2008 - A Case of Exploding Mangoes (4 page)

Which should translate as:

And I am one of those who oppressed their own souls
.

But in this version it said:

I was wrong
.

The General knew the story of Jonah well. The fact that Jonah was Zun-nus here did not confuse him. He knew Jonah and Zun-nus were one and the same, a frustrated prophet who walked out on his clan, ended up in a whale’s belly, then chanted this verse over and over again till the whale spat him back out, alive and well.

General Zia had taken to reading the English translation of the Quran before his morning prayers because it helped him prepare for his acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize presentation ceremony. For the first time in the history of the prize, he would insist on a recitation from the Quran before his acceptance speech. The prize hadn’t been announced yet, but he was hopeful and he was looking for a suitable passage to quote.

Jonah’s prayer was not going to be in the speech, but the discrepancy between what General Zia remembered and what he had before him now on the page still bothered him. Absentmindedly, he shifted his weight and scratched his left buttock on the prayer mat, his index finger still going back and forth over the troublesome verse. The prayer that was a four feet by two antique carpet from Bukhara, embellished with gold thread, and adorned, on the right-hand corner, with a solid gold compass which permanently pointed towards Khana Kaaba in Mecca.

Presenting it to the General, the second Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Prince Naif, had joked, “This will point you towards Mecca even if you are in space.”

And General Zia had replied with humour characteristic of their relationship, “And if wishes were Aladdin’s carpets, sinners like me would always be flying to Mecca.”

General Zia thought maybe he should deliver his speech in Urdu or polish up his Arabic and surprise his Saudi friends. On his visits to the UN he had met these highly paid women in suits, who translated into all these languages as you spoke. Surely the Swedes could afford them. Then he thought of his good friend Ronald Reagan fidgeting with his headphones, getting restless, and decided to stick to English. Better to look at another translation, he told himself. He got up from the prayer mat, wrapping his Chinese silk nightgown around the bulge of his belly. “The only civilian part of my body and hence out of control,” he was fond of saying.

Before he moved here, the marble-floored room with mahogany-panelled walls contained books on military history and his predecessors’ portraits. He had all the books and pictures removed to the guest-room annexe and changed it into a prayer room. Army House, which now also served as the Chief Martial Law Administrator’s office, was a colonial bungalow, with fourteen bedrooms, eighteen acres of lawns and a small mosque. It reminded him of old black-and-white films, of benevolent rulers who were close to their people. The new President House was ready. He entertained foreign dignitaries and local mullahs there a couple of days a week but was reluctant to move in. He felt lost in the President House’s palatial corridors and had instructed his Chief Staff Officer to tell the First Lady that it was still a work in progress.

“The bathrooms are not finished yet and there are some security concerns,” he said whenever she pestered him about the house move. The new President House reminded him of Prince Naif’s palace, and although he loved and respected Prince Naif like a brother, what was good for the Crown Prince of the oil-rich desert kingdom was not necessarily suitable for the humble ruler of this poor nation of one hundred and thirty million people.

He was not sure about that number, but it was a neat figure and he would stick to it till he could get around to ordering a new census.

He wrapped the Pickthall translation in a green velvet cover and put it back on the shelf with other copies, commentaries and interpretations of the holy book. He wondered whether he should change into his uniform before going for his morning prayers. Inter Services Intelligence Chief was due to see him at 0630, the prayers would finish at 0615 and he wanted to spend some time talking to the imam of the Army House mosque.

Between making a decision and implementing it, General Zia sometimes liked to seek divine opinion. And although changing into uniform before or after morning prayers wasn’t likely to affect the destiny of his one hundred and thirty million subjects, he picked up another volume of the Quran from the shelf anyway, closed his eyes, opened the book at random and moved his finger on the pages in front of him with his eyes shut. He wished himself and his country a safe day, opened his eyes and found his finger pointing at:

The pre-dawn routine that gave Army House a head start over its subjects had already begun outside his study. The commandos on the night shift were flicking back the safety catches on their Kalashnikovs and stretching their limbs; a team of gardeners was being body-searched at the main guardroom; General Zia’s personal batman was pinning seven identical sets of medals to seven different uniforms; the first of the hundreds of house sparrows hiding behind floodlights and ack-ack guns that provided the Army House with security cover was chirping away in an attempt to start the morning conversation.

General Zia sighed, pressed the Quran against both his eyes, kissed its spine and replaced it on the shelf. He hugged himself to control the shivers running through his body. The same verse from two different volumes, so early in the morning. That had never happened before.

Starting with the night of the coup, he had always consulted the book for guidance and always found the answers he was looking for. Eleven years ago, moments before ordering his troops to carry out Operation Fairplay that removed Prime Minister Bhutto and installed him as the head of the country, he had opened the Quran and found
He it is who hath made you regents in the earth
.

Then two years later, between fending off world leaders’ pleas to not to hang Bhutto and signing his death warrant, Zia had opened up the holy book and found this:
And the guilty behold the fire and know that they are about to fall therein, and they find no way of escape thence
.

He had read enough Muadudi to know that the Quran wasn’t a book of omens, to be used in worldly affairs, but like a child taking a peek at his surprise birthday presents, General Zia couldn’t resist the temptation.

What is a lone man standing at the crossroads of history to do?

