Insomnia into somnambulism. The monster rises from the bed, shame’s avatar, it leaves that ayah-empty room. The burqa comes from somewhere, anywhere, it has never been a difficult garment to find in that sad house, and then the walk. In a replay of the turkey disaster she bewitches the nocturnal guards, the eyes of the Beast blaze out of hers and turn the sentries to stone, who knows how, but later, when they awake, they are unaware of having slept.
Shame walks the streets of night. In the slums four youths are transfixed by those appalling eyes, whose deadly yellow fire blows like a wind through the lattice-work of the veil. They follow her to the rubbish-dump of doom, rats to her piper, automata dancing in the all-consuming light from the black-veiled eyes. Down she lies; and what Shahbanou took upon herself is finally done to Sufiya. Four husbands come and go. Four of them in and out, and then her hands reach for the first boy’s neck. The others stand still and wait their turn. And heads hurled high, sinking into the scattered clouds; nobody saw them fall. She rises, goes home. And sleeps; the Beast subsides.
General Raza Hyder searched his daughter’s room himself. When he found the burqa it was crackly, starched by the dried-on-blood. He wrapped it in newspaper and burned it to ashes. Then he threw the ashes out of the window of a moving car.
It was election day, and there were many fires.
11
MONOLOGUE OF A HANGED MAN
Chairman Iskander Harappa developed a toothache thirty seconds before the jeeps surrounded his home in the capital of unwanted airport terminals. His daughter Arjumand had just said something that tempted fate, and whenever anybody did that it made all of Iskander’s betel-blackened teeth howl with superstitious anguish, especially after midnight, when such things are even more dangerous than they seem in the daylight. ‘The steam has gone out of the opposition,’ Arjumand had suggested, much to her father’s alarm. He had been musing in a contented afterdinner fashion about the rumoured escape of an albino panther in the wooded hills of Bagheeragali some forty miles away; forcing his thoughts out of those haunted woods he scolded his daughter, ‘God knows how to wash off this optimism of yours; I’ll have to dunk you in the reservoir behind the Barrage Dam.’ Then his teeth began giving him hell, worse than ever before, and he said aloud in his surprise what he had suddenly thought: ‘I am smoking the last but one cigar of my life.’ No sooner had the prophecy left his lips than they were joined by an uninvited guest, an Army officer with the saddest face in the world, Colonel Shuja, for six years ADC to General Raza Hyder. The Colonel saluted and informed the Prime Minister of the coup. ‘Beg for pardon, sir, but you must accompany me at once to the Bagheeragali rest house.’ Iskander Harappa realized that he had failed to grasp the meaning of his reverie, and smiled at his own stupidity. ‘You see, Arjumand,’ he said, ‘they want to feed me to the panther, isn’t it so?’ Then he turned to Shuja and asked who had given such orders. ‘Chief Martial Law Administrator, sir,’ the Colonel replied. ‘General Hyder, sir, beg for pardon.’
‘Look at my back,’ Iskander told his daughter, ‘and you will see a coward’s knife.’
Thirty minutes later General Salman Tughlak, the Joint Chief of Staff, was hauled out of a noisy nightmare, in which the débâcle of the East Wing war was being replayed in slow motion, by the insistence of his telephone bell. General Tughlak was the only member of President Shaggy Dog’s high command to have escaped the Harappa overhaul of the upper echelons of the Defence establishment, and for a moment the bad dream refused to leave him, so that he yelled distractedly into the telephone, ‘What’s up? Have we surrendered?’
‘We’ve done it,’ the voice of Raza Hyder said in some confusion.
General Tughlak was equally puzzled: ‘Done what, for God’s sake?’
‘Ya Allah,’ Raza Hyder panicked, ‘didn’t anybody tell you?’ Then he began to stammer, because of course the Joint Chief was his superior officer, and if the boss refused to bring the Navy and Air Force out in support of the Army’s initiative things could get pretty nasty. Thanks to the indecipherable stammer of his fear and the lingering mist of sleep enveloping General Tughlak, it took Raza Hyder over five minutes to make the Joint Chief understand what had happened that night.
‘So?’ Tughlak said at last. ‘What now?’
Hyder’s stammer improved; but he remained cautious: ‘Excuse me, General,’ he used delaying tactics, ‘how do you mean, sir?’
