2008 - A Case of Exploding Mangoes (29 page)

“And this?” Corporal Lessard fingered the shoulder epaulette on the professor’s crisp camouflage uniform.

“Well, we are at war. Ain’t we?” The professor shrugged and tucked both his thumbs into his belt.

Corporal Lessard had little patience for soldiers behaving like civilians and none whatsoever for civilians pretending to be soldiers, but he found himself powerless in this situation. This evening he was nothing but a glorified usher. He’d had no say in deciding the guest list, let alone the dress code, but he wasn’t going to let this joker get away with this.

“Welcome to the front line,” he said, handing his clipboard to the professor. “Here you go. Consider yourself on active duty now.” Corporal Lessard retreated into the guardhouse, positioned himself on a stool from where he could keep an eye on the professor and joined the beer pot contest with his staff.

Beyond the guardhouse, the guests could choose between two huge catering tents. In the first one the central spread was a salad the size of a small farm, red cabbage and blueberries, giant ham sandwiches with blueberry chutney, all arranged in the shape of an American flag. Before a row of gas-powered grills, marines stood in their shorts and baseball caps, barbecuing hot dogs, quarter-pounders and piles of corn on the cob. Pakistani waiters in bolo ties and cowboy hats roamed with jugs of punch and paper glasses, dodging children who had already started hot-dog fights, and offering drinks to the few people who had bothered to venture into this tent. A long queue was forming outside the adjacent tent, where eight whole lambs skewered on long iron bars were roasting on an open fire. An Afghan chef was at hand to reassure everyone that he had slaughtered the lambs himself and that everything in the tent was halal.

The ambassador’s wife had been feeling sick to her stomach ever since seeing the Afghan chef put an inch-thick iron rod through the first of eight baby lambs that morning. It was Nancy Raphel herself who had come up with the Kabul—Texas theme, but she was already regretting the idea because most of the guests were turning up in all kinds of variations on traditional Afghani clothes and suddenly her own understated mustard silk shalwar qameez seemed ridiculous. The sight of so many Americans decked out like Afghan warlords repulsed her. She was glad that her own husband had stuck to his standard evening wear, a double-breasted blue blazer and tan trousers.

She had planned an evening of culturally sensitive barbecue; what she got was a row of small carcasses slowly rotating on iron skewers, her guests queuing up with their Stars and Stripes paper plates, pretending they were guests at some tribal feast. Under such stressful circumstances Nancy almost collapsed with the sense of relief when her husband took a call from the Army House and told her that President Zia ul-Haq would not be turning up. She excused herself to the wife of the French Ambassador, dressed like an Uzbek bride, and retreated to her bedroom to calm her nerves.

The marines at the guardhouse could afford to party while on active duty not because it was the Fourth of July but because the security for the premises was being managed by a contingent of the Pakistan Army. Five hundred metres before the guardhouse, on the tree-lined road that led to the ambassador’s residence, the guests were required to stop at a makeshift barrier set up by Brigade 101. The troops, under the watchful command of a subedar major, greeted the guests with their bomb scanners and metal detectors. They slipped their scanners under the cars, asked their non-white guests to open the boots of their cars and finally waved them towards the guardhouse where an increasingly cheerful group of marines welcomed them. The army contingent had set up their own searchlights to illuminate the road. Here, too, the trees were awash with light so intense that the birds’ nests on the trees lining the road lay abandoned. A catering van sent by the district administration delivered their dinner early and the Subedar Major was livid when he discovered that the samovar which came in the van was empty. “How are my men going to stay awake without tea?” he shouted at the civilian van driver, who shrugged and drove off without replying.

Embassy functions were usually select affairs, but watching the guests arrive from the guardhouse, Corparal Lessard thought that the ambassador seemed to have invited everyone who had ever put a bandage on an injured Afghan mujahid and every Afghan commander who had taken a potshot at a Russian soldier. Corporal Lessard relieved the professor of his duty when he saw the first guest in a suit, a lanky man with a flowing beard. “OBL,” the bearded man said, and raised his hand as if he wasn’t identifying himself to a party usher, but greeting an invisible crowd.

Corporal Lessard went through the list and looked at the man again.

