In the Light of What We Know: A Novel

by Zia Haider Rahman

  That’s it? asked the general. You say nothing and then expect one word to suffice?

  The Americans cannot stomach casualties, said Reza Mehrani. When the body bags are airlifted by the dozen to their Dover air base, that’s when they pack up and leave their wars. So this time, they will be using drones. The technology is ready for it.

  You are a very scary fellow, said the general. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not what you say but how say it. You could order a chapati and I would be scared.

  He’s right, said Hassan, the man from the ISI.

  See, said the general. Even the spymaster thinks you’re scary.

  They will use drones on a massive scale, added Hassan.

  You think science and technology are just instruments of war, said Mehrani, directing his remarks to the general and the colonel, but science and technology actually change the game.

  How will it change the game, dear boy? asked the general. The Americans have always fought their wars by proxy. Drone attacks are simply a variant.

  If they so much as launch one drone attack in Pakistan, I’ll personally put my boot in the American ambassador’s behind, said Hassan.

  What nonsense! You wear soft slippers. You want to tickle the good ambassador? said the general.

  They want their wars but they don’t want to shed American blood.

  You think Kissinger cared about American blood in Vietnam?

  In the American Civil War it was possible to buy your way out of serving in the Union Army for three hundred dollars. A commutation fee, they called it. All legal and aboveboard.

  The price of patriotism.

  The poor who have nothing else to sell, they are the ones who become soldiers. They are the organ donors.

  The military contractors are already coming in.

  They were there ahead of everyone.

  Bhai, mercenaries have been fighting wars since before the pharaohs.

  I don’t see American elites joining the U.S. Army. So tell me, where is the loyalty in the West?

  Come now. Since time immemorial, soldiers the world over have never lifted a finger for country. Everyone knows that a soldier fights for his comrades.

  You mean to say that our boys will do America’s bidding simply because a soldier will fight for his regiment?

  For his platoon. I’m saying that at the sharp point of battle that is why they fight. Whether it comes to the point of battle is another matter.

  That is my point.

  They’d sooner desert than fight their kin.

  Why have you agreed to U.S. bases on Pakistani soil? I asked, speaking for the first time.

  I’m sorry, I quickly added. That was meant as a question and not an accusation.

  I said the same thing to that American lackey Busharraf, said Dr. Mehrani, and I most certainly meant it as an accusation.

  Tell the boy what the man said, said the colonel.

  These things are more complex than the Western press would have you think, added Mehrani.

  It’s important that the boy should have a complete picture, said the colonel. Tell him what Musharraf said.

  He said, Go fuck a dog, interjected the general, and turning to Mehrani added: A direct order from your commander in chief.

  We are in a bind, explained Hassan. If we say no to America, they’ll fight their war anyway—they’re straining at the leash—but they’ll fight from bases in India. And that way lies ruination for Pakistan. Not only would we lose the support of America, but we would be entering the nightmare vision of an India allied militarily to America. And later, with Afghanistan conquered, we would have no strategic depth.

  Zafar, do you know what he’s talking about? the colonel asked me.

  Because if you do, perhaps you’d care to explain it to us, said the general.

  Strategic depth? I replied.

  Do you really think they can conquer Afghanistan? the general asked Hassan.

  Conquer, perhaps not, not in any comprehensive sense, replied Hassan. But if you think they’ll leave the country altogether, if you think for a moment they won’t maintain permanent bases, right in the thick of it, a slingshot’s distance from Central Asian oil wells, and on the border with Iran, then, my friends, you’ve been taking too much Afghani opium.

  Strategic depth, said the colonel, addressing me, is the very idea of Afghanistan, in particular the border country, providing a hospitable environment for our troops should we need to regroup after an Indian military advance, so that India would never rest easy if, God forbid, it ever mounted a serious foray into Pakistan. The Indians merely knowing that we have such depth is enough.

  That’s one way to describe strategic depth, said Mehrani.

