A Case of Exploding Mangoes

by Mohammed Hanif

  There is silence at the other end. I close my eyes and when I open them again the darkness seems tinged with fluorescent circles dancing in the dead air.

  ‘I realised that. That’s why I declassed myself and started organising the sweepers. But your army people are scared of even the poorest of the poor who clean your gutters.’ At this he replaces the brick in the wall.

  On the floor, face down, my left cheek on the cool sand, arms stretched out, palms upward, I am trying to clear my head of sweepers and Maoists and peasants and fluorescent circles. Secretary General seems too well read to have plotted anything, let alone a plan involving a bomb in a gutter. Will he believe me if I tell him about my plan? We can probably compare notes. We can probably learn from each other’s failure, share tips about our interrogators. There is complete silence from his side. I guess it’s my turn to make a peace move.

  I take the leftover food and push the brick towards him. ‘I have got some chicken here if you’d like it,’ I whisper.

  I can hear him sniff the plate. His hand enters the hole and he shoves the plate towards me, spilling the curry over my shirt. ‘I don’t eat collaborators’ leftovers.’ The brick is shoved in with a sense of finality.

  I guess I am not going to be part of the revolution.

  I take my shirt off and try to clean it, in the blackness, with the blindfold hanging around my neck. There is nothing more disgusting than a curry stain on your uniform shirt.

  Someone cares enough about me to provide me with proper food but not enough to set me free or at least put me in a cell with a window.

  Secretary General has read my thoughts. The brick scrapes and he speaks as if talking to himself. ‘You know the most beautiful thing in this fort? Not the Palace of Mirrors or the Court for the Commoners. No. It’s an underground cell with a window. They put me there for a month. You can actually see the sky. The window opens on to the lawns of the Fort. Sparrows sing there all day long. It was the happiest time of my life.’

  A prisoner genuinely nostalgic for another prison; it will never happen to me.

  ‘And what did you do to get such a privilege? Named your fellow sweepers in the conspiracy?’

  ‘You have spent too much time on the parade square marching up and down to understand the complexity of the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed.’

  ‘Teach me.’

  ‘They sent in their best man to interrogate me. Zia’s right-hand man. Colonel Shigri. On the very first day he had electrical wires put on my privates, but after he couldn’t break me, he became a friend. He moved me into a cell with the window. A very fine man. He must be a general by now.’

  To think that the hands that cradled you also put electrical wires to someone’s testicles is not a very appetising thought. A shudder of loathing runs through my body. My stomach feels bloated.

  ‘They put me back in this dungeon after his transfer. He believed in dialogue. The only man in khaki I have had a decent conversation with. I wonder if he got his promotion or –’

  ‘He is dead. He hanged himself.’ I want Secretary General to shut up. He does for a few moments.

  ‘He didn’t seem like the kind of person –’ Secretary General’s voice comes out all broken.

  ‘I know,’ I say curtly. ‘They made it seem like he hanged himself.’

  ‘How do you know? They have brainwashed you into believing anything they want you to believe.’ I don’t like his dismissive tone.

  ‘Just because I am wearing a uniform, just because they gave me chicken to eat, you seem to think I am a fool. You think I am just another idiot in uniform. Listen to me, Mr Secretary General, I don’t need your lectures. There are certain things in life called facts, empirical realities I think you call them. I do not need to look at some little red book written by a Chink in a funny hat. I don’t need any communist pamphlets to tell me what the facts of my life are. I can find them for myself.’

  I slam the brick back in the wall and tell myself that it’s over. I don’t need lectures from a civilian nutter any more. I don’t want one more loser telling me that Colonel Shigri changed his life.

  Shirtless, I lie back on the floor. The sand and stone underneath my naked back feel good. I grab sand in both my hands and play the sand clock; I let it trickle out of my fists slowly, trying to coordinate the flow from both my hands. It is difficult, but I have time to practise.

  There is a blind spot behind you, announced a red banner, one of the many dotting the flight line to mark the annual Flight Safety Week. HIDDEN HAZARDS HURT, screamed the giant orange letters on the tarmac. There was a bright new take-off line painted down the middle of the runway and new yellow markings for taxi routes. Even the rusting cut-out of the rooster on the windbag sported a new bronze crown.

  ‘Our guest must be getting bored. Take him for a joyride on your next flight,’ the Commandant suggested after unveiling a plaque carrying this year’s motto for the flight safety campaign: Safety is in the eye of the beholder.