‘Damn it, man,’ Tughlak exploded, ‘what orders are you going to give?’
There was a silence during which Raza Hyder understood that it was going to be all right; then he said meekly, ‘Tughlakji, you know, with your previous martial law experience and all …’
‘Spit it out,’ Tughlak commanded.
‘… frankly, sir, we were hoping you could help us with that.’
‘Bastard amateurs,’ old Tughlak muttered happily, ‘take over a government and you don’t know your pricks from your sticks.’ The opposition had never accepted the election results. Mobs in the cities cried corruption; there were fires, riots, strikes. The Army was sent to fire on civilians. Jawans and young officers murmured mutinous syllables, which were drowned at first by rifleshots. And Arjumand Harappa tempted fate.
It is said that General Hyder was at first reluctant to move, doing so only when his colleagues gave him the choice of deposing Harappa or falling with him. But President Hyder denied this: ‘I’m the type,’ he said, ‘who sees a mess and can’t help cleaning it up.’
On the morning after the coup Raza Hyder appeared on national television. He was kneeling on a prayer-mat, holding his ears and reciting Quranic verses; then he rose from his devotions to address the nation. This was the speech in which the famous term ‘Operation Umpire’ was first heard by the people. ‘Understand,’ Raza said briskly, ‘the Army seeks to be no more than an honest ref or ump.’
Where was Raza’s right hand while he spoke? On what, while he promised fresh-elections-within-ninety-days, did his fingers rest? What, leatherbound and wrapped in silk, lent credibility to his oath that all political parties, including the Popular Front of ‘that pluckiest fighter and great politician’ Iskander Harappa, would be allowed to contest the rerun poll? ‘I am a simple soldier,’ Raza Hyder declared, ‘but scandal is scandal, and unscandalling must be accomplished.’ The television camera travelled down from his gatta-bruised face, down along his right arm, until the nation saw where his right hand rested: on the Holy Book.
Raza Hyder, Harappa’s protégé, became his executioner; but he also broke his sacred oath, and he was a religious man. What he did later may well have been the result of his desire to cleanse his sullied name in the eyes of God.
That was how it began. Arjumand Harappa was packed off to Rani at Mohenjo; but Haroun Harappa was not caught. He had fled the country or gone underground … whichever it was, it seemed, in those first days, like a considerable over-reaction. Raza Hyder joked to General Tughlak: ‘That is one heck of a stupid boy. Does he think I’m going to cut off his thing just because he wasn’t good enough to marry my daughter?’
Chairman Iskander Harappa was detained in some comfort at the government rest house in Bagheeragali, where of course he was not eaten by a panther. He even retained the use of a telephone, for incoming calls only; the Western newspapers found out the number and Iskander gave long, eloquent interviews to many overseas journalists. In these interviews he made detailed accusations, casting numerous doubts on Raza Hyder’s good faith, moral fibre, sexual potency and legitimacy of birth. Still Raza remained tolerant. ‘That Isky,’ he confided to Colonel Shuja, ‘highly-strung bloke. Always was. And the chap is naturally upset; I’d be the same in his shoes. Also one must not believe everything one reads in the Christian press.’
‘Suppose you hold elections and he wins, sir,’ Colonel Shuja ventured as his face acquired the most dolorous expression Raza had ever seen on that unhappy countenance, ‘beg for pardon, sir, but what’ll he do to you?’
Raza Hyder looked surpri
sed. ‘What is this do?’ he cried. ‘To me? His old comrade, his family member by marriage? Have I tortured him? Have I thrown him in the public lock-up? Then what is there for him to do?’
‘Family of gangsters, sir,’ Shuja said, ‘those Harappas, everyone knows. Revenge crimes and what-all, it’s in their blood, beg for pardon, General.’
From that moment Raza Hyder’s bruised forehead acquired deep furrows of thought, and two days later he announced to his ADC, ‘We’re going to see that fellow pronto and just sort everything out.’