  What’s yours?

  It’s an aspect of the lunatic obsession we have with India, he replied. India doesn’t care about us. We spend so much time talking about India. It’s the staple of our cocktail parties. But do you think for a moment they talk about us quite so much in Delhi? Their military budget is seven times ours. Are they remotely afraid of us? asked Mehrani.

  You think we should spend more?

  We should spend less. Look at our country. It’s a total disaster. Sixty percent of our children are born significantly stunted, physically stunted! Male illiteracy is at forty-one percent, female at seventy percent. Virtually no health care for the poor. Tax collection is at ten percent, the lowest in the subcontinent, lower than that of Bangladesh, for heaven’s sake.

  Reza-bhai likes statistics. He’s a scientist, said the general.

  Here’s a statistic for you, Reza-bhai, said Hassan. Come to think of it, Zafar, you’ll also like this. It’s rather mathematical. Pakistan may be what you say, but she has a very low Gini coefficient.

  You have read the Dawn editorial, said the general.

  Was that a slip, I asked myself, or had the ISI officer intended to unnerve me by indicating that he knew I’d studied mathematics?

  The Gini coefficient is the work of no less auspicious an institution than the United Nations Development Program. It measures national income inequality, the ratio of the income of the bottom ten percent to the income of the top ten percent. Pakistan’s Gini coefficient is lower than India’s, lower than America’s, lower than Nigeria’s, lower in fact than that of forty other countries.

  I haven’t heard of the Gini coefficient, so I don’t know, I said, but I think you mean the other way around.

  What?

  Ratio of top ten percent to bottom ten percent—if your point is that Pakistan has lower income inequality, I explained.

  Each of them considered this and a few moments passed as the four men stared into space while their brains turned over. Then in unison, they said, You’re right, before breaking into laughter.

  How is that possible? How can income inequality be relatively low? I asked.

  Indeed, replied the ISI official. Here, he continued, we have the heart of the matter. That which is the source of so many of our woes is also the source of strengths. Kinship and patronage.

  As in Bangladesh.

  As in India.

  But even more so here, continued Hassan. Kinship and patronage. The two work together to make this country. Westerners never tire to point to our corruption; they never tire to highlight our moral failings. We are lawless, they say, and if you listened to them you would think we haven’t a shred of integrity. But that is the opposite of the case. You see, my boy, in Pakistan there are very powerful moral obligations at work, those of kinship. Loyalties to one’s family, to one’s clan, tribe, religion, and extended kinship networks—such loyalties override anything our elites bring in the form of laws. Our laws are largely inherited from the British and are no more the expression of the people’s voice than the laws imposed by a colonial power. But the loyalties that bind people together, these flow in the blood of Pakistanis.

  How the blazes does that explain a low Gini coefficient? Now that you’ve let the Gini out of the bottle, I think you should explain that
, said the general, quite evidently enjoying his pun.

  The looting of the state is seldom for the sole benefit of an individual. That is very rare—

  As in military contracts, added Dr. Mehrani mischievously, though none of the others seemed to take the bait. He was the only civilian among them.

  When a man, a politician or a bureaucrat, takes a sum, a commission, or a payment, he is taking it into trust for the benefit of a wider group. He will pay servants, gunmen, supporters, political transport for supporters, political hospitality, and then he will share the rest among his relatives. Unlike countries such as Nigeria where a few plunder the treasury, siphoning off proceeds from oil that ought to benefit the nation and stashing them in Western bank accounts, in Pakistan the moneys get spread around. Therefore, income inequality remains relatively low. As for the military, the good doctor knows very well that the military is the only island of sanity in an ocean of madness, said Hassan.

  Well put, said the general.

