2008 - A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2 page)

I handed over command to the Sergeant of the Day, who marched the boys to the armoury to get their rifles. It was only after the Quran recitation and the national anthem were over, and the Silent Drill Squad was dividing into two formations, that the Sergeant of the Day came to ask me why Cadet Obaid had not reported for duty. He was supposed to be the file leader for that day’s drill rehearsal. I was surprised because I had thought all along that he was in the squadron that I had just handed over to the Sergeant.

“Is he on sick parade?” he asked me.

“No, Sergeant,” I said. “Or if he is I don’t know about it.”

“And who is supposed to know?”

I shrugged my shoulders, and before the Sergeant could say anything Lieutenant Bannon announced that silent zone was in effect. I must put it on record that most of our Academy drill sergeants do not appreciate the efforts of Lieutenant Bannon in trying to establish our own Silent Drill Squad. They resent his drill techniques. They do not understand that there is nothing that impresses civilians more than a silent drill display, and we have much to learn from Lieutenant Bannon’s experience as the Chief Drill Instructor at Fort Bragg.

After the drill I went to the sickbay to check if Cadet Obaid had reported sick. I didn’t find him there. As I was coming out of the sickbay I saw the first-termer from my squadron sitting in the waiting area with bits of vomited toast on his uniform shirt;’s front. He stood up to salute me, I told him to keep sitting and stop disgracing himself further.

As the Character Building Lecture had already started, instead of going to the classroom, I returned to my dorm. I asked our washerman Uncle Starchy to fix my belt, and I rested for a while on my bed. I also searched Obaid’s bed, his side table and his cupboard to find any clues as to where he might be. I did not notice anything untoward in these areas. Cadet Obaid has been winning the Inter Squadron Cupboard Competition since his first term at the Academy and everything was arranged according to the dorm cupboard manual.

I attended all the rest of the classes that day. I was marked present in those classes. In Regional Studies we were taught about Tajikstan and the resurgence of Islam. In Islamic Studies we were ordered to do self-study because our teacher Maulana Hidayatullah was angry with us because when he entered the class some cadets were singing a dirty variation on a folk wedding song.

It was during the afternoon drill rehearsal that I got my summons from the 2
nd
OIC’s office. I was asked to report on the double and I reported there in uniform.

The 2
nd
OIC asked me why I had not marked Cadet Obaid absent in the morning inspection when he wasn’t there.

I told him that I had not taken the roll call.

He asked me if I knew where he was.

I said I didn’t know.

He asked me where I had disappeared to between the sickbay and the Character Building Lecture.

I told him the truth.

He asked me to report to the guardroom.

When I arrived at the guardroom, the guardroom duty cadet told me to wait in the cell.

When I asked him whether I was under detention he laughed and made a joke about the cell mattress having too many holes. The joke cannot be reproduced in this statement.

Half an hour later 2
nd
OIC arrived and informed me that I was under close arrest and he wanted to ask me some questions about the disappearance of Cadet Obaid. He told me that if I didn’t tell him the truth he’d hand me over to Inter Services Intelligence and they would hang me by my testicles.

I assured him of my full cooperation. 2
nd
OIC questioned me for one hour and forty minutes about Obaid’s activities, my friendship with him and whether I had noticed anything strange in his behaviour in what he described as the days leading up to his disappearance’.

I told him all I knew. He went out of the cell at the end of the question-answer session and came back five minutes later with some sheets of paper and a pen and asked me to write everything that had happened in the morning and describe in detail where and when I had last seen Cadet Obaid.

Before leaving the cell he asked me if I had any questions. I asked him whether I’d be able to attend the silent drill rehearsal as we were preparing for the President’s annual inspection. I requested 2
nd
OIC to inform Lieutenant Bannon that I could continue to work on my silent cadence in the cell. 2
nd
OIC made a joke about two marines and a bar of soap in a Fort Bragg bathroom. I didn’t think I was supposed to laugh and I didn’t.

