A Case of Exploding Mangoes

by Mohammed Hanif

  With General Zia refusing to leave the Army House even for state functions because of Code Red, his Information Minister was running out of indoor ideas to keep his boss in the television news headlines. When General Zia ordered him to slot in some prime time for the President’s Rehabilitation Programme for Widows, the Information Minister was reluctant at first. ‘But we always do that during Ramadan, sir,’ the Information Minister had muttered apologetically. He was not sure where to get hold of so many widows at this time of the year.

  ‘Is there a law in this country which prohibits me from helping poor people in the month of June?’ General Zia shouted back at him. ‘Has there been an economic survey that says our widows need help during Ramadan but not tomorrow morning?’

  The Information Minister crossed his hands at his crotch and shook his head enthusiastically. ‘It’s a brilliant idea, sir. It would be a nice change for the news agenda. People are losing interest in all the talk about the Soviets going home and our Afghan mujahideen shooting at each other.’

  ‘And make sure that the hundred-rupee notes are new. Those old women love the smell of fresh currency.’

  The orders went out to the Ministry of Social Welfare to produce three hundred properly dressed widows for the ceremony. The cashiers at the State Bank clocked up overtime stuffing new one-hundred rupee notes into three hundred white envelopes. A press release was sent out announcing that the President would distribute alms to the deserving widows. The Information Minister drafted an additional note which would be released to the editors after the ceremony. It said that the President mingled with the widows and their courage brought tears to his eyes.

  In the morning, a convoy of buses deposited two hundred and forty-three women at the Army House guardroom. The officials at the Department of Social Affairs, despite their best efforts, had not been able to round up the required number of genuine widows and at the last moment had roped in some of their female staff, their friends and relatives.

  A panicked major on guard duty called Brigadier TM and told him that there were hundreds of women waiting to get into the Camp Office. He had no means of body-searching them as there were no women police on duty and according to the Code Red standard operating procedures he couldn’t let them in without a proper body search.

  ‘Hold them there,’ Brigadier TM said, abruptly, terminating his morning exercise regime of five hundred push-ups. He jumped into his jeep, buckling on his holster with one hand.

  The women milled outside the gate of the Army House. Some of them who had attended these ceremonies before threatened the duty guards and said they would complain to the President. ‘We are his guests, not some beggars off the road. He invited us.’ The guards, getting more jittery by the moment, were relieved when Brigadier TM jumped out of his jeep and ordered the women to line up in three rows.

  For Brigadier TM, an all-women gathering was a security nightmare even when he wasn’t implementing Code Red. All those loose shalwar qameez dresses, all the flowing dupattas, the bags, the jewellery that sent the metal detectors wild and then the bloody burqas! How did you know they weren’t carrying a rocket launcher beneath that tent? How did you even know they were women? Brigadier TM put his foot down straight away on the issue of widows in burqas. He sent for the Information Minister, who was supervising the camera crew on the lawns of the Camp Office. ‘I know these burqas look good on television and I know the President likes them but our security level is red and I can’t allow in any ninjas whose faces I can’t see.’

  The Information Minister, always reasonable when it came to dealing with men in uniform, promptly agreed and ordered the women in burqas to board the bus and leave. Their loud protests and at least one offer to take off the burqa were ignored. Then Brigadier TM turned his attention to the remaining women, now subdued after seeing what had happened to their sisters.

  ‘You will not leave the queue,’ Brigadier TM shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Nobody will bend down to touch the President’s feet. Nobody will try to hug him. If he puts his hand on your head, don’t move abruptly. If anyone disobeys these instructions …’ Brigadier TM put his hand on his holster and then stopped himself. It seemed a bit excessive to threaten a bunch of widows with his revolver. ‘If any of you break these rules you’ll never be invited to meet the President again.’ Brigadier TM realised the lameness of his own threat as the rows began to dissolve and the widows started chattering, like students catching up after the summer vacation. He jumped into the jeep and sped away towards the marquee on the lawns of the Camp Office, where the camera crew was getting ready to film the ceremony. Brigadier TM saw a lone woman, with a newspaper in hand, walking towards the widows whom the guards were now trying to form into a queue. He thought of turning round and finding out why the hell she wasn’t sticking with the other widows but then he noticed that General Zia was already talking to the Information Minister. He shouted at her before rushing towards the President.