  ‘Love to,’ Bannon said. ‘Show me some of that pilot shit you do.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ll arrange a picnic for you in the skies.’

  It was time to run some safety checks on Colonel Shigri’s past.

  I placed an order with Uncle Starchy for one of his specials that evening. Uncle Starchy produced a crumpled cigarette from under his shirt: ‘Smoke one every day and you’ll never get a headache and your wife will never complain.’ Uncle Starchy winked.

  I straightened the cigarette and slipped it into the little pocket on the sleeve of my flight suit.

  ‘Uncle, you know very well that I am not married. Hell, nobody is married here.’

  ‘Preparation. Preparation,’ he muttered before whipping his donkey gently and driving off with his bales of laundry.

  Bannon turned up wearing an orange scarf, a flying jacket and a baseball cap with a bald eagle on it. He watched me closely as I carried out the pre-flight checks and prepared for take-off. Bannon seemed disappointed at the size of the cockpit, but he ran his hand over the canopy and said, ‘Sweet little bird.’ After harnessing his safety belt, he rummaged under his seat then looked puzzled.

  ‘No parachutes?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We won’t need them.’

  Safety … Here, There and in the Air another banner greeted us at the end of the runway as we took off and started climbing towards the training area.

  Against the backdrop of a cloudless sky-blue sky, our twin-seater MF17 seemed not to move, as if hanging by invisible threads in an aviation museum. I checked with the air traffic control tower. It was one of those rare days when there is no head- or tailwind. Beneath us Pakistan was breathtakingly symmetrical, green squares of vegetation divided by flat rivers reflecting the gentle rays of sun.

  ‘Want to see the Black and White Valley?’

  Bannon sat tense in his seat as if not sure whether to trust my flying skills.

  ‘Been in too many whirlybirds with my dead men. Too many memories,’ he said, fidgeting with his safety harness.

  ‘This ain’t no chopper and I ain’t dead,’ I mimicked him in an attempt to cheer him up. He forced a nervous smile. ‘Here. I have got your favourite.’ I produced the joint from my pocket and held it towards Bannon. ‘Climbing to ten thousand for manoeuvres,’ I said into my mouthpiece, eased the stick backwards and trimmed the controls again. We were now rooted to our seats as the plane climbed steadily. The G meter read 1.5, gravity tugged softly at our cheeks.

  Bannon sat there, unsure whether or not to light up. ‘Go ahead, be my guest,’ I said. ‘Safety is in the eye of the beholder.’ I took out a lighter, stretched out my left hand, flipped open the air vent on his side of the glass canopy and sparked the joint. The plane shuddered slightly, the vibration pattern changed, and the sound of the propeller slicing the air at 2100 revolutions per minute filtered through.

  The Black and White mountain range appeared on our left. The Black Mou
ntains were covered with lush green pine trees and thick shrubs, while the White Mountains formed a series of grey barren ridges. The altimeter read six thousand feet, the propeller pointed just above the horizon; a cow-shaped cloud nudged the tip of our right wing, dived below and disappeared. Bannon, in his nervousness, smoked more than half the joint in two long puffs. The cockpit was full of aircraft fuel and hash fumes. I held my breath. I was responsible for the safety of the ship. He extended the last bit of the joint towards me. ‘The machine knows who is flying it,’ I said, shaking my head. His eyes laughed a stoned laugh.

  ‘Want some fun?’ Without waiting for an answer I put the plane into a thirty-degree dive, trimmed my ailerons, gave some right rudder and yanked the stick to the right. Bannon tried to jump in his seat but the plane was pulling hard, the gravity pinned him down. The right wing kept rolling up and soon we were inverted, hanging from our safety harnesses. I decided to hold the plane there and pressed the intercom button.

  ‘Who shafted Colonel Shigri?’

  It’s a great vantage position to see the world from; with your feet pointing at the sky, neck stretched and eyes staring at earth, just the way I used to hang upside down from the apple tree in our backyard on Shigri Hill.

  ‘Fuck,’ Bannon said, his voice sounding metallic on the intercom. ‘Get my fanny back on the ground.’

  I obliged. I eased the stick to the left and pushed the right rudder in; the plane completed a roll. I checked the altimeter. Six thousand feet. Exactly where we had started.

  ‘Wasn’t that a perfect roll?’ I looked towards Bannon, my left hand working the trimmer. Bannon’s face was yellow, and his forehead had broken into sweat. His burp filled the cockpit with the smell of Coca-Cola and half-digested omelette.

  ‘Fury Two levelling off at six thousand.’

  The tower babbled on for a few seconds.

