by Nick Macfie
PAKISTAN STATE TV SHOWS DOZENS OF CASUALTIES AT USMAN MAKHDOOM RALLY, DEAD AMONG WOUNDED.
“What’s CNN saying?” Baxter asked.
“They’re quoting us.”
“Fantastic. Great.”
“It’s brilliant,” I said. I really meant it. “His fucking aide wanted me to be his servant! We’ll slug the urgent PAKISTAN-BOMB.”
“At least fifty dead at rally,” Fagin said. “Dozens wounded. The colonel’s safe.”
“I’m snapping,” I shouted.
And so it went on. Fagin on the phone, me doing the snaps and Marcus handling the main story. It was a procedure I enjoyed much more than the reporting. It was fast, important and invigorating. Putting a story into simple words and being quoted on the BBC and CNN seconds later.
I briefly allowed my eyes to wander to another screen. A Pakistani TV station was showing an old interview with Marina. Why it would show that instead of breaking news made no sense.
“To be honest, I am not sure what you just said,” the interviewer said. “You’re not very specific with your policies, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“You don’t think there is any meaning?”
“On first hearing, I would have to say that I didn’t detect any.”
“You think my speeches should have meaning?” She was smiling. She was being ironic.
“Well…”
“My people love me. Already that is true. They don’t listen to my speeches. I might as well go on about western pop music. They’d still come.”
“With respect, I don’t think so.”
“But this is not England where people can have more than one opinion,” Marina said. “You are for one person or you are not. If you are not, you cannot see one good thing in them or sympathise with any opinion they may have. You cannot say: ‘I don’t like Marina’s politics, but she is right about one thing.’ If you do not like my politics, there cannot be one thing that is right. That is why there is so much death. It’s pure hate. Nothing in between. If you hate someone so purely, why not kill them?”
Fagin was off the phone and the bureau was now sending us the latest on the explosion in the chat room.
“Police saying it was twin blasts. Two bombs,” the bureau said.
“I’ve got it,” I said loudly.
Pakistan police say election rally site hit by two bombs
“No, Hadley. Some confusion,” the bureau said. “We need to correct.”
“They said twin blasts. Right, Fagin? They said twin blasts?”
“You said twin blasts,” Fagin wrote in the chat room with so many typos that it was barely legible.
“Yes, twin blasts. No. Sorry,” came the reply with even more typos. “There has been a second. One in Lahore and one at Marina’s rally in Islamabad. Just now.”
“Marina?” I said.
“I’ll snap it,” Fagin said. “Is Marina safe?” he asked in the chat room.
“Unknown. Many casualties.”
“Is Marina safe?”
Fagin shrugged his shoulders. He crossed his fingers in my direction.
“Hadley,” Baxter said. “Fagin can snap. You take a rest.”
“The story has only just begun.”
“Yes, but…”
“This is what I do.”
“Yes, but let Fagin take over.”
The chat room pinged again: “Bomb appears to have been small drone hovering above Land Rover, police say. Marina and at least thirty others dead. Blood all over the shop. Flip-flops all over the shop. Also source to Shrubs witness. Our visuals team all safe.”
“I’m on it,” Fagin said. “I’m snapping.”
“Are you going to write all this down and put it in a story?” I asked Fagin. He kept typing and said nothing. Baxter put a hand on my shoulder.
“CNN back on with Pakistan feed,” someone said from behind me. I pushed my chair back, hands off the story. I put my hands behind my neck and watched slow-motion footage.
Journalists are trained to close their eyes, listen to a description of a street scene, picture it and retell exactly what was in their mind’s eye. I was watching, observing. The closing of eyes would come later. A white Land Rover Defender, specially adapted to allow standing room in the back. Two garlands around her neck. A white shawl. Dark glasses. A crowd too close. A huge crowd. Five children leaning over a balcony above the car, one scratching her leg. One of those electricity switch boxes whose insides had been ripped to shreds. No sign of any drone. No sign of any security. No sign of anyone who cared for her. Just madmen idolising a dream. The camera zoomed out to reveal a tiny car, a Suzuki Mehran, at the edge of a sea of desperate, poor, uneducated, hopeless serfs.
“There must be a million people, Hadley,” Baxter said.
Those nearest were throwing flowers. She was lively, smiling and empowered, just like she wanted the women of Pakistan to be. One security man was catching garlands and throwing them back at the people who had thrown them. Marina had to brush up on her PR, I thought. She waved to her left and waved to her right. She paused. She leant on the roof and sank her head momentarily, stood up straight and beamed.
She put down a garland she was holding on the seat behind her. She raised her arms above her head and pointed the fingers down until they were touching her veil, making the shape of a heart. “It is a gesture of affection I have for you,” she had said. “A first-class gesture.”
