I imagine a two-seater aeroplane going down on all its three axes and the hot white glare of the bulb begins to fade away.
He read poetry. He sang songs about dying but he never actually talked about dying. Not to me. Not in any suicidal way.
EIGHT.
The large reception room in the Army House was reserved for receiving visiting foreign dignitaries from the USA and Saudi Arabia, the VVIPs. After winning his air dash from Saudi Arabia to Islamabad, Prince Naif was seated on a velvet sofa, smoking Marlboro Reds and boasting about the sound barrier that his F16 broke on his way to dinner. "Our brother Bill is probably still flying over the Arabian Sea." Laughing, the Prince raised both arms and mimed the flight of a tired bird.
"Allah's glory," said General Zia. "It's all His blessing. I went on a ride in one of ours and my old bones were aching for days. You, by the grace of Allah, are still a young man."
General Zia kept looking out of the corner of his eyes at Dr Sarwari, who had accompanied Prince Naif at his request but seemed to have been forgotten in Prince Naif's victory celebrations. General Zia wanted to have a word with the royal doctor about his condition.
General Zia's condition, although he himself preferred to call it an itsy-bitsy itch, had been messing up his prayer routine. He had always been very proud of the fact that he was the kind of Muslim who could do his ablutions for his morning prayers and say his late-night prayers with the same ablutions. All the things that break an ablution had been eliminated from his daily routine; garlic, lentils, women who didn't cover their heads properly. But since he had confined himself to the Army House this itch had started.
He had called his staff surgeon first, had told him about the tiny drops of blood he had found on the seat of his pants, but couldn't bring himself to talk about the itch.
"Do you get burning, itching in your rectal passage?" the staff surgeon had asked.
"No," he had said abruptly.
"Sir, internal bleeding can be dangerous but yours seems like a case of worms, tapeworms. If you let me know when you can come to the Combined Military Hospital I'll arrange for a full check-up."
General Zia had mumbled something about Code Red and dismissed the doctor. Although the staff surgeon was security cleared Zia didn't want him to go around sending his tests to other labs or even consulting his doctor colleagues. His own daughter had just graduated from a medical school but he could hardly talk to her about something like this.
Then Prince Naif called and General Zia remembered that Prince Naif always travelled with his personal physician, the only person in his entourage who wore suits and carried a black leather bag, and the only one who stayed silent, neither cracked a joke nor laughed at the Prince's non-stop comedy act.
"I don't share my doctor with anyone," Prince Naif said in mock seriousness when General Zia finally asked his permission to have a private consultation with his physician. "He has seen more of me than any of my wives. But anything for you, my brother, anything. Even my secret weapon." He gestured towards the doctor, who sat pretending they were talking about someone else.
"It's just a private little matter. I don't want my military doctor going around discussing my private things. You know our Pakistani people, they love to gossip."
"He takes care of all my private things," Prince Naif chuckled. "And he never talks to anyone." Then he turned towards the doctor and said, "Take care of my brother's private things as if they were my own private things." He rolled with laughter. General Zia forced a smile, got up and moved towards his office. The doctor didn't join in the joke and followed him sullenly.
After spending eight years looking after Prince Naif's libido nothing about these rulers surprised Dr Sarwari. They all spent too much time and energy keeping their cocks in shape. If they channelled some of this zeal towards their day jobs, the world would be a much better place, Dr Sarwari had thought in moments of despair. He had ordered the livers of so many houbara bustards to make aphrodisiacs for the Prince, he had rubbed so many ointments made from the Bengal tiger's testicles on the Prince's member that he himself had lost all appetite for sex. Even his colleagues in the Saudi medical establishment knew his status as the full-time caretaker of the royal member. After all, the Prince had his own heart specialist, skin specialist and even a plastic surgeon on the royal payroll. But what was dearest to the Prince's heart was his sexual health and Dr Sarwari was the chosen man for the job. The Royal Dick Doctor, they called him behind his back.
With this job description Dr Sarwari could not be faulted when he shut the door to General Zia's private office and asked: "You wanna a bigger or you wanna a longer?"
General Zia, who had never heard the doctor speak, was baffled both by his mixture of Arabic and American accents and his strange question. He ignored his hand gestures.