  ‘Roger,’ I said, without listening.

  Bannon was talking.

  ‘Nothing to do with us. I heard stuff but that’s all bullshit. You’ve got to look at the context and the context in this case was this.’ He counted invisible money with the thumb and forefinger of both his hands. ‘There was a lot of moolah going into Afghanistan. This whole jihad against communism was nothing but loads and loads of mazuma. The mujahideen just loved their greenbacks, you know. And yes we brought them mules from Argentina and ack-acks from Egypt and AK47s from China and stingers from Nevada but what really worked with them was the dollar. Not questioning their motives here, mind you. Your average muj is happy with a shawl on one shoulder and a rocket launcher on the other, he is the best guerrilla fighter we have got – God, I could have used some of them in Nam – but what I am saying here is that the leadership, the commanders with their villas in Dubai and their cousins trading in Hong Kong, I mean nobody could keep track of anything. Although money wasn’t their basic motive, the muj just loved their dollars. But so did your brass and it’s only natural that in a situation like this some of it went missing.’ He was still holding the end of the joint in his hand. I took it and flicked it out of the air vent; it ballooned up before dancing away into the space.

  ‘Spare me the analysis. Are you saying Colonel Shigri was one of those people who wanted your greenbacks?’

  Dad’s bank manager came to see me the day after his funeral and transferred his account to my name. Three hundred and twelve rupees in credit.

  ‘Oh no. Not at all. Not remotely suggesting that.’

  I yanked the stick to the left, and pushed in the right rudder to keep the plane from drifting. I wanted to have a good look at Bannon’s face. He took a deep breath and peered out of the cockpit, surveying Black Valley where some enterprising bugger had cut down the pines on a mountainside and arranged whitewashed stones to read: Mard-e-Momin, Mard-e-haq, Zia ul-Haq, Zia ul-Haq.

  ‘I’m all ears,’ I said, banking away from the mountains. I was in no mood to give him an Urdu lesson or explain what the Man of Faith was doing on top of a Black Valley mountain.

  ‘You know how much money was passing through Colonel Shigri’s hands? Not putting a price on the hardware here, not counting the humanitarian aid. Just the moolah in Samsonites. Three hundred million dollars cash. Every quarter. And that is American taxpayers’ money, not taking into consideration the Saudi royal dosh. So twenty-five mil goes missing – and I say this with my hand on my heart – that sounds like a big pile of greens but it was nothing. No one batted an eyelid at our end. Hey, you don’t count pennies when you are fighting the single worst enemy since Hitler. But. But. Twenty-five mil is a lot of money for your folks. You knew your dad better than I did. I know he had his flash uniforms and rigid principles but the man liked his Scotch, he liked his female companions, so you never know.’ I stared at him without blinking. ‘Look, man, all I’m saying is this: I don’t know and you don’t know how much a hooker costs in Switzerland. But it sure don’t cost twenty-five million US dollars.’

  ‘Do I look like someone who has inherited twenty-five million dollars?’

  He looked at me blankly, wondering why was I taking it all so personally. I rummaged in my pocket and produced a crumpled fifty-dollar bill. ‘This is all I’ve got.’ I threw the note in his lap where it lay like an unproven accusation.

  I wondered if I should tell him that I helped Dad take care of that money. Bannon would have never believed me. I took a deep breath and pressed the radio button. ‘Fury Two, beginning radio silence drill.’

  I pushed the stick forward till it wouldn’t go any further, threw in the full left rudder; the plane went into nose dive and its wings danced a 360-degree dance. The plane headed down, revolving on all three axes. The nose was chasing the tail, the wings were whirring like the blades of a blender; negative Gs were pulling our guts into our throats. The green squares of fields and shimmering straight canals were dancing and becoming bigger with every rotation. I glanced towards Bannon. His hands were flailing in the air, his face contorted with a suppressed scream.

  Dad was screwing hookers in Geneva while I was waking up every day at five in the morning to justify his investment in my public-school education and spending my summer vacations inventing physical exercises for myself?

  Bannon was a bullshit artist.

  The altimeter read two thousand feet. I cut the throttle, yanked the full right rudder in, eased back the stick and the plane slowly curved upwards. The greens began to recede again. Bannon’s voice was frightened, hoarse.

  ‘Are you trying to kill an American?’

  ‘I am just trying to talk,’ I flicked the radio button on and gave the air traffic controller a call. ‘Radio silence out. Spin recovery completed.’

  Bannon began to speak in a measured tone, as if making a speech at his favourite aunt’s funeral.

