"We are alive," says Obaid. I turn round and look at his head covered in yellow paste. He is not in a state where I would want to start a discussion about what it means to be alive.
"So is General Zia," I say.
But Secretary General is dead.
"That man who asked about your father, who was he? Did you know him?" Obaid's curiosity is casual. He's asking me if I had an OK time in the jail, if the food was decent, if I had interesting people to talk to.
"Have you heard of the All Pakistan Sweepers Union?"
Obaid stares at me as if I have learned to speak Greek during my short time in the prison. "He was the Secretary General. We were neighbours. And he probably died thinking I killed him. He probably died thinking I was a bloody spy put in the dungeon by the army."
"Why didn't he recognise you then? If you were his neighbour, I mean."
"It's a long story. It doesn't matter now." I reach across the seat and take his hand in mine.
"Good," says Obaid, his lips giving the first hint of a smile. "Don't go all sensitive on me. That's not the Shigri I know. Or did they manage to change you in a few days?"
I don't want to narrate my life-changing experience when I still don't know how and why has he come back from the dead.
"How far did you get?"
"Never took off."
"Bastards," I say.
"They were there. Before I could even get onto the runway."
"Major Kiyani?" I ask and immediately feel stupid. "Has to be him. How do you think he found out?"
"I thought about it. I knew you would think it was Bannon who told them, but why would he? He was the one who gave me the idea. And he is only a drill instructor."
"He is quite an ideas man, isn't he? Specially for a drill instructor."
Baby O believes life is a series of sweet coincidences. Like the poetry he reads, where random sentiments and metaphors walk hand in hand into the sunset while cause and consequence die a slow death on the pavement, like newborn bastard twins. I wish I could show him the world with Colonel Shigri's dead bulging eyes.
"Look, Ali." When Obaid uses my first name, he is usually about to give me a lecture on the meaning of life, but there is none of the intensity that used to make his lectures such a joy to ignore. His voice comes out of an empty shell. "I tried to do it because I didn't want to see you sticking your sword into him and then getting gunned down by his bodyguards in front of my eyes. I was scared. I wanted to do something."
"You did it to save my ass? You just thought you would take off in a stolen plane, head for the Army House and they would all simply sit and monitor your progress? Do you even have any idea how many ack-ack guns there are around that bloody place? They probably shoot down stray crows over there." I squeeze his hand to emphasise my point.
Obaid shudders. A whimper escapes his lips and I realise he is in pain. The buggers obviously didn't keep him in a VIP cell.
"You are still not listening to me, Shigri. I am not a kamikaze. You have all these expectations of your friends. You think I was going to do it for you? Sorry, I was just providing a diversion. I used your call sign, so that you couldn't carry out your silly plan. A sword, for God's sake. A sword?"
I squeeze his hand again. He whimpers loudly. The bandage slips. His thumb is covered in dried blood and the nail is gone.
Obaid wants to continue his explanation even though I have lost all my appetite for facts.
"I wasn't going anywhere. I was only interested in saving your life and so was Bannon."
"I should have warned you about that double-dealing Yankee. I can't believe you trusted that dopehead instead of me."
"It was a decent enough plan. Take off in an unauthorised plane, cause a security alert and the President's inspection is called off. And then at least I could talk to you. I would at least have the time to drill sense into your head."
Thanks a bloody lot. Somebody's simple plan ruins your life's work and you are supposed to show gratitude.
"There is another way of looking at it, Baby O. You snitched on a friend, you almost got killed and you did it all to save General Zia's life."
"No. Yours." He closes his eyes. I think of telling him about Uncle Starchy's nectar, about the poetic patterns in my plan; maybe I should spell out the meaning of sentiment du fer sentiment du fer for him, but one look at him and I know I shouldn't. for him, but one look at him and I know I shouldn't.
I take out the envelope that the blind woman gave me and start fanning his head. I don't know how it feels but if your skin has been burnt off with a Philips iron, it must hurt.
"Thank you for saving my life."
"Do you think my hair will grow back?" asks Obaid.
The other fat Indian sister starts singing a new song. Something about a conversation going on for so long rhat it has become a rumour in the night. The envelope is addressed to the All Pakistan Mango Farmers Cooperative. Probably Secretary General's last sermon to his lapsed fellow travellers.
"So what did you write in your state...?" We both blurt out the same question at the same time, in the same words. Our questions collide in mid-air and the answer lies wriggling on the jeep floor like an insect trying to take off after breaking a wing.
What do you do when your only mission in life has failed?
You go back to where it all began.