I hereby declare that I saw Cadet Obaid last when he was lying in his bed reading a book of poetry in English the night before his disappearance. The book had a red cover and what looked like a lengthened shadow of a man. I don’t remember the name of the book. After lights out I heard him sing an old Indian song in a low voice. I asked him to shut up. The last thing I remember before going to sleep is that he was still humming the same song.

I did not see him in the morning and I have described my day’s activities accurately in this statement in the presence of the undersigned.

In closing I would like to state that in the days leading up to Cadet Obaid absenting himself without any plausible cause, I did not notice anything unusual about his conduct. Only three days before going AWOL he had received his fourth green strip for taking active part in After Dinner Literary Activities (ADLA). He had made plans to take me out at the weekend for ice cream and to watch
Where Eagles Dare
. If he had any plans about absenting himself without any justifiable cause he never shared them with me or anyone else as far as I know.

I also wish to humbly request that my close arrest is uncalled for and if I cannot be allowed to return to my dorm I should be allowed to keep the command of my Silent Drill Squad because tomorrow’s battles are won in today’s practice.

Statement signed and witnessed by:

Squadron Leader Karimullah,

2
nd
OIC, PAF Academy

T
here is something about these bloody squadron leaders that makes them think that if they lock you up in a cell, put their stinking mouth to your ear and shout something about your mother they can find all the answers. They are generally a sad lot, these leaders without any squadrons to lead. It’s their own lack of leadership qualities that stops them mid-career, nowhere for them to go except from one training institute to another, permanent seconds in command to one commander or the other. You can tell them from their belts, loose and low, straining under the weight of their paunches. Or from their berets, so carefully positioned to hide that shiny bald patch. Schemes for part-time MBAs and a new life are trying hard to keep pace with missed promotions and pension plans.

Look at the arrangement of fruit salad on my tormentor’s chest above the left pocket of his uniform shirt and you can read his whole biography. A faded paratrooper’s badge is the only thing that he had to leave his barracks to earn. The medals in the first row just came and pinned themselves to his chest. He got them because he was there. The 40
th
Independence Day medal. The Squadron Anniversary medal. Today-I-did-not-jerk-off medal. Then the second row, fruits of his own hard labour and leadership. One for organising a squash tournament, another for the great battle that was tree-plantation week. The leader with his mouth to my ear and my mother on his mind has had a freebie to Mecca and is wearing a haj medal too.

As Obaid used to say, “God’s glory. God’s glory. For every monkey there is a houri.”

2
nd
OIC is wasting more of his already wasted life trying to break me down with his bad breath and his incessant shouting. Doesn’t he know that I actually invented some of the bullshit that he is pouring into my ear? Hasn’t he heard about the Shigri treatment? Doesn’t he know that I used to get invited to other squadrons in the middle of the night to make the new arrivals cry with my three-minute routine about their mothers? Does he really think that fuck-your-fucking mother, even when delivered at strength 5, still has any meaning when you are weeks away from the President’s annual inspection and becoming a commissioned officer?

The theory used to be damn simple: any good soldier learns to shut out the noise and de-link such expressions from their apparent meaning. I mean, when they say that thing about your mother, they have absolutely no intention—and I am certain no desire either—to do what they say they want to do with your mother. They say it because it comes out rapid-fire and sounds cool and requires absolutely no imagination. The last syllable of ‘mother’ reverberates in your head for a while as it is delivered with their lips glued to your ear. And that is just about that. They have not even seen your poor mother.

Anybody who breaks down at the sheer volume of this should stay in his little village and tend his father’s goats or should study biology and become a doctor and then they can have all the bloody peace and quiet they want. Because as a soldier, noise is the first thing you learn to defend yourself against, and as an officer noise is the first weapon of attack you learn to use.

Unless you are in the Silent Drill Squad.