Dr Sarwari was pleasantly surprised when General Zia explained his problem. He smiled for the first time.
General Zia was ready when the doctor suggested an on-the-spot probe. He had thought about it so much that he automatically turned his back to the doctor, unfastened his belt and slipped his trousers down. He could feel movement behind him, then a rubber-gloved hand on his buttocks.
"Birather, bend please." General Zia still couldn't get over the man's American accent. He had always heard him speak Arabic with the Prince. He put his elbows on the table. "More," the doctor ordered. He put his right cheek on the table and tried to think of something to distract himself.
His head was between two flags. Pakistan's national flag, green and white with a thin right-facing crescent, on one side and on the other side, the flag of the Pakistan Army. He had almost made up his mind to reverse the crescent on the national flag after an Islamic scholar pointed out that it was a descending moon and not an ascending one, but then his advisers reminded him that the flag had been around for forty years and since nobody actually had any problem with the direction of the crescent, it was better to leave the flag alone.
He was relieved to feel that the doctor's probing finger was lubricated.
He looked at the army flag. Underneath the crossed swords was the famous slogan that the Founder of the Nation had given this country as its birthday present and motto: "Faith. Unity. Discipline." Suddenly, the slogan seemed not only banal and meaningless to him but too secular, non-committal, almost heretical. Faith? Which faith? Unity? Discipline? Do soldiers need that slogan? Aren't they supposed to be united and disciplined by the very nature of their calling? He felt the doctor's breath on his arse. The rubbered finger was replaced by a cold metallic tube which didn't hurt but caused some discomfort.
It also dawned on him that when the Founder came up with this slogan, he had civilians in mind, not the armed forces. This slogan, he told himself, had to go. His mind raced, searching for words that would reflect the true nature of his soldiers' mission. Allah had to be there. Jihad, very important. He knew it would please his friend Bill Casey. He couldn't decide on a third word but he knew it would come.
The doctor patted his buttock and said: "You can get up please." The General pulled up his underwear before turning round, making sure that the doctor didn't get a glimpse of his front. He still remembered his first question.
The doctor was grinning. "You eat a sugaa?" The General shook his head in confusion.
"Yes. Yes. I have a sweet tooth."
"Birather, that's why you so sweet." The doctor patted his cheek with his gloved hand and General Zia blushed at the thought of where that hand had just been.
"You've worms, sir." The doctor opened the palm of his left hand and showed him some tiny dead worms.
"Why does it itch so much, then?"
The doctor's grin broadened. "They like prisoners. They worms. They eat sugaa, they get energy, they wanna out. They wanna find escape. The itch is like..." He tried to think of an expression, then made a shovelling movement with his hands. "The itch is worms tunnelling. Making tunnels."
General Zia nodded his head slowly. This was the second time in three days that he had been warned about tunnels. Here he was, worried about being trapped in a whale, while the enemy was eating away at his innards. A blasphemous thought occurred to him; what if there was an army of little Jonahs trapped in his stomach praying to get out?
"I'll cut down on sugar."
"No cuttin sugaa." The doctor took out bottle of Canderel. "Sugaa finish. OK? No sugaa. Take this."
The doctor shut his bag and General Zia held his face in both hands and kissed him on both his cheeks in the customary Arab fashion.
Then he realised his pants were still around his ankles.
Later over dinner, savouring the bitterness of bitter gourd, Bill Casey spoke like a ghost with the enlightenment of hindsight. "Brother Zia." He dabbed the corner of his mouth with his napkin to wipe off the drool. "You think your folks are tryin' to kill ya? You should see those vultures at Capitol Hill. They have already killed me."
NINE.
The first light of the day catches me dozing on my feet, my back against the wall, my toes clenched in my boots, my sweat-soaked khaki shirt open to my navel. The light is a long thin shaft coming through the tiny gap where the metal door is clamped against the bathroom wall. The shaft of light illuminates the ancient dust particles of the Lahore Fort prison; it highlights the bathroom wall in front of me, revealing bits of graffiti, something for me to do besides fantasising about impossible escape plans. When my car journey with Major Kiyani ended in the Fort, I expected a prison cell worthy of a trainee officer and an expert team of interrogators. What I got is this shithole and my own company.
