In the Light of What We Know: A Novel

by Zia Haider Rahman

  Not every country, he continued, has the utter lack of accountability the Saudi rulers enjoy. The Saudis spend preposterous sums on arms even though they have not fought a war in over sixty years and despite the fact that their external defense needs are totally met by the U.S., by U.S. carrier groups and F-15s permanently patrolling the Persian Gulf. So you have to ask, why do they spend this money? Much of it makes its way into the pockets of Saudi princes, but an equally large amount funds a military dedicated to protecting the Saudi royal family. Those royals are so hated by their own people that they live in fortresses defended by the National Guard, the best trained, best equipped, best paid, and most expensive bodyguard organization in the world, in human history, in fact. With this, they can oppress their people at will. You know what the locals call the venue for public executions in Riyadh? They call it Chop-Chop Square.

  You say the Saudis are to blame, but it is the Americans who permit all this, said Mehrani.

  They are co-conspirators, said the general. You think a thug is exonerated because a bigger thug is standing behind him? Yes, of course oil is at the root. Oil and business. I was reading the Petroleum Intelligence Weekly—

  Sounds like a barrel of laughs, said Mehrani.

  Very droll, said Hassan.

  On September 12, 2001, the Saudis pumped out—oh, I see! Barrel of laughs. Very good.

  Thank you, said Mehrani.

  The general looked helpless; he seemed to have lost his thread.

  September 12.

  Indeed. On September 12, 2001, the Saudis pumped out an extra nine million barrels of oil, most of it for the American markets. Oil prices barely moved after the worst terrorist attacks in American history. Saudi Arabia has half of the world’s surplus production capacity. What does that mean? It means that Saudi Arabia, unlike any other nation in the world, can move oil prices to suit its whim, but in exchange for U.S. protection the Saudi king keeps them stable.

  Now he’s going to tell you that the destruction of the Twin Towers was a Jewish conspiracy.

  You laugh, but some of these conspiracy theories … I’ll tell you this much—

  Conspiracy theories are not what they seem? interjected the colonel mischievously.

  Exactly so, replied the general, altogether blind to the colonel’s joke.

  What do you make of these conspiracy theories, my boy?

  The colonel took me by surprise.

  Yes, you. What do you make of them?

  Generally?

  Or specifically.

  I think conspiracy theories are lies.

  Well said, replied the colonel, though not taking his eyes off me.

  Lies, I continued, propagated by a shadowy international force.

  The general was the only one not laughing.

  I’m not talking about conspiracy theories, he said.

  What exactly are you talking about? asked the colonel.

  That would actually undermine my argument.

  Which is? I must say, I’m losing your thread.

  The Saudi royal family keeps oil prices low. Americans may complain about the high price of oil, but a democratic Saudi Arabia or an unfriendly one would hike prices and gouge the world markets for what they’re worth. Why do they keep it low? Because they’ve earned protection or a blind eye from America, as the royal family’s needs dictate. Washington has been paid off, defense contractors are kept in fine fettle, and the U.S. Navy takes care of Saudi national defense to boot. It works like a tax on Americans. Who, after all, pays for the American aircraft carriers and fighter jets that protect Saudi Arabia? Who pays for the oil but the U.S. citizen? One in five dollars earned from oil-hungry Americans buys off Washington and defense contractors.

  But Americans are better off. They get low oil prices, as you say.

  Yes. Everyone is happy. Except. Except ordinary Saudis. We talk about income inequality, but ordinary Saudis live in a country that won’t even keep relevant data and doesn’t want to know or let it be known; everyone is happy except ordinary Muslims who see the Hejaz overrun by foreigners. What did Osama bin Laden say right after the September 11 attacks? What was the first thing he posted on the Internet? He called for the expulsion of the infidel from Arabia. The Muslim world watches the hypocrisy with righteous indignation.

  The Americans are not alone.

  Of course not. Britain has become a poodle and Blair is a bastard of the highest magnitude. And now these bastards justify their invasion of Afghanistan with platitudes about freedom and liberating the Afghani people. You can’t turn on the news without seeing some Western political sage quoting surveys showing that Afghanis just want to lead their lives in peace and security. You know what? When I hear that, I want to reach for my gun. Afghanis, the pundit says, are no different from the people of Britain or America. Does he mean to say that the British and Americans don’t want anything more? The way of life of a nation is more than merely living in peace. If people don’t have peace and security, of course that’s all they want. When they have that, the other wants come into play. They then want a certain kind of society and certain kind of life. And our idea of a good life is not the same as theirs. Neo-imperialists, all of them. They cannot abandon their imperialist mentality, every utterance steeped in orientalist bullshit. And back they come for the same, over and over. The British diplomatic service is overrun by them; though they may think they’re above it all. Take that chap who went for a long walk. I hear his book is coming out soon, something about Afghanistan. Yet he traveled across half of Asia, you know. Orientalist to the bone but with enough romanticism to stave off the disappointment that awaits the rest.