Look at the parade square during the morning drill and see who commands it. Who rules? There are more than one thousand of us, picked from a population of one hundred and thirty million, put through psychological and physical tests so strenuous that only one in a hundred applicants makes it, and when this cream of our nation, as we are constantly reminded we are, arrives here, who leads them? The one with the loudest voice, the one with the clearest throat, the one whose chest can expand to produce a command that stuns the morning crows and makes the most stubborn of cadets raise their knees to waist level and bring the world to a standstill as their heels land on the concrete.

Or at least that is what I believed before Lieutenant Bannon arrived with his theories about inner cadence, silent commands, and subsonic drill techniques. ‘A drill with commands is just that—a drill,’ Bannon is fond of saying. “A drill without commands is an art. When you deliver a command at the top of your voice, only the boys in your squadron listen. But when your inner cadence whispers, the gods take notice.”

Not that Bannon believes in any god.

I wonder whether he’ll visit me here. I wonder whether they will let him into this cell.

2
nd
OIC is exhausted from his business with my mother and I can see an appeal to my better sense on its way. I clench my stomach muscles against the impending ‘cream of the nation’ speech. I don’t want to throw up. The cell is small and I have no idea how long I am going to be here.

“You are the cream of our nation,” he says shaking his head. “You have been the pride of our Academy. I have just recommended you for the sword of honour. You are going to receive it from the President of Pakistan. You have two choices: graduate with honour in four weeks or go out front-rolling to the sound of drums. Tomorrow. Clap. Clap. Tony Singh style.” He brings his hands together twice, like those Indian film extras in a qawwali chorus.

They did that to Tony Singh. Drummed the poor bugger out. I never figured out what the hell Tony Singh was doing in the air force of the Islamic Republic anyway. Before meeting Tony Singh (or Sir Tony as we had to call him since he was six courses senior to us), the only Tony I knew was our neighbour’s dog and the only Singh I had seen was in my history textbook, a one-eyed maharaja who ruled Punjab a couple of centuries ago. I thought the Partition took care of all the Tonys and the Singhs, but apparently some didn’t get the message.

Tony Singh didn’t get the message even when they found a transistor radio in his dorm and charged him with spying.
Top of the Pops
was Sir Tony’s defence. They reduced the charge to un-officer-like behaviour and drummed him out anyway.

A lone drummer—a corporal who, after carrying the biggest drum in the Academy band all his life, had begun to look like one—led the way; keeping a thud, thud, thud-a-dud marching beat. More than one thousand of us lined both sides of Eagles Avenue that leads from the guardroom to the main gate.

At ease, came the command.

Tony Singh emerged from the guardroom, having spent a couple of nights in this very cell. His head was shaved, but he still wore his uniform. He stood tall and refused to look down or sideways.

Clap, came the command.

We started slowly. 2
nd
OIC removed Sir Tony’s belt and the ranks from his shoulder flaps and then he took a step forward and whispered something into Sir Tony’s ear. Sir Tony went down on his knees, put both his hands on the road and did a front roll without touching his shaved head on the ground.

The bugger was trying to be cocky even when his ass was raised to the skies.

His journey was painfully slow. The drumbeat became unbearable after a while. Some cadets clapped more enthusiastically than others.

I glanced sideways and saw Obaid trying hard to control his tears.

“Sir, I swear to God I have no knowledge of Cadet Obaid’s whereabouts,” I say, trying to tread the elusive line between grovelling and spitting in his face.

2
nd
OIC wants to get home. An evening of domestic cruelty and
Baywatch
beckons him. He waves my statement in front of me. “You have one night to think this through. Tomorrow it goes to the Commandant and the only thing he hates more than his men disappearing is their clever-dick collaborators. He is looking forward to the President’s visit. We are all looking forward to the visit. Don’t fuck it up.”

He turns to go. My upper body slumps. He puts one hand on the door handle and turns; my upper body comes back to attention. “I saw your father once, and he was a soldier’s bloody soldier. Look at yourself.” A leery grin appears on his lips. “You mountain boys get lucky because you have no hair on your face.”

I salute him, using all my silent drill practice to contain the inner cadence, which is saying, “Fuck your mother too.”