The stench has invaded my pores and become a part of me. I am light-headed from lack of sleep, my lips are parched and my feet are swollen after standing all night. Walking half the night-three steps in one direction, two in the other-has obviously not given me the exercise I need. I think about taking off my boots. I bend down to do so, see the yellow muck on the floor closely and give up on the idea. I stretch my arms and concentrate on the reading material instead.
The scribbling on the walls is in three languages and the writers have used a variety of materials. I can read two of the languages, the third I have to guess. I can make out the etchings done with nails. The dried rust is probably blood, and I don't want to think what else they might have used.
There are hammers and sickles and date trees and fifteen varieties of breasts. Someone, who seems to have managed to bring in a ballpoint pen, has drawn a driveway, lined on both sides with apple trees, leading to a little house. My predecessors in this place had a lot to say, both personal and political.
I was lashed one hundred times and I liked it.
Pray for an easy end.
Asia is red with the blood of martyrs.
Asia is green and may Allah keep it this way.
Roses are red. Violets are blue. This country is khaki.
Screw the First Lady, not this nation.
Scream on the first lash. And don't faint because when they start again they will count from one.
Dear son, I did it for your future.
Major Kiyani is my bitch.
Lenin lives.
I love Nadia.
Lenin was a faggot.
A Persian couplet I can only vaguely decipher: the lover, long tresses, snakes the lover, long tresses, snakes. I think I get the picture.
I think about contributing my own two bits. Something like..."On a very hot evening Under Officer Shigri had a flash of brilliance..."
Not enough space on the wall.
The silent drill conspiracy that Major Kiyani is trying to unearth was a fucked-up idea, which, like most fucked-up ideas, was conceived at the end of a very hot day in the Academy. We were taking potshots at a Bruce Lee poster in Bannon's room after a busy day on the parade square. All the heat that our bodies had accumulated during the drill rehearsal suddenly started to seep out, the starch of our uniforms stuck to our bodies like rough glue, sweat ran like lizards crawling over our flesh, our feet had suffocated and died in their shiny leather coffins. Bannon's room, with its overefficient, noisy air conditioner, was the obvious hideout. Bannon had designed his room like a bunker; there was no bed, just a king-sized mattress on the ground, covered by a camouflaged canopy he had improvised with four bamboo sticks. On the floor, a little fat Buddha sat on a copy of Stars and Stripes Stars and Stripes. The Buddha had a secret chamber in his stomach where Bannon kept his supply of hashish. His uniforms hung neatly in the door-less cupboard. The only liberties he had taken with his designer bunker were the air conditioner and a life-size poster from Game of Death Game of Death, which covered the entire inside of the door. The poster was a shot from the climax of the film, after the last surviving villain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, had managed to get his paw on Bruce Lee's right ribcage, leaving four neat, parallel scratches. Bruce Lee's hands, in classic defensive posture, were spotlessly clean; his mouth was yet to bleed.
The official reason for our regular visit to Bannon's room was that we were working out the details of our silent drill display for the President's inspection. We needed to review the squad's progress, plot every single manoeuvre and work on our inner cadence.
But we really ended up there every day after the parade because Obaid loved to put his cheeks against the air conditioner's vent and I wanted to play with Bannon's Gung Ho Fairburn Sykes knife and listen to his stories of Operation Bloody Rice in Vietnam. He had done two tours of duty, and if he was in the right mood he could transport us to his night patrols and make us feel the movement of every single leaf on the Bloody Rice trail. He embellished his stories with a generous smattering of Cha obo, Chao ong, Chao co Cha obo, Chao ong, Chao co, probably the only Vietnamese words he knew. He called his slippers his Ho Chi Minhs. Obaid had his doubts.
"What was a drill instructor doing hunting down commies in a war?"
"Why don't you ask him?" I would say, and then go on to show off my own knowledge of the subject, culled from two classes on the history of the Vietnam War. "It was war, Baby O, the biggest that America fought. Everyone had to fight. Even the US Army priests and barbers were at the front."
But today Bannon was in one of his dark, knife-throwing moods. It was difficult to get a word out of him if it wasn't about the pedigree of his Gung Ho. We lay under the camouflaged canopy. An unlit joint dangled from Bannon's mouth as he held his Gung Ho from its tip and contemplated its path towards Bruce Lee.