“Of Laden and Co. Constructions.” The man patted his beard impatiently and Corporal Lessard ushered him in with a smile and an exaggerated wave of his hand. Taking his turn at the beer pot, Corporal Lessard told a joke. “What does a towelhead wear to disguise himself?” Then choking on his own beer, he blurted: “A suit.”

The ambassador had reasons to be inclusive. A year into his job, Arnold Raphel was feeling increasingly isolated as dozens of American agencies ran their own little jihads against the Soviets along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. There were those avenging Vietnam and there were those doing God’s work and then there were charities with names so obscure and missions so far-fetched that he had a hard time keeping track of them. Now that the last Soviet soldiers were about to leave Afghanistan and the mujahideen were laying siege to Kabul, some Americans were tearing at each other’s throats to claim credit, others were just lingering, reluctant to go home, hoping for another front to open. Just last week he had received a demarche about a group of teachers from the University of Minnesota who were writing the new Islamic books for Afghanistan and sending them to Central Asia. He investigated and was told to keep his hands off as it was yet another branch of yet another covert programme. Every American he met in Islamabad claimed to be from ‘the other agency’.

He was certain that if he wanted to bring this chaos under control, he first needed to bring them all under one roof and make a symbolic gesture so it became clear that there was one boss and it was him. And what better way to do it than throw a party? What better time to do it than the Fourth of July? He was hoping that this would be a farewell party where American nuts would be able to meet the Afghan commanders who had done the actual fighting, get their pictures taken, and then everybody would go home so that he could get on with the delicate business of implementing US foreign policy. Arnie had not prepared a speech but he had a few lines ready that he would weave into the big conversation that he wanted to have with his American guests: ‘
victory is a bigger challenge than defeat’, ‘answered prayers can be more troublesome than the sad echoes of unanswered prayers
’.

He wanted it to be a ‘job well done, now push off to wherever you came from’ kind of party.

Standing with the ambassador and feeling disgusted at the sight of respectable men gnawing at bones was General Akhtar. He also felt out of place and overdressed. He had turned up in his full ceremonial uniform, with gold braid and shiny brass medals, and now he found himself surrounded by small groups of white men dressed in loose shalwar qameez and the most astonishing variety of headgear he had seen since his last visit to Peshawar’s Storytellers’ Bazaar. General Akhtar knew before everyone else that General Zia would not turn up for the party. “He is not feeling too well, you know,” he told Arnold Raphel, looking closely for any reaction. “Brigadier TM’s loss is a big setback. He was like a son to General Zia. One of my best officers.” When Arnold Raphel offered indifferent condolences, it only strengthened General Akhtar’s resolve to square things with the Americans one last time. He had won them their war against communism. Now he wanted his share of the spoils. He picked up a strawberry from the shortcake on his plate and said to Arnold Raphel, “Mrs Raphel has done a splendid job with the arrangements. Behind every great man…”

OBL found himself talking to a journalist who was nursing a beer in a paper cup and wondering what he should file for his newspaper now that General Zia hadn’t turned up. “I am OBL,” he told the journalist and waited for any signs of recognition. The journalist, a veteran of diplomatic parties and used to meeting obscure government functionaries from far-flung countries with bizarre motives, pulled out his notepad and said, “So what’s the story?”

Out in the guardhouse, the University of Nebraska professor, now fully accepted as an honorary marine for the evening, raised his bottle and proposed a toast to the warrior spirit of the Afghans, then paused for a minute.

“What about our Pakistani hosts?”

“What about them?” Corporal Lessard asked.

“The guys on the trucks out there. Our first line of defence. What are they doing?”

“They are doing their duty. Just like us.”

“No, they are doing
our
duty,” the professor said. “They are keeping the enemy at bay. They are guarding us while we enjoy this feast, this feast to celebrate our freedom. We must share our bounty with them.”

Corporal Lessard looked around the already crammed guardhouse. “There are about two hundred of them. They wouldn’t fit in.”

“Then we must take our bounty to them.”

Corporal Lessard, drunk on Coors and patriotism and the love that one feels for one’s fellow human beings on days like this, volunteered to take a tray of food to the Pakistani troops. He thought of throwing in a couple of beers but he had been taught in his cultural sensitivity course not to offer alcohol to the locals unless you had an ulterior motive or the locals absolutely insisted. Corporal Lessard covered a stainless-steel tray with aluminium foil, hoisted it over his head and started walking towards the Pakistani troops. He walked in the middle of the road. The tree branches on both sides of the road hissed like snakes in his drunken vision. The road seemed endless.

