2008 - A Case of Exploding Mangoes (34 page)

The crow’s fate was intertwined with that of one of the two big aluminium birds being put through the last maintenance checks in the hangar of the VIP Movement Squadron of the Pakistan Air Force, five hundred miles away. The engines had been tested, the fatigue profiles had been declared healthy, the backup systems checked for any malfunction. Both the C130 Hercules aircraft were healthy and superfit to fly. According to the standard presidential security procedures, however, the aircraft for General Zia’s journey to attend a tank demonstration in Garrison 5, Bahawalpur, would not be chosen until a few hours before the flight. A fibreglass VIP pod, twelve feet long, was being put through a very strict hygiene regime by Warrant Officer Fayyaz personally. From the; outside the pod looked like one of those shiny capsules that NASA launches into space. From the inside it looked like the compact office of a gangster. Warrant Officer Fayyaz dusted the beige leather sofas with its nova suede headrests and vacuumed the fluffy white carpet. He polished the empty aluminium bar and put a copy of the Quran in the drinks cabinet. It was mandatory for all vehicles and flights carrying the General to have a copy. Not that he recited it during his journeys. He believed that it added another invisible protective layer to his elaborate security cordon. Now all Warrant Officer Fayyaz had to do was to put new air freshener in the air-conditioning duct and the pod would lie ready. For security reasons the pod would not be fitted into one of the two planes till six hours before take-off. Only when this pod had been fitted into one of the two aircraft would it become the presidential plane. At this point it would automatically acquire the call sign Pak One. Warrant Officer Fayyaz had a lot of time on his hands, enough to do a second round of dusting and polishing before he went to pick up the new air freshener from VIP Movement Squadron’s supply officer, Major Kiyani.

The crow circled above the orchard, out of the range of the catapult, until the boy spotted a red-nosed parakeet and started to prepare an ambush. The crow swooped down and settled on the top branch of the tallest mango tree, hiding in the blackish-green branches, and picked at his first mango. As the smell had promised, the mango was overripe and dripping with sweet, sweet juices.

When I get the summons from the Commandant’s office I am busy teaching a pair of my Silent Drill Squad members how to be an Indian; it involves completing a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn with their feet and head on the floor and their hands in the air. I caught them whispering during the silent drill practice and now I am administering a lesson on the virtues of silence. They are groaning like a bunch of pansies. Probably the Coke bottle tops that I put under their heads are causing some discomfort. If they thought I would come back tender-hearted from my tribulations, they have definitely revised their opinions by now. Bannon or no Bannon, the rules of the drill can’t change. If they thought a few days in a jail could turn a soldier into a saint then they should try spending a week in the Fort. Only civilians learn their lessons behind bars, soldiers just soldier on. I put my half-smoked cigarette in the mouth of the one making the most noise, his hands flail in the air and his groans become louder as the smoke enters his nostrils. “Learn some manners,” I tell him and start marching towards the Commandant’s office.

The Commandant had accepted us back into the fold as if we were his errant sons. He walked into our dorm on the night we arrived from Shigri Hill and looked at us pensively from the doorway. Obaid and I stood to attention by our bedsides. “I don’t like it when my boys are taken away from me,” he said in a subdued voice, dripping with fatherly concern. As if we were not two just-out-of-the-dungeon prisoners but a pair of delinquents who had arrived home after lights-out time. “As far as I am concerned and as far as the Academy is concerned you were away on a jungle survival course. Which is probably not very far from the truth.”

I have always found his Sandhurst brand of sentimentality sickening, but his words came out undipped and unrehearsed as if he meant what he was saying. I didn’t feel the usual nausea when he said things like putting it all behind us and drawing a line under the whole episode. He turned to go back and asked in a whisper, “Is that clear?” We both shouted back at strength 5: YES, SIR. He was startled out of his depression for a moment, smiled a proud smile and walked away.

“There goes another general wanting to play your daddy,” Obaid said bitterly, falling back on his bed.

“Jail has made you a cynic, Baby O. We are all one big family.”