"Give me a target," he said to no one in particular.
"Third rib from the top," Obaid said without moving his cheek from the air conditioner's vents. Bannon held the handle of the knife to his lips for a moment. Then his wrist flicked, the knife circled in the air and ended up between Bruce Lee's third and fourth rib. "Damn. The air conditioning," he said. "Gung Ho works best outdoors." He suggested switching the air conditioning off and having another go. But Obaid wouldn't have any of that. Obaid went for Bruce Lee's right nipple and drew a blank, hitting the blue space above his right shoulder.
I removed the knife from the poster and walked backwards, keeping my eyes locked on Bruce Lee's right eye, my assigned target. When you do short-range targets it's usually your own eye that fails you, not the way you handle your weapon. The target has to exist in the cross hairs of your eyeballs. If the target doesn't live in your eye, you can keep your hands as steady as you want and you can hold your breath till you turn blue but there is no guarantee that you'll get the target. As the knife left my fingertips, I shut my eyes and only opened them when I heard Bannon going, "Oh man, oh man." I got up from the mattress, walked to the poster, removed the knife from the iris of Bruce Lee's right eye and threw it over my shoulder towards Bannon. I didn't have to look back to find out that he had caught it. Obaid shouted: "Don't be a bloody show-off, Ali. It's only a circus trick."
Bannon put the knife back in its leather sheath and lit his joint. "In Danang we captured this gook who had killed nine of my men with a knife. The man was a fucking monkey. He hid in the trees; for all I know he swung from tree to tree like a fucking Chinky Tarzan. Nobody ever saw him. He got 'em all in the same fashion, during the patrol. Our guys would be out there with their M16 targeted at the bush, ready for an ambush, they would hear a branch move, they would look up and then swishhhh." Bannon jabbed two fingers at his Adam's apple. A red rope was tightening in his eyes, his speech was slightly slurred. The air conditioner was refusing to exhale the thick hashish smoke in the room.
"I had some landmines planted around our bunker and put up a sign: "Ho Chi Minh sucks running dogs." To lure the enemy, you know; we did that all the time. But this gook never showed up."
The joint was dead. Bannon lit it again and tried to remember where he was.
"So the point is, when we finally caught him, my boys wanted to make hamburger meat out of him. But I said we had to interrogate him, go by the book. It turned out he was a circus guy. You believe that? He'd travelled up to Taiwan throwing his daggers around his mama-pyjama girl. And then his eighty-year-old dad was killed working in his paddy field, just shot down in one of these raids. So this guy gave up his big-titty woman and circus tent. He didn't join the Viet Cong, which he would have been justified in doing. He just took to the jungles with his circus dagger." He took a deep puff and exhaled a spiral. "So there, Baby O, that's the point of my sorry-ass tale. You can throw a knife in a circus and you can have your big-titty women and you are a fucking freak show. You can have the same knife, polish it up with a bit of purpose and you are a man. A real man, not a fucking air-con soldier like you."
I extended my hand towards Bannon. He mimed a question with his joint. "Are you sure?"
I was very sure. Obaid looked at me with panicked eyes. Bannon handed me the joint and I took a proper puff and held it in my lungs till my eyes watered. It was between exhaling that sweet, acrid smoke and throwing up half an hour later that I got the fucked-up idea that landed me in this shithole.
TEN.
As he went through the newspapers the morning after broadcasting his special address to the nation, General Zia found himself cheering up. He spread the newspapers on the dining table one by one, till the gleaming mahogany surface was covered with his pictures and his words. He put his red pencil aside, savoured his tea and gave an approving nod to the duty waiter in the corner. The thing General Zia liked about his Information Minister was that although he was a devious bastard with a fake MBA who had made a lot of money ordering useless books that never arrived at the military libraries, he knew how to handle these newspaper editors. General Zia had tried to cultivate these editors himself and found out that they were the kind of intellectuals who prayed with him devoutly then rushed off to get drunk in the hotel rooms that his government provided them, with the booze that the Information Minister bought them. And the following morning their editorials were messy transcriptions of what General Zia had told them between their prayers and the boozing sessions.
