Mohammed Hanif - A Case of Exploding Mangoes

I started my brief career as a swordsman by practising on a bed sheet. I hung the sheet over the curtain in my dorm and marked a circle roughly at the height where my target’s face would be. I stood with my back to the bed sheet and tried to pierce it from all possible angles, from above my shoulder, with my left hand, with backhand swipes. After one hour the sheet was in shreds and the circle more or less intact, mocking my swordsmanship. The next day, as Obaid got ready to go out for the weekend, I pretended that I had a fever. Obaid came to my bed, put his hand on my forehead and nodded his head in mock concern. “It’s probably just a headache,” he said, pulling a face, disappointed at the prospect of having to watch The Guns of Navarone without me.

“I am not a city boy like you. I am from the mountains where only women get headaches,” I said, irritated at my own lie. Obaid was mystified. “What do you know about women?” he taunted me, spraying his wrists with a sharp burst of Poison. “You don’t even remember what your mother looked like.” I pulled my bed sheet above my head and started to detach myself, bit by bit.

I locked the room as soon as he left and dressed up in uniform; boots, peaked cap, sword belt, scabbard, the whole works. From now on every rehearsal would be a full dress rehearsal. There was no point doing this by halves, it didn’t make sense not to simulate the exact circumstances. I took out a white towel. Instead of a circle, this time I drew an oval shape with a pencil, then two small circles for eyes, an inverted seven for a nose. I took extra pleasure in drawing a broom of a moustache. I hung my creation over the curtain, put my right hand on the hilt of the sword and took five steps back. I came to attention, with my eyes fixed on the moustached face on the towel. I drew the sword and extended it towards the target. It flailed in the air inches away from the towel.

Five steps is the regulation distance between the parade commander and the guest of honour inspecting the parade and nobody can change that. I tried throwing the sword. It did pierce the chin but throwing the sword is not a possibility. You can’t do that with a live target because if you miss, then you are left standing there empty-handed. Not that I could afford to miss. Not that I was going to be given a best-of-three-type chance.

I knew what the problem was. It wasn’t the distance. It wasn’t the fact that my target would be moving; the problem was the relationship between my hand as it wielded the sword and the sword itself. These were two different entities. Through practice I could improve my hand — eye coordination, I could make them work together better but sadly that wasn’t enough. My arm and the sword needed to become one. The muscles in my tendon had to merge with the molecules that made up the sword. I needed to wield it like it was an extension of my arm. As Bannon had pointed out again and again in our knife-throwing sessions, I needed to work on my sentiment du fer .

It was time to look for the sentiment of steel within myself.

I took off my sword belt and lay down on the bed with my shoes on and stared and stared at the two small circles on the towel and did Total Detachment, an exercise of my own invention. It’s a slow exercise and few have the mental stamina required to do it because it involves complete abandonment of your thoughts and total control of your muscles. I was able to master it during that holiday when Colonel Shigri sought forgiveness for his sins over the Quran during the day, then plotted his next foray into Afghanistan over Scotch in the evenings. I had a lot of time at my hands.

Starting with my scalp, Total Detachment works its way towards my toes. I contract, hold, and let go my muscles, knot by knot, while the rest of my body stays unaware; both anticipation and longing are counterproductive.

It’s not in the muscles. The sentiment of steel is all in the head. The sword should feel your will through the tips of your fingers.

Obaid was surprised to find me in uniform on his return. I ignored his account of The Guns of Navarone , produced a black leather eyepatch cut out of my old drill boot and asked him to wear it. For once he didn’t ask me any questions, nor did he make any show-off-Shigri jokes. He didn’t say a word when I drew the curtains and switched all the lights off one by one.

He did speak up when he heard the buckle of my sword belt click. “I hope you know what you are doing.” I switched the table lamp on, took out a bottle of white boot polish and dipped the tip of my sword in it. Obaid kept looking at me as if I was growing horns right in front of him but he had the good sense not to speak. “OK, Baby O. You can move all you want but if you want to keep using both your eyes stay as still as you can. And yes I know what I am doing. Save your lecture for later.”

I flicked the table lamp off. I walked towards Obaid and stood very close to him, I could smell cardamom on his breath. That was his idea of good oral hygiene and he always carried a few green pods in his pocket. I marched backwards. One, two, three, four, five steps. I put my right hand on the sword hilt, held the scabbard straight and steady with my left. In the darkness the sword caught the moonlight filtering from the slit in a curtain and it glinted for a moment. That’s how it would happen on the day, if there are no clouds, I thought. But what I thought was irrelevant. The command had communicated itself from my mind to the tendons in my forearm and the dead molecules in the sword metal were alive and my will was the tip of the sword that found the middle of the leather patch. I put the sword back in the scabbard and asked Obaid to turn on the light. When Obaid turned around after flicking the light switch, I saw the little white dot in the middle of the black eyepatch on his right eye. My shoulder muscles sagged with satisfaction. Obaid came and stood in front of me, flipped his eyepatch and extended his tongue, offering me the half-chewed cardamom shell: a green fly on the red velvety tip of his tongue. I took it and put it in my mouth, savouring its sweet smell. The bitter seeds had already been eaten by him.

He came forward and put his hands on my shoulders. I stiffened. He put his lips close to my ear and said, “How can you be so sure?”

“It’s in the blood,” I say, taking out a white hankie from my pocket to polish the tip of the sword. “If you ever found your father swinging from a ceiling fan, you would know.”

“We know someone who can find out,” he said with his chin on my shoulder. I could feel the heat from his cheek.

“I don’t trust him. And what am I going to say? ‘Officer Bannon, can you use your connections to shed light on the circumstances of the tragic demise of a certain Colonel Shigri who might or might not have worked for the CIA, and who might or might not have killed himself?’”

“You have to start somewhere.”

I wiped the tip of the sword vigorously one last time before putting it in the scabbard.

“I am not starting anything. I am looking for an ending here.”

He brought his lips to my ear again and whispered, “Sometimes there is a blind spot right under your gaze.” His cardamom breath raged like the waves of a sweet sea in my ears.

I must have dozed off because when I wake up, the shock of being in the dark is new and someone is trying to prod the back of my head with what seems to be a brick. My initial reaction is that the pitch dark is trick-fucking my brains and I am inventing imaginary company. I close my eyes again and put the back of my head on the same spot on the wall and again it gets a little push from the brick. I turn around and trace the outline of the brick with my fingers. It is protruding half an inch from the wall. As I am tracing its outline, with a heart that desperately wants to believe in miracles, the brick moves again. It’s being pushed from the other side. I put my hand on it and gently push it back. This time, it’s pushed towards me more forcefully. The brick is now jutting halfway out from the wall. I hold onto it and gently ease it out of the wall, hoping for the cell to be flooded with light, with bird-song. Nothing happens. It’s still as dark as the Mughals intended it to be. I squeeze my hand into the gap, my fingers touch another brick. I prod at it and the brick moves, I give it a little push, it disappears. Still not even a flicker of light. I can feel human breath held at the other end, then gently released. I hear a giggle, a well-formed, deliberate, throaty man’s giggle.