2008 - A Case of Exploding Mangoes (19 page)

I am quite amazed at the speed and accuracy with which I replace the brick in the wall. I am ready to get out of this black hole. I am certain that Major Kiyani’s little game has come to an end. He might be General Akhtar’s personal pet but his leash can’t be this long. I am looking forward to cleaning my teeth, getting into a fresh uniform and above all feeling the sun’s rays piercing my eyes.

The only light I see is a tunnel of brightness that blinds me momentarily as the door opens slightly. The only thing I see is a hand pushing in a stainless-steel plate. Before I can get up, greet the person behind the door, receive or send a message, snatch his gun and take him hostage or beg him for a cigarette, the door is shut again and the room is dark and full of the smell of hot food.

You want freedom and they give you chicken korma.

G
eneral Zia Ul-Haq picked up the photocopied clipping marked
New York Times
from the stack of his morning papers and sighed. There she was again: Blind Zainah, her head and face draped in a white dupatta, a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses covering her eyes. He knew it was her before he read the caption under her picture, even before he saw the headline: BLIND JUSTICE IN THE LAND OF THE PURE.

The mornings had become unbearable since the First Lady stopped serving him breakfast. With her at the table, he could at least vent his frustration over the day’s headlines by shouting at her. These days, sitting alone at the twenty-four-seat dining table, he looked like a librarian from hell; he picked a paper, underlined the bad news, made circles around any good bits, jabbed at the pictures of the opposition leaders and flung the paper towards the duty waiter who lurked in a corner desperately hoping that at least some of the news was good.

What was wrong with the Western press? Why were they so obsessed with sex and women? This was the third story in the international press about Blind Zainab. A simple case of unlawful fornication had been turned into an international issue. Why? General Zia wondered. Maybe because the woman was blind, he thought, because she wasn’t much to look at. Trust Americans to devote front-page space to fornicating blind women. Perverts.

General Zia remembered the NYT reporter who had interviewed him: all ballpen-chewing reverence about how he had never met such an erudite leader in the whole Muslim world. General Zia had talked to him for two hours, gifted him a small Persian carpet and walked him out to the porch after the interview. He did remember the reporter asking about the blind woman’s case and he had given his standard reply. “The matter is in the court. Would you ask the President of the United States about a criminal case being heard in a US court?”

He looked at the picture again. He had never quite believed that this woman was blind. Blind people don’t get their photos published on the front pages of American papers. He adjusted his reading glasses, read the story carefully and realised it wasn’t all bad. He was described as a ‘
smiling dictator’, “a man with impeccable manners’, “a man who told jokes about himself’, “a man who talked openly and frankly in fluent English but refused to discuss the blind woman’s case
”. The relief didn’t last long as he put the article aside and found another clipping from the
New York Times
” editorial page: a two-paragraph piece, again titled ‘
Blind Justice
”. He knew that the negative editorials in US papers meant the owners of these papers were out to get you and they were probably doing it at the behest of their government in Washington. He underlined the words
barbaric, wily dictator, our government’s fundamentalist friend who is relentlessly marching his country back in time
. With every word that he underlined, his blood pressure went up. His left eye twitched. He looked at the top of the editorial page and underlined the name Arthur Sulzberger. He picked up the phone and called his Information Minister, who had set up the interview and thus saved his job after the widows fiasco.

“What kind of name is Sulzberger?” he asked, dropping his customary greeting (How are you and how are the wife and kids?).

The Information Minister was a bit hazy. “Sir, forgive my ignorance but I haven’t heard the name.”

“Did I ask you whether you know this person? All I am asking is this: what kind of name is it? Is it Christian, Jewish, Hindu?”

“I am not sure, sir. It sounds German.”

“I know some newspapers call you Disinformation Minister, but you don’t have to take that title so seriously. Find out and let me know before the evening prayers.” He slammed down the phone.