This morning, however, was different. The nation's press had finally shown some spark. The editors had used their imagination while reporting his speech. Every newspaper had it as the banner headline. The message had gone out loud and clear. "The Battle for Our Ideological Frontiers has begun." He was particularly pleased with the three-picture strip idea that the Pakistan Times Pakistan Times had come up with to illustrate the main points from the extempore part of his speech. had come up with to illustrate the main points from the extempore part of his speech. First of all I am a Muslim First of all I am a Muslim was the caption under a picture of him draped in a white cotton sheet with his head reclining on the black marbled wall of Khana Kaaba in Mecca. was the caption under a picture of him draped in a white cotton sheet with his head reclining on the black marbled wall of Khana Kaaba in Mecca. Then I am a soldier of Islam Then I am a soldier of Islam appeared under his official portrait, in which he was wearing his four-star General's uniform. appeared under his official portrait, in which he was wearing his four-star General's uniform. And then, as an elected head of the Muslim state, I am a servant of my people And then, as an elected head of the Muslim state, I am a servant of my people was the caption for the third picture, which showed him in his presidential dress, looking dignified in a black sherwani and his reading glasses, not imposing but authoritative, not a military ruler but a president. was the caption for the third picture, which showed him in his presidential dress, looking dignified in a black sherwani and his reading glasses, not imposing but authoritative, not a military ruler but a president.
Heads of state, especially the heads of state of developing countries, seldom get the time to sit back and admire their own achievements. This was one of those rare moments when General Zia could recline in his chair with the newspaper in his lap, order another cup of tea and let the collective goodwill of his one hundred and thirty million subjects engulf his body and mind. With his red pencil he jotted a note in the margin of the paper to tell the Information Minister to nominate the editor of the Pakistan Times Pakistan Times for a national literary award. He'd also tell the Information Minister that if you speak from your heart people for a national literary award. He'd also tell the Information Minister that if you speak from your heart people do do listen. He decided that from now on all his speeches would include a section starting with: " listen. He decided that from now on all his speeches would include a section starting with: "My dear countrymen, now I want to say to you something from my heart." He imagined himself at public rallies flinging his written speech away, into the crowd, the papers flying above the heads of his audience. "My fellow countrymen, I don't want to read from a written script, I am not a puppet who would parrot page after page of words written by some Western-educated bureaucrat. I speak from my heart..." He brought his fist down on the dining table with such force that the teacup rattled, the Pakistan Times Pakistan Times slipped off his lap and the red pencil rolled off the table. The duty waiter standing in the corner tensed up at first, then, noticing the ecstatic smile on the General's face, relaxed and decided not to pick up the paper and pencil from the floor. slipped off his lap and the red pencil rolled off the table. The duty waiter standing in the corner tensed up at first, then, noticing the ecstatic smile on the General's face, relaxed and decided not to pick up the paper and pencil from the floor.
On any other day, General Zia would have read the editorials, looked for negative comments, scanned the adverts for female models not properly covered, but he was so content over the coverage of his speech, his heart was so full of tenderness for the newspapers and journalists, that he didn't see the back page of the Pakistan Times Pakistan Times. He missed the picture which showed him in full military regalia, golden-braided peaked cap on his head and a couple of dozen medals dangling from his chest. A silk sash with the emblems of all the armed forces crossed his torso diagonally, his hands entangled over his crotch as if trying to restrain one another, drool forming in the corner of his mouth, his eyes wide open and staring, like the eyes of a child who has wandered into a sweet shop to find its owner fast asleep.
The First Lady stayed away from newspapers. There were too many words she couldn't make sense of and too many pictures of her husband. She herself rarely appeared in the papers and if she did she was usually attending a children's festival or the Quran recitation competitions for women General Zia dispatched her to so she could represent the government and hand out prizes. The Information Minister sent her the clippings of these pictures and she usually hid them from General Zia because he always found fault with her appearance. If she wore makeup, he accused her of aping high-society Westernised women. If she wore no makeup, he said she looked like death, very unlike a first lady. He constantly lectured her that as the First Lady of an Islamic state, she should be a role model for other women. "Look at what Mrs Ceausescu has done for her country."