  That’s a little unfair, I interjected.

  What do you mean?

  He’s orientalist because he traveled across half of Asia? You haven’t advanced anything approaching an argument, unless you’re saying that everyone who writes a book should describe all his experiences. Is that right? I asked him, a little facetiously.

  You like him? the colonel asked me, intervening. Of course you do. You have a soft spot for Etonians. What is the American expression? Get over it.

  He then did something that caught me totally off guard. He winked at me. The wink did more than take the edge off the admonishment contained in Get over it; it acknowledged my embarrassment—the general was on the mark—but it also made me feel that my embarrassment was safe with him.

  Bloody British. Bloody perfidious Albion, said Hassan, now quite hammered. One swallow does not a summer make, I tell you.

  Definitely more whisky, said the general.

  No two ways about it, added the colonel.

  * * *

  The following morning, I was taken to the airport for my flight to Kabul. We drove in a Land Cruiser with dark windows, the colonel and I sitting together in the back.

  You’re staying at AfDARI, aren’t you? the colonel asked.

  I don’t know where but I believe the UN rapporteur has made arrangements.

  I’ll have you picked up at the airport. In Kabul, I mean. And in future, when you come to Pakistan, I’ll have you picked up at the airport here also. As a matter of fact, fly PIA and use your credit card. We’ll have you reimbursed.

  Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.

  Nonsense, he replied.

  You know that I have an employer, I pointed out.

  Keep it that way. It is your company I enjoy.

  I think you may be mistaking me for someone else.

  Not at all. That, I think, is what you’re doing.

  I know you’re in the Pakistani army, someone senior, and I suspect with a little more authority than your rank confers.

  I mean that you are mistaking yourself for someone else.

  I see. You’re a Zen Buddhist after all.

  I think you are a little secretive.

  Not very effectively. You and your friends seem to know enough.

  What is strange to me is that although I know a fair deal about you, I’m still puzzl
ed as to who you really are.

  Anonymity is my middle name.

  The colonel chuckled. I should have liked a son like you, he said.

  Do you think I’m involved in some kind of subterfuge? A masquerade?

  No, no, no! You’re not a pretender. You’re much further on. No, my boy, you are so unsure of your bearings that you wonder if you’re pretending to be the person you actually are. How can I tell? I see it in your face. I see the searching assessment, which you hide well but unsuccessfully, at least to me. You have never had doors opened for you, and so you learned how to pick locks, as did I. I have survived every administration. We are a dangerous breed, you and I. We are lock pickers. We are dangerous to others and to ourselves. It is always a great risk to open a door if you don’t know what’s behind it. You didn’t talk much last night.

  Should I have spoken more?

  We also have that in common.

  What?

  We both like to watch.

  Only you make a living from it.

  Everyone who watches has their living made from it.

  There’s the Zen again.

  Your anger is misdirected.

  What anger?

  Hate them. You’re angry with them.

  Now you sound like Darth Vader.

  Excellent films. What? You thought the reference would elude me? We get films here, too. As far as I could see, those films were about gunslinging Americans. That man Harrison Ford looked like a cowboy.

  Hate isn’t healthy, I said.

  Don’t tell me: Hate the sin but love the sinner. I believe that if hate doesn’t find its rightful place, there’s only one place left for it to go.

  Where’s that?

  Inward.

  * * *

  At the airport, the colonel was brisk with his valediction. When a plane roared overhead, he leaned forward and spoke.

  Find out what’s in the envelopes. And be careful with Crane, he said.

  What envelopes? I replied. I had no idea what he was referring to.

  The colonel glanced at the driver.

  You don’t have to share it, he said. Find out and then decide.

  As I walked into the building, I realized that he had used the sound of the jet engines for cover.

  15

  Where Credit Is Due

  Rating agencies continue to create and [sic] even bigger monster—the CDO market. Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters. :o)

  —Senior S&P executive Chris Meyer, email to colleagues Nicole Billick and Belinda Ghetti, December 15, 2006

  SHAH: btw [by the way]: that deal is ridiculous.

  MOONEY: I know, right … model def [definition] does not capture half of the risk.

  SHAH: We should not be rating it.

  MOONEY: We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.

  —S&P analysts Rahul Dilip Shah and Shannon Mooney, IM conversation, April 5, 2007

  One common misperception is that Moody’s credit ratings are statements of fact or solely the output of mathematical models. This is not the case. The process is, importantly, subjective in nature and involves the exercise of independent judgment by the participating analysts … Importantly, the rating reflects Moody’s opinion and not an individual analyst’s opinion of the relative creditworthiness of the issuer or obligation.

  —Raymond W. McDaniel, chairman and chief executive officer, Moody’s Corporation, Testimony Before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, October 22, 2008

  Probabilistic propositions constitute a little world unto themselves. What is stated in probabilistic terms can be interpreted only in probabilistic terms. If you do not already think in probabilistic terms, predictions emerging out of the probabilistic world seem vacuous. Can one imagine the Sphinx foretelling that Oedipus will probably kill his father and marry his mother? Can one imagine Jesus saying that he will probably come again?

