The Prisoner

by Omar Shahid Hamid

  Constantine took out the thin wad of bills from the brown envelope. “Sir, the beater has given you less than the fixed amount today. And sir, we only have one pickup today because the other two are in the workshop. If we send this one away on escort duty, the area will be empty.”

  Inspector Deedar’s frustration boiled over at Constantine’s response. “Look, dammit, I’ve had enough of you, you bloody Christian! Do you have any idea of the problems I have to face? I am in trouble with the ward boss because you let that old fool sit in front of you all day long! Why did you even listen to his complaint? You should have thrown him out of the station or, even better, arrested him! I had to pay the ward boss half of this month’s collection to get them to clear us! I have no desire to end my days arresting sheepfuckers on the edge of the desert or worse, being taken into a ward office and being tortured! Maybe you do. If so, you can call up the ward boss and inform him yourself that you find it inconvenient to send an escort for his family. I have tolerated you enough! You may be a good manager but if you don’t learn your place in this police station, you might as well just fuck off from here!”

  Constantine’s face reddened and his body tensed, as if to strike the SHO. But Ashraf, who was the duty constable alongside him, restrained him. Inspector Deedar turned around and walked towards his room. Constantine glared after him, as Ashraf whispered in his ear to calm him down. He needed to get out of there, so he stormed out of the station. He was still fuming when he got to the main gate and didn’t notice the man in the starched white shalwar-kameez who came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He was very fair, with a shock of brown hair and a bristling handlebar moustache that had been finely waxed.

  “Kya, Consendine. So much anger at me? Just because I still owe you a little money?”

  “Akbar!” For the first time that day, Constantine’s face lit up. “What are you doing here? And it isn’t a little amount you owe me, it’s quite a lot! But I am so happy to see you. I’m having a really bad day. The in-charge is probably going to have me booted out of here. Come, let’s get out of here and get something to eat.”

  Akbar grew concerned. He put his hand on Constantine’s shoulder as they walked out of the station gates towards a nearby roadside restaurant. “What’s wrong? What happened? Anything I can do to help?”

  “It’s nothing, yaar. Normal work phaddas—political interference, all that kind of stuff. You know how it is. Fact is, these past few days I just haven’t been myself. But tell me about yourself. Are you still holed up in that Special Investigation Cell of yours? Don’t you ever want to do a real job?”

  They had seated themselves in a booth of a restaurant across the street from the police station. The restaurant had an old, faded sign that proclaimed it as IRANI CAFÉ, with SPONSORED BY PEPSI hand-painted in small print below the name. Nobody knew why it was called Irani Café, as there was nothing remotely Iranian about it, from the food (which consisted mostly of variations of the same basic curry, with mutton, prawn, and chicken, and the Special, which was also the same curry with a hard-boiled egg thrown in for good measure) to the staff, whose hooked noses and fair skin earmarked them as men from the Swat Valley. Indeed, even the owner, a fat Punjabi who sat at the counter overseeing the various vats of curry bubble away, couldn’t have told you why the name was what it was, except to say that this had been the name when he had bought the joint from its previous owner thirty years ago.

  A raised hand from Constantine to the owner brought them instant service. After all, the owner was on excellent terms with all the police wallahs at the station. He allowed the constables to eat for free and gave a hefty discount to the officers. In return, no one ever bothered to ask him for extortion money and, in the evenings, his waiters could extend the restaurant’s seating area from the curbside, encroaching right onto half of the main road. Communicating with his staff only through very slight movements of his head, he ensured that four waiters, laden with several plates of curry representing more or less everything on the menu, soft drinks, and naan hot from the tandoor descended upon Constantine and Akbar even before they had settled down.

  Akbar tore off a piece of naan and dipped it into a plate of curry swimming in oil. “Arre, chutiya, this is your misconception. That is our real work. Catching criminals, not this clerical work and political ass-kissing that you do in Preedy. But I’m not in the Cell anymore.”

  “Have you gone back to a thana? Which one?”

  “Not exactly. I got suspended last week.”

