lie. Obaid was mystified. “What do you know about women?” he taunted me, spraying his wrists with a sharp burst of Poison. “You don’t even remember what your mother looked like.” I pulled my bed sheet above my head and started to detach myself, bit by bit.

I locked the room as soon as he left and dressed up in uniform; boots, peaked cap, sword belt, scabbard, the whole works. From now on every rehearsal would be a full dress rehearsal. There was no point doing this by halves, it didn’t make sense not to simulate the exact circumstances. I took out a white towel. Instead of a circle, this time I drew an oval shape with a pencil, then two small circles for eyes, an inverted seven for a nose. I took extra pleasure in drawing a broom of a moustache. I hung my creation over the curtain, put my right hand on the hilt of the sword and took five steps back. I came to attention, with my eyes fixed on the moustached face on the towel. I drew the sword and extended it towards the target. It flailed in the air inches away from the towel.

Five steps is the regulation distance between the parade commander and the guest of honour inspecting the parade and nobody can change that. I tried throwing the sword. It did pierce the chin but throwing the sword is not a possibility. You can’t do that with a live target because if you miss, then you are left standing there empty-handed. Not that I could afford to miss. Not that I was going to be given a best-of-three-type chance.

I knew what the problem was. It wasn’t the distance. It wasn’t the fact that my target would be moving; the problem was the relationship between my hand as it wielded the sword and the sword itself. These were two different entities. Through practice I could improve my hand—eye coordination, I could make them work together better but sadly that wasn’t enough. My arm and the sword needed to become one. The muscles in my tendon had to merge with the molecules that made up the sword. I needed to wield it like it was an extension of my arm. As Bannon had pointed out again and again in our knife-throwing sessions, I needed to work on my
sentiment du fer
.

It was time to look for the sentiment of steel within myself.

I took off my sword belt and lay down on the bed with my shoes on and stared and stared at the two small circles on the towel and did Total Detachment, an exercise of my own invention. It’s a slow exercise and few have the mental stamina required to do it because it involves complete abandonment of your thoughts and total control of your muscles. I was able to master it during that holiday when Colonel Shigri sought forgiveness for his sins over the Quran during the day, then plotted his next foray into Afghanistan over Scotch in the evenings. I had a lot of time at my hands.