  The army is industrious, it is efficient, and it gets the job done. Why else do you think Pakistanis have turned to the army time and again? For God’s sake, even elected governments seek our help. In ’99, Sharif* put the military in charge of water and power in order to restore order and enforce fee payment. And you know what else? asked Hassan, looking at me. The military is a meritocracy, he said, as if this was the clincher. No one can deny that. Do you know who’s going to head the ISI next? The director general of military operations, General Ashfaq Kayani, the son of an NCO, a lowly sergeant. And look at Musharraf, he’s the son of a Mohajir.*

  What is it Voltaire said of Frederick the Great’s Prussia? Where some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state, said Mehrani.

  The Americans know nothing about the realities, the basic facts of this part of the world, the general added, ignoring Mehrani’s barbed comment.

  The British are no better, said Hassan. The British are delusional. Just the other day, the British ambassador was complaining to me: If only the American soldier would behave half as well as his British counterpart. In what way? I asked him. We hand out sweets to the children, he said, we respect local customs, and we don’t go charging in all guns blazing. I almost throttled him. Respect customs at the barrel of a loaded rifle? They still regard themselves as the benevolent imperialists, but in Afghanistan the duplicitous shit heads are hated even more than the Americans. Do they think we in this part of the world don’t know history? They tried fucking us up the Khyber Pass every chance they got but still they think they’re nobility. Fuckers.

  Calm down, bhai, said Mehrani.

  Pour me some whisky.

  The educated classes know something; give them some credit, said the colonel.

  Don’t fool yourself. I was in Washington last month, said the general, with Sattar† at a meeting with Colin Powell. The chap sat opposite us and for fifteen minutes he spoke of Pakhtoon and Taliban interchangeably—he said Pashtun, of course. It became unbearable, and even Kurshid,‡ a Punjabi, was agitated enough to point out that two senior officials with him were Pakhtoons but decidedly not Taliban. I wondered to myself if Powell might even need it explained to him that there were Pakhtoons in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the very least, you would think he’d been briefed about us. One should always know whom one’s meeting.

  Hassan, the ISI official, smiled at me.

  But what about their Great Unwashed? It is by their license that their armies are waging war. They know nothing. What does “tribal area” mean to them? What does Swat mean to them, other than gunslingers in an American TV drama?

  The masses defer to the educated classes, as they do everywhere.

  Have some more whisky, said the general.

  I’m fine, said Hassan.

  Have some more whisky.

  Okay.

  Let’s talk about these educated classes. Zafar, said the colonel, you will have some insight here. When you are in the West and you are discussing Bangladesh with one of your educated friends—or let’s say you are discussing some aspect of your family life—tell me, do you feel the conversation has a different quality if you are speaking to a Bangladeshi, or a subcontinental, for that matter, from what it feels like if you are speaking to a Westerner? Don’t you feel you have to explain less?

  Feel, feel, feel. How did bloody feelings come into the picture? What are you talking about now? asked the general.

  Even when your Western friend is a child of Enlightenment liberalism? asked Reza.

  Yes, even when your Western friend is a child of Enlightenment liberalism, added the colonel.

  Tell us about your feelings, said the general.

  Let the boy answer, said the colonel.

  There is indeed a difference, I said. Talking to diasporic South Asians—

  Diasporic? Must you? said Hassan.

  Let him finish, insisted the colonel.

  Talking to expatriate South Asians about South Asian things is usually a lot easier than talking to others. Not always, though. I’ve met South Asians, men usually, who shrink from conversation that has a South Asian turn.

  Ah, yes, the babu, said the general.

  I’m sorry?

  A coconut. The South Asian who has become white in all but skin color, replied the general.

  But I wonder if the events of September 11 have changed that, I said.

  Certainly we hear of young British Muslims becoming radicalized in the face of the West losing its collective wits, said Reza.