  “What for?”

  “I got this complaint, that someone was kidnapping young boys from their neighborhood in New Karachi and demanding ransom from the parents. I haven’t worked in that area before, but my informer gave me a hint of who it was. Turned out it was a group of madarchod ward boys who were making some money for themselves on the side. The children they were abducting were barely four or five years old. I raided the apartment and recovered one of them. You know me, I became a meter. I took the madarchod ward boss and dragged him by his hair down to the street. The whole neighborhood saw it. He tried to threaten me, so I told him I’d fuck his mother in front of his eyes, and then I thrashed him in front of everyone. That shut him up for good. Heh. I took him back to the cell and locked him up. My own DSP shat a brick when he found out, but I told him: ‘Sahib, these haramkhors were abducting children. If I hadn’t caught them red-handed it would be a different thing, but now that I’ve got them, I’m not going to let them off. So I booked them.’” Akbar narrated all of this with his particular brand of nonchalance, stuffing his mouth with raw onion and radish from a plate of salad and downing almost an entire can of Pepsi, before belching in satisfaction.

  “You booked them, and the party allowed you to book their boys? Simple as that?”

  “Well, they told the DSP to suspend me. He was more than happy to do it because he didn’t want this film around his neck. But the fact is that once the case is registered, it’s a matter for the judge. Nothing they do to me is going to help them out in that respect.”

  “What will you do now? I’m sure they aren’t going to stop with just your suspension, and at this moment in time you’re not going to be able to find anyone to do sifarish for you.”

  “Arre, Consendine, I’m not going to beg them for a job. Besides, I’m glad to be rid of that DSP. Saala, his fatigues were never-ending. Do you know, before this incident happened, I was getting screwed with him because of my friendship with you.”

  “Who is your DSP?”

  “Maqsood Mahr.”

  “But I don’t even know him. Why would he screw you because of me?”

  “Heh. I know you don’t know him, but he knows you are Christian. Somehow he got it in his head that being a Christian, you’d have easy access to foreign booze because so many of the bootleggers in the city are Christian. So he started making demands on me. First it was a bottle of whisky every other day. Then it became a couple of bottles a day. Then a whole case of Black Label every week. A whole fucking case! Do you know how much that costs? Bhenchod, I nearly went broke! I started having nightmares about cases of Black Label. And every time I had to fulfil the fatigue, I would curse you. I wanted to tell him that my chutiya Christian friend wouldn’t know the difference between whisky and a bottle of piss. But kya karoon, that bastard Mahr just doesn’t take no for an answer. He’s so bloody greedy. No matter how much money he makes, his stomach asks for more. Never satisfied. Good riddance.”

  Constantine smiled. It was a typical Akbar Khan story. “But seriously, what are you going to do about the UF? You know they aren’t going to let you go like this.”

  “Look Consendine, I did what I had to do. Now they can do whatever the fuck they want. You can’t live your life always scared of the fact that someone is going to take a shit on you from above. These UF madarchods aren’t the final authority on life and death in this city. There are forces more powerful than them also.”

  “Look Akbar, this is hardly the time to st
art becoming religious. God isn’t going to come down and help you when a ward boss is holding a gun to your head.”

  “Arre, chutiya, I’m not talking about God. I’m talking about the Agencies. No one is more powerful than them in this country.” He lowered his tone and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “They called me, you know. The day after I booked the ward boss. Very nice fellow, a major called Tarkeen. I told him the whole story, and he told me not to worry. They are taking up my case. You see, both the Agencies—the Kaaley Gate wallahs and the Bleak House wallahs—are not very happy with the UF government. And you know what that means.”

  “What does that mean? Aren’t the Agencies part of the same government that the United Front heads? What can they possibly do?”

  “Arre, Consendine, are you actually that thick or is this an act that you’re putting on? Arre, baba, the Agencies are never under any party or government. They are above the government. They decide who gets to rule and who doesn’t. And if they’ve decided that they aren’t happy with the UF, then it means these ward thugs are on their way out. The Agencies have started their work. Major Tarkeen told me that they were taking notice of all these stories about the UF ward bosses and soon they were going to set up a special unit to deal with these bastards. They are going to put me in charge of the unit. It’s all top-secret right now.”