“Yes,” he said, yawning and covering his face with a book. “Big family. Big house. Nice dungeons.”

What could the Commandant possibly want from me now? A report on the progress of the Silent Drill Squad? Another lecture about jail being the university of life? Has someone from the squad been complaining about my new-found love for Coke bottle tops? I adjust my beret, straighten my collar, enter his office and offer an enthusiastic salute.

His reading glasses are on the tip of his nose and his two-fingered salute is even more cheerful than mine. There is a have-I-got-good-news vibe in his office. Has he got his third star? But he is beaming at
me
. I seem to be the source of his soaring spirits. He is making circles in the air with a paper in his hand and looking at me with eyes that say ‘Guess what?’

“You must have made quite an impression on the big guys,” he says, a bit puzzled by whatever the paper has to say.

“‘Silent Drill Squad is invited to perform after the tank demo at Garrison 5, Bahawalpur, on 17 August,’” he reads from the paper and looks up at me, expecting me to dance with joy.

What do I run? An elite drill squad or a touring bloody circus? Am I expected to go from cantonment to cantonment entertaining the troops? Where is Garrison 5 anyway?

“It’s an honour, sir.”

“You don’t know the half of it, young man. The President himself will be there, along with the US Ambassador. And if the Chief is going to be there, then you can expect all the top brass. You are right, young man. This is an honour and a half.”

I feel like the guy left for dead under a heap of bodies, who hears someone calling out his name. What are the chances of the rope snapping before your neck does? How many assassins get to have a second go?

“It’s all because of your leadership, sir.”

He shrugs his shoulders and I immediately know that
be
hasn’t been invited.

With that I realise for the first time that buried under the slick greying hair, privately tailored uniform and naked ambition, there is a man who believes that I have been wronged. He is on an epic guilt trip. Good to have suckers like him on my side but the only thing that is depressing about his ramrod posture, his shuffle towards me and the hands he places on my shoulders is that he means every word of what he is saying. He is proud of me. He wants me to go places where he himself would have liked to go.

I look over his shoulder towards the trophy cabinet. The bronze man has moved to the right. His place is occupied by a paratrooper’s statue. The parachute’s canopy is a silver foil, the silver-threaded harnesses are attached to the torso of a man who is holding his ripcords and is looking up into the canopy. The temperature in the room suddenly drops as I read the inscription on the gleaming black wooden block on which the statue is mounted:
Brigadier TM Memorial Trophy for Paratroopers
.

“Go, get them, young man.” The Commandant’s hands on my shoulders seem heavy and his voice reminds me of Colonel Shigri’s whisky-soaked sermon. Once I am out of his office, I offer 2
nd
OIC an exaggerated salute and start running towards my dorm.

I know the phial is there, in my uniform maintenance kit, secure between the tube of brass shine and the boot polish, an innocuous-looking glass bottle. I know it’s there because I have thought of throwing it away a number of times but haven’t been able to do so. I know it’s there because I look at it every morning. I need to go back and see it again, hold it in my hand and dip the tip of my sword in it. “It ages very well.” I remember Uncle Starchy’s low whisper. “It becomes smoother, it spreads slower. But a poor man like me can’t really afford to keep it for long.” I’ll find out how well it has aged. I’ll find out what hue it takes on the tip of my sword. I’ll find out if the sentiment in my steel is still alive or dead.

Accidents in silent drill are rare but not unheard of.

G
eneral Akhtar was scribbling on a paper with the intensity of a man who is absolutely sure about what he wants to say but can’t get the tone right. His eyes kept glancing towards the green telephone, which he had placed right in front of him, in the middle of a small orchard of table flags representing his myriad responsibilities to the army, navy, air force and various paramilitary regiments. As the head of the Inter Services Intelligence he had never had to wait for a phone call, especially for information as trivial as this. But now, as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, he presided over strategic reviews and inaugurated one army officers’ housing project after another. Sometimes he found out about General Zia’s movements from the newspapers. This irritated him, but he had learned to cultivate a studied lack of interest in intelligence matters: “I am happy to serve my country in whatever capacity my Chief wants me to,” he said every time he happened to be around General Zia. The information he was waiting for was easy to get: there were two planes and only one VIP pod. All he wanted to know was which one of the two planes the fibreglass structure was going into, which one of the two planes would become Pak One. He tried not to think about it. He tried to concentrate on the last sentence of his address.