  —J. M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year

  I don’t think Crane ever considered going into his father’s business. There was too much of the outward-bound about him, certainly in the boy I knew. The fact that he attended law school is, I can only imagine, down to some sort of coercion from his father, the kind of man who would try to mold his son into the image of his legacy.

  In 1998 Forrester senior (in fact Forrester II), was a United States senator and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. As I’ve mentioned, I met him first when my parents and I lived in Princeton when I was a boy. The Forresters had a home there, where he, then a prominent figure in New York’s financial community, had installed his family, at safe remove from the mad metropolis.

  As any reference to him in the press was bound to include in those days, Forrester had built a fortune in the eponymous ratings agency he founded. In more recent times, the business diversified into other sectors of finance, attracting concerns in some quarters about potential conflicts of interest, but the core of the business remains providing credit ratings for financial instruments before issue.

  In the spring of 1996, at his invitation, I met Forrester for lunch at the Yale Club in New York. Forrester was a Yalie, said to be a member of Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society, and was a patron of the club in New York, where, I understood, he often stayed when visiting that city. A lifelong Democrat in the patrician mold, Forrester had gained the office of senator from New Jersey. It was a matter of public record that he had spent more of his own money on financing his first election campaign than had any other politician in any election, east of the Mississippi, I’d read, though I expect that that rather hackneyed qualification was in this case superfluous.

  I’d known the Forresters for many years, but though I counted Crane, the junior, among my closest friends, that closeness owed more, I’ll concede, to the special quality of friendships forged in childhood than to any coincidence of spirit. Nevertheless, I was surprised to receive an email from the father, whom I hadn’t seen since my wedding, asking me to lunch when I was next in New York or Washington. Crane had been talking with his friends about joining the Marines, which apparently the father was opposed to, and having otherwise no notion what might have prompted the surprise invitation, I rather wondered if the father was hoping to enlist me in a campaign to dissuade his son.

  When did you get in? asked Forrester.

  I flew in yesterday.

  How are you? How is Meena?

  All going well, I replied. Of course Forrester remembered my wife’s name. It rolled off his tongue with the familiarity that belongs to the shrewd politician. She’s fine, I said. Thank you for asking. How is D.C.?

  The waiter appeared, and Forrester, taking charge, ordered a bottle of white wine, pausing briefly to let me nod my assent. The Roof Dining Room, set out in rather feminine elegance, evidently attracted an older generation of silver-haired suited men and a smattering of young men, bankers and lawyers seeking to impress clients, no doubt. The round tables were elaborately laid, cutlery placed perfectly as if marking the hours on a clockface, opulent flower arrangements, and plenty of space on and between tables. There was a certain New England charm in its aesthetics, unself-conscious and without irony. Americans know what they like, more so than most of humanity, which leaves me skeptical of the claim, made usually by Europeans, that the American is insecure in the face of European history. It may be that at some time, as the story goes, Yale did age the appearance of certain of its buildings by spraying the exteriors with acid. But the fact that such a thing would be done when it could hardly escape public knowledge shows, in my view, the readiness of America to go it alone. I imagine now what Zafar, to whom America meant so much, might say to this and I’m minded to think he would agree. America is not short on energy, and its citizens believe quite heroically that things can be made to happen quickly, as only the freedom of the market permits. And history for the American is but one such thing. It, too, can be accelerated to meet demand.

/>   D.C., replied Forrester, is D.C., a cesspit of egos and small minds. Not enough good people. Have you thought of politics?

  Not for me, I replied quickly.

  You should, said Forrester, but without much conviction.

  As a matter of fact, I think Crane ought to think about going into politics, he added.

  Here it is, I thought, what he really wanted to discuss: his son’s future, which men like Forrester believe to be their own. Forrester was near enough to my father’s age, but his body seemed to have been reduced to an instrument of iron will. When later he rose to visit the bathroom, I could not but regard his physique. His slim figure seemed conditioned to bring out the best in a perfectly tailored suit, while my father held off the worst of a good appetite with a weekly game of squash. Forrester’s hair, combed back with a dash of some glistening product, had turned white and silver, and his face, ravaged by years of tough business, must now bear, I thought, the blows of American politics. His fortune might have secured him a degree of independence, but in the byways of Capitol Hill, the lobbyists and potential funders also peddled access, influence, and prefab constituencies, without which no American politician has any more voice than a mumbling vagrant on the street.

  I suppose you know Crane’s talking about the Marines.

  I nodded.

  What do you think about that? he asked.

  I don’t imagine Crane’s short of advice. He’ll make an informed decision.

  Forrester smiled at me.

  Something you learn pretty damn quick on the Hill, he explained, is that journalists don’t care a dime if you do or don’t answer their question. What they want is for you to kick the other side and, added Forrester, fixing my eye, they only come knocking on your door when they think you’ll deliver that. As a matter of fact, they want you to make it personal.