  ‘Get in the bloody queue.’

  General Zia always felt a holy tingling in the marrow of his backbone when surrounded by people who were genuinely poor and needy. He could always tell the really desperate ones from the merely greedy. During the eleven years of his rule, he had handed out multimillion-dollar contracts for roads he knew would dissolve at the first hint of monsoon. He had sanctioned billion-rupee loans for factories he knew would produce nothing. He did these things because it was statecraft and he had to do it. He never got any pleasure out of it. But this ritual of handing over an envelope containing a couple of hundred rupees to a woman who didn’t have a man to take care of her made him feel exalted. The gratitude on these women’s faces was heartfelt, the blessings they showered over him were genuine. General Zia believed that Allah couldn’t ignore their pleas. He was sure their prayers were fast-tracked.

  A television producer with an eye for detail walked up to the Information Minister and pointed to the banner that was to serve as the backdrop for the ceremony.

  President’s Rehabilitation Programme for Windows, it read.

  The Information Minister knew from experience that a spelling error could ruin General Zia’s day and his own career. General Zia photocopied the newspaper articles, even those praising him, and sent them back to the editors with a thank-you note and the typos circled in red. The Information Minister placed himself strategically in front of the banner and refused to budge during the entire ceremony. This was probably the first and the last time that the Information Minister was not seen in the official TV footage in his usual place and in his usual mood; he had always stood behind his boss with his neck straining above General Zia’s shoulders and always grinned with such fervour that it seemed the nation’s survival depended on his cheerful mood.

  ‘Pray for Pakistan’s prosperous future and my health,’ General Zia said to a seventy-five-year-old widow, a shrivelled apple of a woman, a deserving veteran of these ceremonies and hence the first one in the queue. ‘Pakistan is very prosperous,’ she said, waving the envelope in his face. Then she pinched his cheeks with both her hands. ‘And you are as healthy as a young ox. May Allah destroy all your enemies.’

  General Zia’s teeth flashed, his moustache did a little twist and he put his right hand on his heart and patted the old woman’s shoulder with his left. ‘I am what I am because of your prayers.’

  General Zia, occupied for the last few days with the security alert triggered by Jonah’s verse, felt at peace for the first time in ages. He looked at the long queue of women with their heads covered, with eyes full of hope, and realised they were his saviour angels, his last line of defence.

  Brigadier TM stood out of frame and bristled at the way these women were disobeying his instructions. But the camera was rolling and Brigadier TM had enough television manners to stay out of the picture, control his anger and focus on the end of the queue where a catfight seemed to be in progress.

  Most of the women in the queue knew why it was taking the President so long to hand out
a few hundred rupees. The President was in a talkative mood, enquiring after the health of each woman, patiently listening to their long-winded answers and asking them to pray for his health. The one hour and thirty minutes scheduled for the ceremony were about to run out and more than half the women were still waiting in the queue. The Information Minister thought of stepping forward and asking the President if, with his permission, he could distribute the rest of the envelopes, but then he remembered the misspelt word he was covering and decided to stay put. Brigadier TM looked at his watch, looked at the President chattering away with the women, and decided that the President’s schedule was not his problem.

  The First Lady wasn’t getting the sisterly support she had expected from the other women in the queue. ‘Begums like her bring us a bad name,’ the woman in front of the First Lady whispered to the woman ahead of her, making sure that the First Lady could hear. ‘Look at all the gold this cow is wearing,’ the woman said, raising her voice. ‘Her husband probably died trying to keep her decked out in all that finery.’

  The First Lady pulled her dupatta even further over her head. She tightened it across her chest in a belated attempt to hide her necklace.

  Then she realised that to these women she must appear a fraud, a rich begum pretending to be a widow coming to feed off the official charity.