The speech was going to be simple. He would keep it short and punchy. He would not go into long-winded formalities like General Zia did—‘my brothers, and sisters and uncles and aunts’. His message would be short. In a mere ten lines, which would last no more than a minute and a half, he would change the course of history. “My fellow countrymen. Our dear President’s plane had an unfortunate accident in mid-air soon after taking off from an airfield in Bahawalpur…”

He read the sentence again. It did not seem very believable to him. There was something about it that didn’t ring true. He should probably explain what had happened. A mechanical failure? He couldn’t possibly say sabotage but he could hint at it. He crossed out the words ‘
had an unfortunate accident
’ and replaced it with ‘
exploded
’. This sounds punchier, he thought. He added another sentence in the margin. ‘
We are surrounded by enemies who want to derail the country from the path of prosperity…
’ He decided to stick with the
unfortunate accident
after all but added: ‘
The reasons for this tragic plane crash are not known. An inquiry has been ordered and the culprits, if any, will be brought to swift justice according to the law of this land
.’

He picked up the phone absent-mindedly. It was still working. He thought long and hard about the closing line of his speech. He needed something that would tie it all up, something original, something uplifting. There had been too much God-mongering under General Zia and he felt the Americans might like a nice secular gesture, something that would sound scholarly, reassuring and quotable. He was still divided between ‘
we as a front-line state against the rising tide of communism
’ and ‘
we as a frontline state against the flood of communism
’ when the phone rang. Without any preliminaries Major Kiyani read him a weather report. “Two low-pressure zones that were gathering in the south are headed northwards. Delta One is definitely going to overtake Delta Two.” Instead of putting the phone down, General Akhtar pressed his forefinger on the cradle and went through a mental checklist, a list he had been through so many times that he felt that he could not be objective about it any more. He decided to go through it backwards.

9. Address to the nation: almost ready.

8. Black sherwani for the address to the nation: pressed and tried.

7. US reaction: predictable. Call Arnold Raphel and reassure him.

6. Where should I be when the news breaks: inaugurating the new Officers’ Club in General Headquarters.

5. If Shigri boy has a go: problem solved before take-off. If Shigri boy loses his marbles: the plan goes ahead.

4. The air freshener doesn’t work: nothing happens.

3. The air freshener works: no survivors. NO AUTOPSIES.

2. Does he deserve to die? He has become an existential threat to the country.

1. Am I ready for the responsibility that Allah is about to bestow upon me?

General Akhtar shook his head slowly and dialled the number. Without any greetings he read out the weather report, then gave a pause and before replacing the receiver said in loud and clear voice. “Lavender.”

He suddenly felt sleepy. He told himself that he would decide the last sentence of his speech in the morning. Maybe something would be revealed to him in his dreams. He looked into his wardrobe before going to bed and took a long look at the black sherwani in which he would appear before the nation tomorrow. His hope about figuring out the last sentence of his speech in his dreams turned out to be false. He slept the sleep of someone who knows he will wake up a king.

What woke him up was the red phone at his bedside, a call from General Zia. “Brother Akhtar. Forgive me for bothering you so early but I am taking the most important decision of my life today and I want you to be here at my side. Join me on Pak One.”

The C13O carrying my Silent Drill Squad smells of animal piss and leaking aircraft fuel. My boys are sitting on the nylon-webbed seats facing each other with their legs stretched to preserve the starched creases of their uniforms. They are carrying their peaked caps in plastic bags to keep the golden-threaded air force insignia shiny. Obaid’s head has been buried in a slim book since take-off. I glance at the cover; a bawdy illustration of a fat woman, part of the title is covered by Obaid’s hand. “…
of a Death Foretold
” is all I can read.