The Information Minister’s first port of call was his own monitoring desk, which maintained files on all correspondents, editors and publishers. They had never heard the name. He called up a local reporter who had shown him his NYT card many times, but it turned out that this guy worked as a stringer for the NYT’s regional stringer and had never heard the name.

Reluctantly, very reluctantly, the Information Minister passed the request on to the information cell in the Inter Services Intelligence. He knew that it would be fed back to General Zia and he’d be asked why the country needed an Information Minister if the intelligence agencies had to do all his dirty work.

When the ISI told him politely in mid-afternoon that they had nothing on Arthur Sulzberger, his frustration resulted in the cancellation of publishing permits for two local film magazines. Then a flash of brilliance: the
New York Times
was in New York. He slapped his forehead and called up Pakistan’s press attache in New York, who didn’t have an answer but was confident that he’d find out in half an hour as he had excellent contacts in the
NYT
newsroom. The press attache called up a friendly Pakistani cab driver who he knew read every word in every paper and always alerted him to any stories about Pakistan.

“Sulzberger,” the cab driver shouted into his cab phone, jumping a Manhattan traffic light. “Sulzberger…that Jew.”

The information travelled from his cab to the Pakistani consulate in New York, reached the Information Ministry in Islamabad over a secure teleprinter and five minutes before his deadline the Information Minister received a note marked ‘
Classified
’.

The owner of the
New York Times
was a Jew.

General Zia heard it with a sense of relief. He knew in his guts when he was right. He shouted at the Information Minister: “What are you waiting for? Put out a press release and tell them all this fuss about that blind woman is Jewish propaganda. And next time we go to America invite Sulzberger for lunch. Take a large Persian carpet for him.”

At the end of such a hectic day at the office the Information Minister couldn’t bring himself to tell the General that he had issued the press release about Jewish propaganda first thing in the morning. His office had standard operating procedures when it came to rebutting negative stories about General Zia. These were divided into two categories: Jewish and Hindu propaganda. And since the story had appeared in the
New York Times
, you couldn’t really put it on the Hindu propaganda pile.

General Zia knew that Arnold Raphel wouldn’t help, but called him up anyway. The ambassador had, of course, seen the interview.

“Some nice quotes,” he said, trying to cheer General Zia up.

“The editorial,” General Zia said, then paused. “The editorial is very unfortunate. I don’t mind personal insults, but somebody is trying to malign our friendship. Somebody is trying to undermine all the good work we have done together.”

“It’s probably a bunch of liberal op-ed writers on a lean news day, Mr President. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“It could jeopardise our chances for the Nobel, you see. I was hoping we would receive it together.” There was a moment’s silence at the other end. “For liberating Afghanistan,” he added, and thought this Arnie chap wasn’t very bright.

“We can discuss it at the party, Mr President, I hope you will be able to come.”

General Zia realised that a statement blaming the Jewish press and talking to the US ambassador would not solve the Blind Zainab problem when yet another group of women staged a protest in Islamabad the next day. “All rich begums,” the Information Minister told him. “More chauffeurs than protesters.”

When confronted with a legal dilemma like this, General Zia always picked up the phone and called ninety-year-old Qadi, his man in Mecca who had retired as a judge of the Saudi Sharia Court thirty years ago and since then had never missed a prayer in Khana Kaaba. The man practically lived in the House of God.

The phone call started, like it always did, with the General expressing his desire to die while on a pilgrimage to Mecca and to be buried at Qadi’s feet. Qadi assured him that Allah would grant him his wish and enquired about the purpose of this phone call.

“With your blessings I have introduced the new laws in Pakistan and by the grace of Allah hundreds of sinners have already been convicted: we have two hundred thieves waiting for their hands to be amputated, thousands of drunkards have been lashed in public.”

“Allah may help you, Allah may help you,” Qadi kept muttering.

“We have just had a death-by-stoning sentence passed and I was calling about that.” General Zia didn’t want to mention Zainab’s name.