Afterwards Colonel Shuja would swear that until the meeting between Raza and Iskander the General had never thought of assuming the Presidency. ‘That stupid man,’ he always stated when asked, ‘brought his fate on his own head.’ Shuja drove with General Hyder to Bagheeragali, and as the staff car climbed the hill roads their nostrils were assailed by the sweet scents of pine-cones and beauty, those aromas which had the power of lifting the heaviest hearts and making one think that nothing was insoluble. And at the Bagheeragali bungalow the ADC waited in an antechamber while the fateful conference took place.
Iskander Harappa’s premonition about the cigars had come true, because in spite of all the air-conditioning units and cut-glass goblets and Shirazi rugs and other creature comforts at the rest house he had been unable to locate a single ashtray; and when he asked the guards to have a box of his favourite Havanas sent from his home they had politely told him it was impossible. The smoking ban possessed Isky’s thoughts, wiping out his appreciation of his comfortable bed and good meals, because it was plain that somebody had ordered the guards to deny him his smokes, so he was being told something – watch out – and he didn’t like it, no sir. The absence of cigar-smoke left a rancid taste in his mouth. He began to chew betel-nut non-stop, deliberately spitting the juice out on the priceless rugs, because his rage had begun to overcome the fastidious elegance of his true nature. The paans made his teeth hurt even more, so what with everything that had gone wrong inside his mouth it wasn’t surprising his words turned bad as well … Raza Hyder could not have been expecting the reception he got, because he went into Iskander’s room with a conciliatory smile on his face; but the moment he shut the door the cursing began, and Colonel Shuja swore that he saw wisps of blue smoke emerging from the keyhole, as if there were a fire inside, or four hundred and twenty Havana cigars all smoking away at the same time.
Seducer of your grandmother’s pet mongrel bitch, seller of your daughters at low prices to the bastard offspring of pimps, diarrhoeic infidel who shits on the Quran – Isky Harappa cursed Raza for an hour and a half without permitting any interruption. Betel-juice and the absence of tobacco added to his already enormous vocabulary of imprecations a deadlier rancour than it had ever possessed in the days of his rakehell youth. By the time he finished the walls of that room were spattered from top to bottom with betel-juice, the curtains were ruined, it looked as if a herd of animals had been slaughtered in there, as if turkeys or goats had been struggling wildly in their death-throes, rushing around the room with the blood spewing from the red smiles on their throats. Raza Hyder came out with paan-juice dripping off his clothes, his moustache was full of it and his hands shook as the red fluid dribbled off his fingertips, as if his hands had been washed in a bowl of Iskander’s lifeblood. His face was paper-white.
General Hyder did not speak until the staff car pulled up outside the C-in-C’s residence. Then he said casually to Colonel Shuja: ‘I have been hearing some terrible things about Mr Harappa’s period in office. That man does not deserve to be set loose. He is a menace to the country.’
Two days later Talvar Ulhaq made the statement in which, under oath, he accused Iskander Harappa of arranging for the murder of his cousin, Little Mir. When Colonel Shuja read this document he thought; wonderingly: ‘Just look where bad language will get you.’
In those days the Chief Martial Law Administrator’s home had begun to resemble an orphanage more than a seat of government, owing to Good New’s inability to stem the annual flood of children issuing from her loins. Twenty-seven children aged between one and six puked, dribbled, crawled, drew with crayons on the walls, played with bricks, screamed, spilled juice, fell asleep, tumbled down stairs, broke vases, ululated, giggled, sang, danced, skipped, wet themselves, demanded attention, experimented with bad language, kicked their ayahs, refused to clean their teeth, pulled the beard of the religious teacher engaged to teach them handwriting and the Quran, tore down curtains, stained sofas, got lost, cut themselves, fought against vaccination needles and tetanus jabs, begged for and then lost interest in pets, stole radios, and burst into top-level meetings in that demented house. Meanwhile Good News had expanded yet again, and she was so big she looked as if she’d swallowed a whale. Everyone knew with a terrible certainty that the progression was continuing, that this time no fewer than eight babies would be produced, and that next year there would be nine, and after that ten, and so on, so that by her thirtieth birthday she would have given birth to no fewer than seventy-seven children; the worst was still to come. It is possible that if Raza and Talvar had not been thinking of other things they might have guessed what she would do; but maybe nobody would have stopped her anyway, because the oppression of the children had started to unhinge everyone who lived amid the uproar of their numbers.