  But short of that radicalization, I continued, I think expatriate Pakistanis and Bangladeshis—the babus, as you call them—they can no longer keep their distance. And there’s a deep pleasure in talking to someone who knows where you’re coming from right away, who knows what you’re talking about and can even finish your sentences. Nothing really beats that familiarity, that feeling of being swept into a vortex of mutual understanding. You all must know this. But equally I find it troubling. Is everybody so pleased to find a shared experience that their emotions rule the content? Not always but sometimes, sometimes as I walk away from the conversation, I wonder if it was a conversation framed by common defensiveness, a sense of unity by exclusion, which makes me uneasy because those kinds of conversations also exclude things that could challenge or test whatever’s being said. It’s true of everyday life, people not just talking but seeking common ground on the most mundane things—it’s the problem of clubs—except that the impulse gets magnified, I think, when there’s a defensiveness framing the conversation.

  Silence.

  You’re one of us, dear boy. You’re one of us. Welcome home.

  Because I’m not one of them?

  You’re not in favor of the American war?

  I knew two people who worked in the World Trade Center.

  Surely one’s position should be independent of whether one knew a victim of the nefarious miscreants. Otherwise one falls into the danger you mentioned—of letting emotions rule one’s judgment.

  You’re one of us because you are a Muslim. Do you know the Shahadah? asked Reza.

  You just called him a Muslim and yet you ask him if he knows the Shahadah, said the colonel.

  Do you know it in English?

  I’m no authority, but I don’t think the English translation qualifies as a declaration of faith, I said.

  Humor me.

  There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger, I said.

  Exactly.

  He qualifies, does he? asked the colonel.

  Exactly wrong, said Reza. This is what we teach our children. Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s because we use their translation, their bloody translation, which is just plain wrong.

  Reza-bhai, why the blazes would we teach them the English translation? asked the general.

  Your boys went to Aitchison! he snapped back. Now there’s another thing. Our best schools are English medium. Do you know what Arab Christians call God? he asked, turning back to me. All those Palestinian Christia
ns and Coptic Christians, those fellows like Edward Said and Boutros-Ghali. Arab Christians speak Arabic, and what do they call God?

  If I didn’t know, I could now guess, but it would have been impolite to steal his thunder. Tell me, I said.

  Actually, for that matter, do you know what virtually every Maltese calls God?

  Maltese? asked the colonel.

  People from Malta. I believe they’re called Maltese.

  They don’t speak Arabic, surely? asked the colonel.

  They speak a Semitic language, Ricky. And they’re Roman Catholics and they also call God Allah, because that’s what Allah means.

  Aren’t you making too much of a translation?

  Aren’t you making too little? Why do we keep seeing this over and over, this bogus translation of the Shahadah? It loses the meaning entirely and instead leaves the impression we worship some foreign god called Allah, when in fact the Shahadah is a beautiful creed of monotheism. It has nothing to do with the name of God. If you want a name, Islam offers ninety-nine names for God, precisely because he has no name. So tell me now. What is the Shahadah in English?

  There is no God but God and Muhammad is his messenger.

  Exactly right. You’re one of us because you are a Muslim and you are from here, said Reza.

  I’m Bangladeshi.

  The great wound from which we will never recover is the betrayal of East Pakistan, said the general.

  Whose betrayal?

  The conversation came to a standing stop.

  Not to change the subject but—

  Indeed.

  Speaking of which, surely the culprit here, the root of the matter, is Saudi Arabia. The hypocrites won’t do anything about the Saudis, said the general.

  Has anyone been following the cricket?

  The Saudis are overmaligned, protested Mehrani.

  You have a conflict of interest, O God of small things.

  The Christians have their bomb. And the Jews. Must the Muslims be denied? asked Mehrani.

  Be that as it may, Saudi finance makes you biased. No, the Saudis are undermaligned. Did you know that the Saudis still don’t provide advance manifests for flights going to the U.S.? How is this possible when every one of our Pakistani boys is being pulled over to have some gora shove his hand up his backside? In fact, right up to September 11, Saudis who applied for U.S. entry visas were not required to attend an interview at the U.S. embassy. Visa Express they called it. Travel agents arranged it all, Saudi travel agents acting for the U.S. State Department! What madness!