  ‘My husband is not dead,’ she said, raising her voice to the point where ten women in front of her could hear. The women turned round and looked at her. ‘But I have left him. And here, you can have these.’ She removed her earrings and unhooked her necklace and pressed them both into the reluctant hands of two women standing in front of her.

  The whisper travelled along the queue that a woman at the back was distributing gold.

  General Zia’s right eye noticed the pandemonium at the back of the queue. With his left eye he sought out the Information Minister. He wanted to find out what was happening, but the minister was standing in front of the backdrop as if guarding the last bunker on a front line under attack.

  An incredibly young woman, barely out of her twenties, shunned the envelope extended towards her by Zia, and instead removed the dupatta from her head and unfurled it like a banner before the camera.

  Free Blind Zainab, it read.

  General Zia shuffled back, Brigadier TM rushed forward with his right hand ready to draw his gun. The television cameras cut to a close-up of the shouting woman.

  ‘I am not a widow,’ she was shouting over and over again. ‘I don’t want your money. I want you to immediately release that poor blind woman.’

  ‘We have set up special schools for the blind people. I have started a special fund for the special people,’ General Zia mumbled.

  ‘I don’t want your charity. I want justice for Zainab, blind Zainab. Is it her fault that she can’t recognise her attackers?’

  General Zia glanced back and his right eyebrow asked the Information Minister where the hell he had got this widow. The Information Minister stood his ground; imagining the camera was taking his close-up, his mouth broke into a grin. He shook his head, and composed a picture caption for tomorrow’s papers: The President sharing a light moment with the Information Minister.

  Brigadier TM could stand disorder at one end of the queue, but now there were women wagging fingers and shouting at both ends, those furthest from him cursing the last woman in the queue and this one right in front of him defying presidential protocol. He took out his revolver and moved towards the cameraman.

  ‘Stop filming.’

  ‘This is good, lively footage,’ the cameraman said, his eye still glued to the camera. Then he felt something hard poking his ribs and switched off the camera.

  Brigadier TM had the protesting woman removed and the ceremony started again, this time without the television camera. General Zia’s movements became mechanical, he barely looked at the women when they stepped forward to receive their envelopes. He even ignored their blessings. If his enemies had infiltrated his saviour angels, he was thinking, how could he trust anyone?

  By the time the last woman in the queue stepped forward to receive her envelope, General Zia was already turning towards his Information Minister. He wanted to give him a piece of his mind. General Zia extended the envelope towards the woman without looking at her; the woman held his hand and pressed a small metallic ring into it. He only turned to look when he heard the sound of glass breaking.

  His wife was standing there striking her glass-bangled wrists against each other, something that women only did when they heard the news of their husband’s death.

  Later she would listen patiently as General Zia blamed his enemies in the press, pleaded national interest and invoked their thirty-eight years together. He would say everything the First Lady had thought he would. She would agree to continue to do her ceremonial duties as the First Lady, she would appear at the state ceremonies and she would entertain other first ladies, but only after kicking him out of their bedroom.

  But here at this moment, she only said one thing before walking off. ‘Add my name to that list of widows. You are dead for me.’

  THIRTEEN

  THE SOLDIER ESCORTING me back from the torture chamber unties my hands, doesn’t bother to remove my blindfold, holds my neck down with one hand, puts his boot on my buttocks and shoves me into a room. I land face down, my tongue tastes sand. The door that shuts behind me is small. I am relieved to notice that I am not in the bathroom where I spent the night. I fumble with the rag covering my eyes, the knot is too tight. I yank it down and it hangs around my neck like a poor man’s dog collar. My eyes blink and blink again but don’t register anything. I open them wide, I narrow them. I don’t see a thing. Have I gone completely blind? I stand still, scared to move my hands and feet, scared to find myself in a grave. I breathe, and the air smells of a duvet that has spent a night out in a monsoon, but it’s better than last night’s stench. Tentatively, I move my right hand, stretch out my arm. It doesn’t touch anything. I stretch out my left hand; it flails in a vacuum. I stretch my arms to the front, to the back, I make a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn with my arms outstretched, they don’t come in contact with anything. I keep my hand in front of me and walk, counting my steps. Ten steps and my hand scrapes a brick surface. I run my hand over the slim, flat bricks that the Mughals used to build this fort. Conclusion: I am still in the Fort. I am in a part of the Fort which is not an extension built by the army. I move left. Twelve steps and I run into another specimen of Mughal masonry. I knock on the wall, and as I should have known, there is only the dead sound of my knuckles against a historical monument.