Something distracted her. She looked to the sky, keeping her arms where they were, ever so slightly arching her back. The screen went blank in a flash of yellow and orange.
“We need all this in the trunk, Fagin,” Baxter said.
“Of course.”
“It’s colour. The hands on the head bit. It’s extraordinary.”
Marcus said something under his breath about a prima donna.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Nothing, Hadley.”
“No, it was something.”
“I was just wondering why she was standing like that. Leaning back with her arms above her head, making a heart like a ballerina.”
“A prima donna, you said.”
“Maybe she heard or felt something overhead,” Baxter said. “The drone.”
Who would have thought of it? A little helicopter-like device, a toy, hovering overhead. A dapper gadget in a country which can’t even keep the electricity switched on all day and where a Goblin Teasmaid is considered high-tech.
“That would be it,” I said. “She heard something overhead. She felt something.”
The news, of course, was hotter than red hot, and I did not have the energy to take part. Marina was hotter than red hot. Now she had been vaporised, bits of hotter than red hot shrapnel, even now, lying in her midst. Vaporised was the wrong word. I couldn’t think of the right word. I just thought: what’s the fucking point? Of both the blood lust of Pakistan politics and the breathlessness in the way it was reported. Fuck all the politicians. Fuck all the journalists. Fuck Fagin and Baxter and Marcus. They were all in it for themselves.
“Hadley, follow me.”
Baxter brushed past me, headed for his office. I traipsed behind and sat down in front of his desk. He closed the door and took his place in his giant, black, ergonomically correct chair, his back to the harbour haze. He reached down to his bottom left drawer where I knew, from many times gone by, he kept a bottle of Black Label.
“Onward Christian bloody soldiers,” I said.
“What?”
“No nothing. Just a line of Colonel Makhdoom’s. I’m thankful for small mercies. The drink, I mean.”
“Indeed.” He quickly brought out the bottle, poured two triple shots and returned the bottle to its home. “Here we go. Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
Baxter swivelled a half turn, looked out over the water and swivelled back.
“Hadley, I have an idea of how you may be feeling, and I want to say that I am sorry.”
“I haven’t written one story.”
&n
bsp; “Never mind that now. This bombing, these bombings, must be a dreadful shock. Don’t interrupt. You are bearing up extremely well, I have to say. My heart goes out to you – all of our hearts go out to you. And you must take as much time as you need before you arrive here again for work.”
Was I was bearing up extremely well? Bearing up to what, exactly? If I was bearing up to anything, well or badly, it would be the first time. “Her husband did it, of course,” I said.
“Well, we don’t know that.”
“Yes we do. The colonel and his people. That’s the story we can write. I can remember her words on specific points.”
“Well, we have to have a discussion. There are legal issues.”
I watched a Star Ferry bobbing up and down on its way to Tsim Sha Tsui – “Sharp Sand Point” in Cantonese.
“The strange thing is, despite all her affairs with superstars from all round the world…” I didn’t finish the sentence. “It’s all just…” I rapped the knuckle of my forefinger on the desk. “It’s just such a waste.”
“It’s Pakistan. It happens all the time.”
I took a large gulp of the Scotch. It tasted a bit rough. As though he had filled a bottle of Black Label with Red.
“All the time,” I said. “Any time, any place.”
“Instead of time off, we need to get you off the desk again and on to another story. To take your mind off things. What do you say?”
“Sure. Anything.”
Baxter’s phone went. He listened a while.
“You realise we are very busy with the Pakistan bomb story,” he said. “But yes. I’m sure we can.” Baxter looked at me. “In fact, I think I may have the very person sitting right in front of me. You are looking for someone who knows the Hong Kong story well. Okay… okay. This evening. The Captain’s Bar at the Mandarin. Drinks on you. Yes. Yes, you’re right. The best line-up of Scotch whiskies in Asia. Very swish. I will tell him. Yes. Yes. Thank you. No, it’s my pleasure.”
Baxter hung up the phone, lifted his glass and said cheers again. “This man was beaten up last night for just being near the pro-democracy protests,” Baxter said. “Not the first time, apparently. Said he wasn’t taking part. Just an observer. Wants to give his side of the story.”
“Who is it?”
“Didn’t give a full name. Said China was pissed off at him for no reason.”
“So he’s famous, then. Who is he?”
“He’ll meet you in the Captain’s Bar. Seven-thirty. He says you can drink as much as you like. All you know about him is that he sounds like a prick.”
“Who the fuck is it?”
“Party by the name of Kenny G.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NICK MACFIE was a reporter for the Sussex Express, Cambridge Evening News and Sydney Sun before moving to Hong Kong where he worked for the South China Morning Post, Agence-France Presse, Asian Wall Street Journal and Reuters. He now lives in Singapore.