OBL and the journalist found each other equally dull. The journalist listened with a smirk on his face when OBL claimed that his bulldozers and concrete mixers had been instrumental in defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan. “My editor thinks that it’s his pen that forced the Red Army to withdraw, and he can’t even compose a sentence,” the journalist said with a straight face. OBL gave up on the journalist when he offered to pose for a photograph and the journalist said, “I don’t have a camera and even if I did I wouldn’t be allowed to carry it into a diplomatic party.”

“That is very unprofessional of you,” OBL muttered, scanning various groups of guests enjoying themselves. He spotted General Akhtar in the middle of the lawn surrounded by a number of Americans wearing Afghan caps. He walked up and stood behind them, hoping that the circle would part to welcome him. He skulked for a few minutes, trying to catch General Akhtar’s eye. To OBL’s horror General Akhtar saw him and showed no signs of recognition, but the local CIA chief followed General Akhtar’s gaze, moved rightwards, making space for him in the circle and said, “Nice suit, OBL.”

General Akhtar’s eyes lit up. “We would have never won this war without our Saudi friends. How’s business, brother?” General Akhtar asked, holding him by his hand. OBL smiled and said, “Allah has been very kind. There is no business like the construction business in times of war.”

Arnold Raphel talked to a group of Afghan elders and kept looking sideways at his wife who had reappeared wearing khaki pants and a plain black T–shirt, replacing the loose ethnic thing she was wearing at the start of the party. On the one hand he was relieved that General Zia hadn’t turned up, but on the other hand as a diplomat, as a professional, he felt slighted. He knew it wasn’t an official state occasion, but General Zia had never missed any invitation from his office. Arnold Raphel knew that General Zia had gone completely bonkers since his security chief’s death, but surely the General knew that a Fourth of July party at the American Ambassador’s residence was as safe a place as you could find in this very dangerous country. “Brother Zia is not coming. He is not feeling well,” he told the bearded Afghan covered in a rainbow-coloured shawl. The Afghan elder pretended he already knew but didn’t care. “This is the best lamb I have eaten since the war started. So tender, it seems you plucked him out of his mother’s womb.”

A wave of nausea started in the pit of Nancy’s stomach and rushed upwards. She put a hand over her mouth, mumbled something and ran towards her bedroom.

OBL soaked up the atmosphere, laughing politely at the light-hearted banter between the Americans and General Akhtar. He felt that warm glow that comes from being at the centre of a party. Then suddenly the CIA chief put his hand on General Akhtar’s shoulder, turned towards OBL and said, “Nice meeting you, OBL. Good work, keep it up.” The others followed them and in an instant the party deserted him. He noticed a man in a navy-blue blazer talking to some of his Afghan acquaintances. The man seemed important. OBL slowly started drifting towards that circle.

The party moved down to the den, a large basement hall with leather sofas, a forty-four-inch television screen and a bar; a blatant exercise in suburban nostalgia. Arnold had arranged for some of his American staff to see the recording of the Redskins versus Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the previous week’s NFL play-off. The den was full of cigar smoke and noisy Americans. Instead of beer, which seemed to be the drink of choice upstairs, here people were serving themselves whiskeys. The Saudi Ambassador sat on a divan with a wad of fifty-dollar bills in front of him taking bets on the game. Somebody had forgotten to explain to him that the game was eight days old and that the Redskins had trampled the Buccaneers.

A tall American wearing a kaftan and a flyer’s orange scarf around his neck handed General Akhtar a glass half full of bourbon. General Akhtar felt the urge to throw the whiskey at the stranger’s face but then looked around, didn’t see any familiar faces except the Americans and the Saudi Ambassador, who himself seemed too sloshed to care. General Akhtar decided to hold on to his drink. The noise in the den, the veteran spymaster in General Akhtar concluded, was the perfect backdrop for sounding out Coogan. Not even the most sophisticated bug would pick out any distinguishable sounds in the incomprehensible chorus that was going up: “Lock him up, Jack, lock him up. Feed them dirt, Jack, feed them dirt.” General Akhtar raised his glass like everyone else but only sniffed his drink. It stank like an old wound.