  I am not in a grave. I have ample space, I can breathe. I am in a luxury-sized dungeon. My eyes adjust to the dark, but they still can’t see anything. The darkness just grows darker. It’s the kind of darkness which is ancient, manufactured by the sadistic imagination of the Mughals. Those buggers may have lost their empire but they knew how to build dungeons. I go down on my knees and embark on a crawling tour of my abode. The sand is real sand, beneath it the floor, endless cold slabs of stone. Anyone planning to dig a tunnel here would need to hire a mining company. In this monument to sixteenth-century architectural values, the only concession to modern times is a plastic bucket in a corner that I butt my head against. It probably hasn’t been used in a long time, but the stale smell that emanates from it makes it absolutely clear that I shouldn’t expect any visits to a loo.

  I sit with my back to the wall and shut my eyes, hoping the darkness will get less dark, the way it does in a cinema. I open them again. This place is no cinema. I can’t even muster any imaginary shadows.

  Minutes pass, hours pass. How should I know how long I have been here? If I stay still I’ll lose my eyesight or parts of my brains and probably the use of my limbs. I jump up in panic. On your feet, Mr Shigri, get busy. I command myself to run. I run on the spot for a while, my body warms up. I keep my mouth shut and concentrate on breathing through my nose. Not a good choice of exercise, as I
realise I am breathing in sand from the floor which has begun to fly in the air. I stop. I put my hands behind my neck and sit on my toes and start doing frantic squats. I do five hundred and without a pause jump in the air and land with my hands on the sand, body parallel to the ground. One hundred push-ups; a thin film of perspiration is covering my body, and an inner glow brings a smile to my face. As I sit back with my back to the wall I think that Obaid could probably write an article about this, send it to Reader’s Digest and fulfil his dream of getting one hundred dollars in the mail: ‘Aerobics for Solitary Prisoners’.

  I started my brief career as a swordsman by practising on a bed sheet. I hung the sheet over the curtain in my dorm and marked a circle roughly at the height where my target’s face would be. I stood with my back to the bed sheet and tried to pierce it from all possible angles, from above my shoulder, with my left hand, with backhand swipes. After one hour the sheet was in shreds and the circle more or less intact, mocking my swordsmanship.

  The next day, as Obaid got ready to go out for the weekend, I pretended that I had a fever. Obaid came to my bed, put his hand on my forehead and nodded his head in mock concern. ‘It’s probably just a headache,’ he said, pulling a face, disappointed at the prospect of having to watch The Guns of Navarone without me.

  ‘I am not a city boy like you. I am from the mountains where only women get headaches,’ I said, irritated at my own lie. Obaid was mystified. ‘What do you know about women?’ he taunted me, spraying his wrists with a sharp burst of Poison. ‘You don’t even remember what your mother looked like.’ I pulled my bed sheet above my head and started to detach myself, bit by bit.

  I locked the room as soon as he left and dressed up in uniform; boots, peaked cap, sword belt, scabbard, the whole works. From now on every rehearsal would be a full dress rehearsal. There was no point doing this by halves, it didn’t make sense not to simulate the exact circumstances. I took out a white towel. Instead of a circle, this time I drew an oval shape with a pencil, then two small circles for eyes, an inverted seven for a nose. I took extra pleasure in drawing a broom of a moustache. I hung my creation over the curtain, put my right hand on the hilt of the sword and took five steps back. I came to attention, with my eyes fixed on the moustached face on the towel. I drew the sword and extended it towards the target. It flailed in the air inches away from the towel.