After eleven years he was feeling a creeping habit setting in. For he had started consulting the holy book daily as if it was not the word of God but his daily horoscope on the back page of the
Pakistan Times
. This morning he felt like an addict who looks himself in the mirror after a long time and doesn’t recognise what he sees. He felt a strong urge to have another go. He picked up another volume of the Quran, but with trembling hands put it back on the shelf without opening it. He realised he needed help; he needed to speak to the imam at the Army House mosque.

Walking along the corridor that led to the mosque, he passed his bedroom. He opened the door gently and took a peek. The table lamp was on and his wife was sleeping with her ample back towards him. Every time he saw her like this he remembered what Prince Naif had told him about why Bedouins had such huge organs. According to the Prince they had evolved in response to the huge derrieres of their women.

“Evolution happens very fast in the desert,” General Zia had joked.

His wife stirred in her sleep, the huge mounds that were her buttocks quivered and the General shut the door gently and went to his own room which doubled as his late-night office as well as a walk-in cupboard. He had decided to change before prayers. He didn’t want to keep the ISI Chief waiting.

His room was sparsely furnished, a standard wooden army-issue double bed, a stack of morning newspapers on one bedside table, on the other a glass of milk covered with an embroidered napkin.

The glass of milk was one of those domestic routines that had changed its meaning during the thirty-four years of his marriage. As a newly-wed captain his wife put it on his side table as an innocent domestic aphrodisiac. When, as a major, he experimented with whisky to impress his superiors, it became a cure for his hangovers. Through his days as a colonel and brigadier it took care of his ulcers caused by promotion anxiety. Now it was a mere talisman. The First Lady recited some verses, blew on the milk and plonked it on his side table knowing fully well that he wouldn’t drink it. “For your long life,” she would say. “To foil the conspiracies of your enemies.” He hadn’t touched it for years but he didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop. Who could argue with women? If three Special Services Group platoons surrounding his residence, a battery of anti-aircraft guns, and six different-coloured phones representing six different hotlines arranged on a table in his bedroom couldn’t save him, how was a glass of milk going to protect him against the conspiracies that the First Lady kept dreaming about? But who could argue with a First Lady who was always complaining of cramped housing and nothing good on the national television?

He looked at his watch and realised that if he started changing into his uniform he would be late for his prayers. Not that it mattered, because the imam would wait for him to turn up before starting the prayer, but Jonah’s verse had induced palpitations in his heart and he felt that he would be able to find peace in the mosque.

As he stepped out of the side door of the Army House that led to the mosque, two commandos standing in the shadows saluted. General Zia, absorbed in muttering the verse that he always recited before stepping out in the morning, was startled by the thud of the boots landing on the concrete. He stumbled at the doorstep and took a step backward. He stepped out again and instead of returning the salute nodded at them. He tried to recite the verse again but his mind seemed to have returned to Jonah’s incessant pleas.

The imam started the prayers as soon as General Zia took his place behind him. The Chief of the Inter Services Intelligence, General Akhtar, stood on his left, his movements a fraction of a second slower than General Zia’s, as if, even when prostrating himself before Allah, General Akhtar wanted his cue to come from his boss. For General Zia, it was reassuring to have someone as his eyes and ears who prayed with him. He knew he had a brother in faith, and also that the brother was here with him and not somewhere else nurturing some dark ambition.

Like most people who pray five times a day, General Zia was finding it difficult to concentrate on the actual prayer. His lips muttered the right verses, his hand went up to his ears, his knees bent to the imam’s call and his forehead touched the ground with practised efficiency, but his mind was stuck with Jonah, inside the whale. There were gushing noises and giant bubbles and Jonah’s flailing arms in the darkness. He swallowed hard and felt a swarm of little fish nibbling their way towards his heart. He retched and gulped for air as the whale plunged deeper into the sea. General Zia skidded through a sea of slime before coming to rest against a thick wall of warm flesh. So absorbed was he in the innards of the whale that it took him some time to realise what the imam was saying.

General Zia had been the army chief for only sixteen months when he launched the coup and installed himself as the Chief Martial Law Administrator. He wasn’t sure how much the eight generals who formed his council trusted him or—more important—respected him. They all saluted him, called him Chief even in their private conversations according to the telephone transcripts that General Zia had seen, and carried out his orders. But could he really trust this clean-shaven, whisky-swilling, elitist bunch? Given his mistrust of anyone with more than two stars on their shoulders, it was understandable that in the first Corp Commanders’ meeting after the night of the coup, General Zia was a bit shaky, not sure what these generals wanted from him, not sure what they wanted him to do with this country. They had carried out the coup as if they were reporting for a drill inspection, but General Zia knew that he couldn’t take their loyalty for granted. He would have to kill the cat at the very beginning.

General Zia had married when he was a captain in the armoured division. He was also a virgin. One of his maternal uncles took him into a corner on his wedding night and whispered an old Persian proverb in his ear: “Kill the cat on the first day.” Uncle squeezed his shoulder, laughed a vulgar laugh and pushed him into the room where the future First Lady waited on a bed, a bundle of red silk. Zia didn’t know any Persian and found no cat to kill that night.

“Would you like to change into something more comfortable?” General Zia had asked, twirling the embroidered hem of her red silk shirt. “This is comfortable enough,” she had answered, snatching the hem away from his hands. She turned her back to him and went to sleep.

The fumbling failure of that first night, he knew, had resulted in a marriage in which his authority was never fully established. Twenty-three years later, the morning after his midnight coup, he knew the meaning of the proverb. He intended to kill the cat, bury it and hoist his flag over its grave. He just wasn’t quite sure how he would go about it. Allah will help me, he thought, before entering the conference room.