O, this Talvar Ulhaq: what uneasinesses, what ambiguities hung around the stiff-necked chief of the Federal Security Force! Hyder’s son-in-law, Harappa’s right-hand man … after the fall of Iskander Harappa, Raza Hyder came under considerable pressure to do something about his daughter’s husband. The FSF was not a popular organization; Raza had no option but to disband it. But still there were cries for Talvar’s head. So it was just as well that the former polo star chose this moment to prove that he had meant every syllable of his loyal vow to be the perfect son-in-law. He handed Raza Hyder his secret, detailed dossier on the Mir Harappa killing, from which it was obvious that Haroun Harappa had committed the murder, out of his ancient hatred for his father; and that the evil genius behind the unsavoury affair had been none other than the Chairman of the Popular Front, who had once murmured, patiently: ‘Life is long.’
‘There is evidence that he misused public money developing the tourist trade, for his own benefit, in Aansu,’ Raza Hyder briefed General Tughlak, ‘but this is much better. This will finish him completely.’
The act of loyal treason committed by Talvar Ulhaq changed everything. The Popular Front was banned from the elections; then the elections were postponed; then postponed again; then shelved; then cancelled. It was in this period that the initials CMLA, standing for Chief Martial Law Administrator, acquired a new meaning. People began to say what they really stood for was Cancel My Last Announcement.
And the memory of a right hand on a Book refused to fade.
Chairman Iskander Harappa was taken from Bagheeragali rest house to the Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore. He was kept there in solitary confinement. He suffered from malaria and from infections of the colon. There were bouts of severe influenza. His teeth began to fall out; and he lost weight in other ways as well. (We have mentioned that Omar Khayyam Shakil, his old companion in devilry, was also slimming down in this period, under the benign influence of a Parsee ayah.)
The trial took place in the High Court at Lahore, before five Punjabi judges. Harappa, it will be recalled, hailed from the Mohenjo estate in Sind. The testimony of ex-FSF Chief Talvar Ulhaq was central to the prosecution’s case. Iskander Harappa gave evidence in his own defence, accusing Talvar of fabricating evidence to save his own skin. At one point Iskander used the phrase, ‘Damn it,’ and was reprimanded for the use of bad language in court. He apologized: ‘My state of mind is not good.’ The Chief Justice replied: ‘We don’t care.’ This made Iskander lose his temper. ‘I’ve had enough,’ he cried, ‘of insults and humiliations.’ The Chief Justice ordered police officers: ‘Take that man away until he regains his senses.’ Another judge added the following remark: ‘We
cannot tolerate this. He thinks he is the former Prime Minister, but we do not care for him.’ All this is on the record.
At the end of the six-month trial, Iskander Harappa and also the absent Mr Haroun Harappa were sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. Iskander was immediately moved into the death-cell at Kot Lakhpat jail. He was given just seven days, instead of the usual thirty, to lodge an appeal.
Iskander announced: ‘Where there is no justice, there is no point in seeking it. I shall not appeal.’
That night Begum Talvar Ulhaq, the former Good News Hyder, was found in her bedroom at the Hyder residence, hanged by the neck, dead. On the floor beneath her dangling feet lay the broken rope of her first attempt, snapped by the enormous weight of her pregnancy. But she had not been deterred. There was jasmine in her hair and she had filled the room with the fragrance of Joy by Jean Patou, the most expensive perfume in the world, imported from France to cover up the smell of her bowels opening in death. A suicide note had been attached to the obscene globularity of her midriff by a baby’s safety-pin. It referred to her terror of the arithmetical progression of babies marching out of her womb. It did not mention what she thought of her husband, Talvar Ulhaq, who would never be brought to trial on any charge.
At the funeral of Naveed Talvar, Raza Hyder kept staring at the cryptic and estranged figure of his wife Bilquìs in her black burqa; he remembered all at once how he had first come upon her in that distant fortress full of refugees, how she had been as naked then as she was clothed now; he saw her history as a slow retreat from that early nudity into the secrecy of the veil.
‘Ai, Bilquìs,’ he murmured, ‘what happened to our lives?’
‘You want to feel bad?’ she answered, much too loudly. ‘Then feel bad for the life that has been lost. I blame you for this. Shame, shame, poppy-shame.’
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