  Constantine heard himself respond to Akbar in a whisper. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. There are many people in the corridors of power who are sick of the UF’s gangsterism. Major sahib has told me that I can bring anyone I want with me into the unit. That’s why I came to see you—to ask if you want to be in this with me. Don’t worry about a thing. You don’t have to do anything right now. When the time is right, the Agencies will call for us and then we will be working solely for them. No bloody interference from anybody. And I’m telling you, the time isn’t far. I know you’ve been having a tough time over here. But this will be work that matters. We will have a mission, a purpose.”

  “But Akbar, all of this sounds too fantastic—special units, working without any interference. No one even dare raise their eyes to anything the UF does, leave alone taking them on. How will all these things come to pass? This major of yours has just fed you a tall tale.”

  “These are the Agencies, Consendine. Anything is possible for them. Besides, what is the alternative? Do you want to continue to work like you are right now? I overheard your argument with your SHO. Is this the kind of bullshit that you want to put up with? Is this the way you want to live? I don’t know about you, but I took up this job to be a police officer, not a bloody clerk. I came to you because I have always thought that you felt the same way. So come on, are you with me?”

  Constantine took a sharp intake of breath and stared at Akbar, who was holding out his hand across the small table. He looked around for an instant, to check if anyone had overheard them, and then gazed out from the window of the little restaurant onto the crush of traffic outside. All he could hear was the cacophony of bus horns, blown by drivers desperate to get home. He bit his lower lip, as if deliberating over a particularly difficult decision. But the truth was, his decision was never really that hard. He had reached the same conclusion and it was fate, or the Lord’s will, as his father would have put it, that Akbar had come to visit him this day. His face cracked into a smile, and he finally took Akbar’s hand in his.

  “Akbar Khan, you are my oldest friend in the force. I would follow you anywhere. Count me in.”

  Akbar’s eyes sparkled. “Heh. That’s more like it. Now I wish I had saved some of that Black Label.”

  4

  August 1998

  The stench was overpowering. Constantine could smell it over the carbon dioxide fumes of the rickshaw. What was worse, the monsoon rain had reduced the garbage into a kind of slushy mixture that flowed ankle-deep onto the road. The rain had been beating down hard for the past three hours. Constantine cursed as the rickshaw driver pulled up just short of the police station compound. It meant he would have to wade through the slush just to get to the gate of the station. But the driver had flatly refused to go right up to the gate, because he feared that he might be taken for a police sympathizer. Constantine shook his head in disgust. Orangi was a long way from the bright lights of Preedy.

  The sentry at the gate was a frightened rookie, barely out of his teens. He wore a uniform three sizes too large and viewed Constantine with great suspicion, unbelieving that a police officer would actually want to come to this place. Finally, having satisfied himself that Constantine was indeed a sub-inspector, he took him inside. On one side of the station wall, there was a gaping hole with blast marks on the edges. A pair of shirtless laborers continued to repair the wall despite the rain.

  The sentry took Constantine into a room which had a signboard outside proclaiming it to be the station in-charge’s office. To call it an office would be stretching imagination considerably, as it was little more than a shack walled with unplastered bricks. There were several buckets in the room to collect water from the innumerable leaks in the ceiling, and a dangerously exposed electric wire was connected to the solitary light bulb. At the desk sat Akbar Khan, looking out of place in this hovel with his smart new uniform and freshly waxed moustache.

  “Well, you took your bloody time getting here, didn’t you?” The young sentry was surprised that it was the new sub-inspector who mouthed those words, rather than in-charge sahib.

  “Consendine! Thank God you’re here. It’s so good to see you! Come, sit. Bachay, go tell the munshi to send some tea. And some samosas, if you get any in this godforsaken locality. So Consendine, remember what I told you last time we met? These UF bastards were on their way out. I told you the Agencies would come through.”