"Have you ever been to Shigri Hill?" I tap the driver's shoulder. "No? Take the next exit. I'll give you the directions. Stop if you see a post office. I need to mail a letter." I turn towards Obaid. "Asha or Lata?"
"Lata," he says. "The older one, the sad one."
Let's take you home, Baby O.
TWENTY-EIGHT.
Shigri Hill is cloaked in mist. We shiver as the jeep deposits us at the beginning of the narrow pathway that leads up to the house. It's July and the plains have turned into God's frying pan but the air on the hill is thin and chilly. As Colonel Shigri used to say, it still carries an occasional message from Siberia. Shigri Hill might be a part of Pakistan but its climate has always been renegade; it's never shared the meteorological destiny of the plains. The Himalyan peaks surrounding the hill are covered in snow. Kz lords it over the mountains like a sullen white-haired matriarch. Grey transparent clouds float below in the valley. Overgrown almond trees rub shoulders with us as we make our way up to the house. Obaid is huffing with the effort of walking the steep climb to the house. "Why didn't you people build a road here?" he asks, leaning against the slender trunk of an almond tree to catch his breath. "Never had the time," I say, holding his hand and moving on.
We take a sharp turn out of the almond tree grove and there it is, a wooden cottage with the pretensions of a summer palace, a house that nobody lives in. Sloping roofs perched on wooden arches, a long wooden balcony running along the side facing the valley. The lime-green paint has peeled itself over again and again during decades of neglect and now has settled into ghostly patches of turquoise. The house sits on the top of the mountain and from a distance it looks as if somebody stuck a doll's house on a ridge and forgot to play with it. Look at it up close and it seems sad and majestic at the same time, poised there in seclusion as if looking down on the world with contempt.
Obaid, who has never been to a hill station in his life, punches a passing cloud and breaks into a grin when his hand turns slightly moist.
The Burnol on his head has dried up and the burnt side of his scalp appears cobalt blue through the cracks. I wonder if it's the healing process or the beginning of an infection. Inside, the house is a glorious mess as if kids have had a non-stop party. Carpets are rolled up and thrown about, floorboards have been lifted and put back clumsily. We walk through heaps of clothes pulled out of cupboards and dumped in the corridors.
Those buggers didn't leave this place alone even after its occupants did. The only thing I am sure about is that they didn't find what they were looking for.
The main living room has a wall-to-wall glass window covered in drapes. I open the curtains and I can feel Obaid catching his breath at what he sees beyond the glass. The window opens on the ridge and the mountain falls away steeply. We are standing on the edge of the deep bowl of a lush green valley through which runs a silver snake of a river.
"Who built this place?"
"I don't know, my grandfather's father perhaps. It has always been here."
"It's a shame that you're not interested in your family history," says Obaid, then probably remembers my family history and doesn't wait for an answer. "It's out of this world." He stands with his nose to the glass.
We sit in front of the fireplace and look at the stars outside the windows. They hang low and burn bright. The mountains sleep like giants who have lost their way.
"The night is different here," says Obaid.
"I know. It's very quiet. No traffic."
"No. It arrives suddenly. Then it travels at a slow pace. It's like a boat that moves across the valley. Listen, you can hear it move, you can hear it row. The gentle splash of water..."
"That's the river below in the valley. It doesn't sleep at night. But I am sleepy," I say.
The day arrives like somebody giving you a friendly thump on the shoulder. The sun is a mirror playing hide-and-seek with the snow-covered peaks; one moment a silver disc ablaze in its own white fire, the next moment veiled in a dark wisp of cloud. Obaid stands in front of the window, contemplating a cloud that is gently nudging at the glass. "Can I let it in? Can I?" Obaid asks me as if borrowing my favourite toy.
"Go ahead."
He struggles with the window latches. By the time he slides the door open the cloud has dissolved into a puff, leaving behind a fine mist.
"What should we cook today?" Obaid shouts from the kitchen. It wouldn't have occurred to me but Obaid had bought a month's worth of groceries on our way here.
Colonel Shigri stays out of my dreams. Obaid doesn't ask me about his last night in the house. He doesn't ask me where and how I found him. I think he knows.
The study is unlocked but I stay away from it. Obaid wants to see the pictures. They are all there on the wall, all mixed up, out of order, as if Colonel Shigri's career progressed at random: General Akhtar and Colonel Shigri surrounded by Afghan mujahideen commanders with shawls and rocket launchers draped around their shoulders; Colonel Shigri with his bearded ISI officers in civvies holding the bits from the wreckage of a Soviet helicopter like trophies; Colonel Shigri with Bill Casey's arm around his shoulder, looking over the Khyber Pass. Then the earlier pictures: his fellow officers are thin, moustaches clipped, medals scarce and not a beard in sight.