The First Lady had never met Mrs Ceausescu and her husband never bothered to explain who she was or what she did. She did take other visiting first ladies shopping, but it was no fun because the shopkeepers either refused to take money from her or quoted her prices so low that she couldn't even haggle. The bazaars were cleared of shoppers before her arrival and she felt as if she was on the set of a television soap opera. General Zia did encourage her from time to time to read newspapers to keep abreast of the political and social changes he was bringing about in the country, but she never bothered. "These newspapers are full of what you said and what you did and who you met. And you are always here, lounging around the house. Don't I see enough of you that I shouldn't have to see you staring at me from every page of every single rag?"
With such indifference to the national press it couldn't be a coincidence that the First Lady found a copy of the Pakistan Times Pakistan Times on her bedside table, carefully folded to reveal the picture on the back page, the picture that would destroy her faith in all men forever and result in the unceremonious sacking of the editor of the on her bedside table, carefully folded to reveal the picture on the back page, the picture that would destroy her faith in all men forever and result in the unceremonious sacking of the editor of the Pakistan Times Pakistan Times.
The first thing that shocked the First Lady about the picture was the amount of flesh oozing out of the white woman's blouse. She immediately knew that the woman was wearing one of those new bras with wire construction that pushed the breasts up, making them seem bigger. Many of the other generals' wives wore these bras, but at least they had the decency to wear proper shirts that didn't show any flesh, only hinted at their enhanced shape. The woman in the picture was wearing a blouse cut so low that half her breasts were out, pushed up and pressed together so closely that the diamond on her necklace was resting on the cusp of her cleavage.
And then, there was her husband, the Man of Truth, the Man of Faith, the man who lectured women on piety on prime-time TV, the man who had fired judges and television newscasters who refused to wear a dupatta on their heads, the man who made sure that two pillows could not be shown together on an empty bed in a television drama, the man who made cinema owners blot out any bare legs or arms of actresses from the film posters; the same man was sitting there staring at these globes of white flesh with such single-mindedness that it seemed as if his own wife had been born without a pair.
The caption said innocuously: The President being interviewed by the famous foreign correspondent Joanne Herring The President being interviewed by the famous foreign correspondent Joanne Herring.
Interview my foot, she thought. It seemed that it wasn't Ms Herring interviewing him, but General Zia interrogating her breasts. She put the paper aside, drank a glass of water, thought of their thirty-four years together, reminded herself of her five grown-up children, of their youngest daughter still to be married. For a moment she doubted what her eyes had just seen and picked up the paper again. There was no mistaking this. It was not the kind of thing where you can write a letter to the editor and demand a correction. General Zia's eyes, normally crossed, the right one looking in one direction while the left one wandered away to take in something else, were for once focused in the same direction, on the same objects. The angle of his stare was so obvious that if she drew two lines with a pencil, they would connect the iris of his eyes straight to the two white spheres pushed up and pulled together.
She tried to remember what this woman was wearing last time she saw her. She remembered very clearly what her husband had looked like when he saw this woman last time.
The First Lady had started to suspect that her husband was up to something when he asked her to pack his old safari suit for their US visit. Her suspicions deepened when she was told that their first stop would not be Washington DC or New York but Lufkin, Texas, where they were to attend a charity ball. Jeddah, Bejing, Dubai, London, she could understand. These were regular stops for General Zia. But Lufkin? Safari suit? The old man was definitely up to something fishy, the First Lady had thought, checking his beige-coloured, polyester safari suit for any missing buttons.
General Zia had abolished all types of Western dress from his wardrobe except for military uniforms. He always wore a black sherwani for state occasions and, taking their cue from him, the bureaucrats had all started wearing minor variations of the same dress. The more adventurous ones experimented with cuts and colours, and occasionally their headgear, but basically stuck to what General Zia had started calling the National Dress. But like all men of principle, General Zia was always ready to make an exception for a higher cause. And if the cause was a fund-raiser for Afghan jihad, then no principle was sacred enough.
The charity ball in Lufkin was being hosted by Joanne Herring, prime-time news anchor on Lufkin Community Television and Pakistan's Honorary Ambassador to the United States; an appointment made after her four-hour-long, soul-searching interview with General Zia. Joanne was on a mission to rid the world of evil but she insisted on having fun while doing it.
And God, Lufkin could do with a bit of exotic fun.