  “Yeah, you told me that over a year ago. When we last spoke, I thought it was going to happen in a matter of days. I picked a fight with my SHO and, as a result, got posted to Orangi Extension, the worst thana in the city. I have been stuck in that shithole for the past year and a half, hoping for deliverance from your Agencies.”

  “Arre, baba, they don’t work on exact schedules. Sometimes events come in the way of their planning. When I spoke to you that day in Preedy, they had already begun working on getting rid of the UF. But then these things can take time, yaar. The Agencies have to also look at the big picture in the country.”

  “You and your damn Agencies, Akbar. They are also badshah log. First they created this monster of a party, and then when that party started getting too big for its boots, they tired of it and decided that it was being run by a bunch of anti-state criminals. They should never have given these UF bastards so much leeway. Now it’s impossible to control them. No one is willing to move against the ward bosses. So what have they sent you here for, after so long? This operation has been on for the past three months, but no sign of you.”

  “They got my suspension reversed as soon as the UF left the coalition, but they had me posted to the interior, because there was still a possibility of the government cutting a deal with the UF. I told Major Tarkeen that it was foolish to think the party would change its ways, but there were those in the government who still wanted the United Front’s political support at any price.”

  “Well, it’s a price we’ve been paying in blood here in the streets.”

  “I had heard it had gotten worse, but I didn’t realize how bad. When I came to take charge yesterday, no one was wearing uniform in this station. Then last night, they fired a rocket at the station wall.”

  “The rocket is the local ward’s way of greeting the new SHO. They did the same thing to the fellow you replaced. He didn’t step out of this compound after that for three months. No one wears a uniform because no one wants to be identified as a police officer outside. The rickshaw driver who dropped me here wasn’t willing to pull up in front of the station gates. In some cases some officers still go out in the area, like my SHO, for instance. But that’s because he has an understanding with the ward
boss. It’s the same all over. Either our people have been frightened off, or they’ve become collaborators. If I were you, I’d be very careful about my own staff. Half of them are linked to the party.”

  “Yes, I got that impression from their reluctance to disclose any information on the whereabouts of the local ward office. They’re more scared of those bhenchods than they are of me. Heh. But that will soon change.”

  “You can’t blame them, Akbar. The few who did try and conduct some raids were killed the next day by UF death squads. Everyone else chickened out after that. Myself included.”

  Akbar stared out of the tiny slit between concrete blocks that served as a window. “You see those laborers working in the rain? Last night they weren’t willing to come and fix the wall. I even offered to double their wages. They still said no. Like your rickshaw driver, they were wary of being identified with the police. Then I held a pistol to the foreman’s head and told him to get to work, so now you see they are still working despite the downpour. You have to show everybody that you are the bigger badmash.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “You are going to be my eyes and ears. You are the only one I can trust here. That’s why I arranged your posting here as my No. 2. You are going to run things on my behalf over here. Whatever you say goes. If there’s anyone else you want to bring with you from Orangi Extension, tell me and I’ll get their orders done. Anyone whom you feel is mixed up with the wardias, we’ll have them transferred out. By the way, who’s the SP?”

  “You mean you haven’t met Hanuman yet?”

  “No. Our orders came straight from corps headquarters. They didn’t want the information to leak out before we had taken charge, so Major Tarkeen ordered me to go straight to the police station. I haven’t been to the SP office yet. Hanuman. Is he a Hindu?”

  Constantine chuckled. “No, that’s his nickname. You know the story about the Hindu God Hanuman having two faces? That’s our SP sahib. One minute he says one thing, the next minute he will do the exact opposite. Somehow he manages to get along with whoever is in power. Before the operation started, everyone used to say he was the khas-o-khas of the UF. Now the new government has come in, and he is the only SP in Karachi who hasn’t been replaced. Competent fellow, though. Knows every nook and cranny of the area, knows exactly what’s going on where. Always keeps us on our toes. And he’s not averse to calling up the thana in the middle of the night and speaking to the duty sentry, to find out what’s going on.”