"A comrade in uniform is potentially the deadweight that you'll have to carry one day." Colonel Shigri had sipped slowly at his whisky, twelve hours before he was found hanging from the ceiling fan. He had returned from another of his duty trips with a coffin-sized Samsonite and was teaching me Pakistan's military history through its falling fitness standards. "You owe it to your fellow soldiers to stay fit, to keep your weight down because one day you'll take a hit in battle and somebody will have to carry you on his back. That's what one soldier owes to another; the dignity of being carried back to one's own bunker even if near-dead. Hell, even if dead." His voice rose and then he went quiet for a moment. "But look at them now, look at their bloated bodies. Do you know why they let themselves go?"
I stared at him. I stared at the suitcase and wondered what he had brought home this time.
"Because they know they are not going to be fighting battles any more. No, sir, they are drawing-room soldiers, sitting on their comfy sofas and getting fat. That is the first thing they think of-that they will never have to be in a battle again. But they also know in their heart of hearts that even if they were to end up in a battle, even if they got hit, nobody is going to carry them back to their bunkers. Do you understand?"
I didn't. "Why wouldn't anyone carry them back?"
"Because they are too goddam fat to carry."
I had carried Obaid on my back during our jungle survival course after a mock ambush. He dug his heels into my thighs, his arms around my neck kept getting tighter. I flung him down to the ground when he nibbled at my earlobe.
"Cadet Obaid. The first rule of survival is that you shall not screw your saviour."
"Not even if it feels so good?" he had asked with his eyes half closed.
On our last night in the house Obaid discovers a half-empty bottle of Black Label in the kitchen. I stare at him. I don't tell him that I found the bottle in his study the morning the Colonel was found hanging from the ceiling fan.
We drink it with large quantities of water. "It's very bitter," says Obaid, pulling a face. "Can I put some sugar in it?"
"That would be disgusting."
He takes a sip, makes a face as if somebody has punched him in the stomach.
He likes it after the second glass. "It doesn't taste that bad, actually," he says. "It's like drinking liquid fire."
One more drink and there are tears in his eyes and truth on his drunk lips.
"I gave them your name. I told them about you. I told them you were practising with the sword."
I take his hand into my hands. "I would have done the same thing."
I don't tell him that I did did do the same thing. do the same thing.
"Why did they let you go then?" he mumbles.
"The same reason they let you go."
Stars start to go out one by one as if God has decided to close His parlour for the night.
"They were never interested in what we were going to do and why. They just wanted our names on their files," says Obaid, insightful like only a first-time drunk can be. "We were General Akhtar's suspects, General Beg will find his own."
"What if they actually liked my plan?" I say, draining the last dregs from the bottle. "What if they just wanted to see if I could carry it out?"
"Are you saying that the people who are supposed to protect him are trying to kill him? Are they setting free people like us? Are you drunk? The army itself?"
"Who else can do it, Baby O? Do you think these bloody civilians can do it?"
Colonel Shigri had kept talking even after his sixth drink. I had tried to interrupt him in the middle of a long story about his latest trip behind the enemy lines in Afghanistan. He had asked me to start a fire in the living room but seemed to have forgotten about it. "We don't have any ice."
"Water would do," he said and continued. "There are people out there fighting the fight and there are people sitting here in Islamabad counting their money. People in uniform." He paused for a moment and, through his bloodshot and blurry eyes, tried to focus on my face.
"You must think I am drunk."
I looked at the glass in his hand and moved my head in a halfhearted denial. How do you talk to someone who has only known you through your public-school report cards and suddenly wants to tell you their life story over a bottle of whisky?
He tried to hold my gaze, but his eyes were already drooping with the burden of honesty.
For the first and the last time in his life he talked to me about his day job.
"I had gone to pick up one of my officers, who'd lost a leg planting anti-personnel mines. Then I get this message that I should forget the officer and bring this thing back. This thing." He pointed to the suitcase as if he had been ordered to carry a dead pig. "Blast your way back, they told me."
I think he noticed some interest in my eyes.
"I didn't kill anyone." He looked at me and then laughed a slurred laugh. "I mean this time. You know it's my job," he shrugged. "The thing about these Afghans is that they are not in it for the killing. They fight but they want to make sure that they are alive after the fighting is over. They are not in the business of killing. They are in the business of fighting. Americans are in it for winning. And us?"
He realised that he was going off on a tangent and mumbled something under his breath which sounded like 'pimps and prostitutes'.
"How is the fire, young man?" He was suddenly practical. Drunk practical. As if I had taken him for a drunkard and was trying to fool him.
"Let's go then, young man. Let's do our duty."