  ‘He didn’t have a case officer or anything. It was a loose arrangement. But we knew he was one of the good guys, and trust me, there weren’t many of them. We were gutted. I wasn’t involved then. I wasn’t even on the South Asia desk, man, but I knew some guys who had worked with him and they were crying in their beers. It was a big loss. And not that people didn’t raise a ruckus, but it was all about staying the course and moving on, all diplomatic bull.’

  ‘So nobody bothered to find out?’

  ‘No they didn’t. Because they knew. The orders came from the top. They didn’t want to rock the boat, so to speak. I mean it’s no secret. Shit, sure you know. From the very top.’ He waved to the black mountain with white stones. ‘Mard-e-Haq.’

  I was pleasantly surprised at his grasp of Urdu. I patted his shoulder and gave him an understanding nod.

  ‘So what are you doing here now? What do you want from me?’

  ‘Shit. I am only the Silent Drill instructor. You know the rules.’

  I stayed quiet for a moment. ‘It must have come up in meetings, memos. After all, he was your best man.’ I moved the stick left and started preparing for landing.

  ‘What were they going to say? Hey, stop the Cold War,
our cross-eyed Mard-e-Haq is not fighting by the book? But trust me, man, this is all guesswork. Educated guesswork done by folks in Langley who loved your dad, but guesswork nonetheless. Nobody knew for sure. It was all very low-level stuff. I’ve got no clue who pulled the trigger.’

  ‘I would have understood if it was the barrel of his gun in his mouth. He was that kind of a man. But it was his own bed sheet,’ I said, before asking the tower for permission to land and informing the air traffic controller that I had an airsick passenger on board.

  Secretary General’s whispers are echoing in the cell. I can’t decide if he is in a delirium or trying to entertain me. ‘Comrade, I think I’ve gone blind. I can’t see anything.’ I rub my own eyes and don’t see anything. But I know I am not blind. ‘I swear I can’t see anything. They brought food, they opened the door but I didn’t see anything. Not a thing.’

  ‘It’s probably night-time, comrade,’ I say, trying to suppress a yawn. Remember day and night? Night, day, then again night.

  SIXTEEN

  AFTER THE INTER Services Intelligence’s counter-espionage unit carried out its weekly sweep through the living quarters of the Army House for any bugs or jamming devices, Brigadier TM started an old-fashioned, hands-on inspection of the premises. He removed the hand-woven burgundy silk covers from the sofa cushions and ran his fingers along their velvet lining. He gave the matching drapes a good shake, combed his way through the brown silk tassels and looked suspiciously at the silver curtain holdbacks. The Persian rugs, plundered from the palaces of Afghan kings and presented to General Zia by Afghan mujahideen commanders, were removed one by one and TM’s boots searched for any uneven surfaces on the grey synthetic underlay. The table lamps, shiny brass with silk cord switches, were turned on and off and on again.

  Brigadier TM’s mistrust of the ISI was based on a simple principle: the cops and thieves should be organised separately. His problem with the ISI was that everything was being done by the same people. After sweeping through the living quarters with their bug detectors and scanners and patting the seats of some random chairs they had simply signed a document saying no espionage devices were detected. Brigadier TM never knew whether to trust these signed documents. After all, potential presidential assassins don’t go about their business signing affidavits as they close in on their target. Brigadier TM had done his staff and command course, and he understood why a country needed an intelligence service, why an armed service needed spies to spy on its own men and officers, and he could live with that. But there was another reason he didn’t like these military intelligence types. Brigadier TM didn’t like them because they didn’t wear uniforms. It was hard enough to trust anyone who didn’t wear a uniform, but how on earth could you trust someone with a rank who didn’t wear a uniform? Brigadier TM considered ISI a menace on a par with the corrupt Pakistani police and lazy Saudi princes, but since his job was to watch and keep quiet, he never mentioned it in front of General Zia. Going through the trophy cabinet, he concluded that the sheer amount of stuff in the Army House was a security hazard. ‘Who needs all these photos?’ He stood in front of a wall covered with framed portraits of former generals who had ruled the country. Brigadier TM couldn’t help noticing that they had progressively got fatter and that the medals on their chests had multiplied. He came to the end of the row of photographs and stood in front of a large portrait. In this oil painting, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Founder of Pakistan, was wearing a crisp Savile Row suit and was absorbed in studying a document. With a monocle in his left eye and his intense gaze, Jinnah looked like a tortured eighteenth-century chemist on the verge of a new discovery.