“Real test, my birather. A real test.” Ninety-year-old Qadi’s voice was suddenly booming over the phone. “Our rulers of this Saudi kingdom, may their rule last till the Judgement Day, they don’t have courage for this. They like to make easy on everyone’s eyes; chop, chop after Friday prayers and everyone goes home happy. They not only chop the head off the criminal, they kill the spirit of law. People just become spectators. Adultery is a crime against society and people must carry out the punishment themselves. You cannot pass the responsibility onto some hired executioner and think you have done Allah’s work.”

“Yes, Qadi, I wanted your guidance on this matter: what happens if the accused says that she was forced to fornicate? How do we establish whether she is telling the truth? I mean, sometimes you can look at a woman’s face and tell that she is a fornicator, but we need legal procedures to establish it.”

Qadi spoke as if he had thought about this for a long time. “Women always make this excuse after they are caught fornicating, but we all know that rape is not easy to commit. The perpetrator will need at least four accomplices. There will have to be two men holding her by her arms, two pinning down her legs and then the fifth one between her legs, committing the act. So the answer is yes, a woman can be raped and it’s a serious crime.”

“So the woman will be required to recognise all five culprits in the court?” Zia asked.

“Our law, you know, is not set in stone, it encourages us to use our common sense. So the two men who are holding her down by her arms, maybe the woman would not be able to recognise those two and the judge can make an exception.”

“And what if she didn’t see any of the culprits? What if they were wearing masks?”

General Zia could tell the old man was suddenly angry.

“Why would a rapist wear a mask? Is he a bank robber? Bank robbers wear masks. Kidnappers wear masks. I have never heard of a rapist wearing a mask in my forty years as a judge.”

General Zia felt stupid as Qadi continued, this time in a cold, admonishing, teacher-like voice. “Rapists like to see their own reflection in the woman’s eyes. That is one reason they’d never wear masks,” said Qadi.

“And what if the woman in question was blind?” General Zia asked.

Qadi clearly didn’t get General Zia’s drift.

“Do you mean morally blind or someone who Allah has not given the physical powers to see?”

“Blind. A woman who can’t see.”

“The law doesn’t differentiate between those who can see and those who can’t. Let’s assume for the sake of legal argument that the rapist was blind in this case, would he be entitled to any special privilege? So the victim, blind or not, is entitled to the same scrutiny, same rights.”

“How will she recognise her rapists and the other people who held her down?”

“It can be done in two ways: if she is married, her husband will have to establish in the court that she is of good character and then we’ll need four male Muslims of sound character who have witnessed the crime. And since rape is a very serious crime, circumstantial evidence wouldn’t do. ‘We heard screams and we saw blood and we heard the man hitting her’ is not enough evidence; witnesses will be required to have witnessed the actual penetration. And if the woman is not married she’ll have to prove that she was a virgin before this horrible crime was committed.”

General Zia felt much better by dinner time. He had already passed Qadi’s legal advice to his Chief Justice and was now composing a speech in his head that he would ask the First Lady to deliver at the annual charity bazaar of the All Pakistan Professional Women’s Association. He tried to test some of the arguments on the First Lady after reminding her of her promise to carry out her state duties. She listened silently at first, but when he reached the part about the victim having to establish her virginity the First Lady interrupted him.

“Are you talking about Blind Zainab’s case?”

“Well, yes, but basically we are trying to establish a legal precedent that will safeguard women’s honour. All women’s honour.”

“I don’t know anything about the law and I’ll make this speech if that’s what the law says.” The First Lady pushed her plate away. “But how is this woman supposed to prove that she is a virgin if a bunch of men banged her for three days and three nights?”

I
follow the chicken korma smell and crawl my way towards the door. I pick up the plate and put it back. It’s hot. I suddenly feel very hungry. I sit down with my back against the door and start to eat. My world is reduced to the tender chicken flesh dripping with creamy curry. Even the bitter whole spices that get stuck in my teeth seem like portents of a prosperous, free future. I have only finished half my plate when the brick is pushed out. I take my plate to the hole and remove the brick.