Mohammed Hanif - A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Not that Bannon believes in any god.

I wonder whether he’ll visit me here. I wonder whether they will let him into this cell.

2nd OIC is exhausted from his business with my mother and I can see an appeal to my better sense on its way. I clench my stomach muscles against the impending ‘cream of the nation’ speech. I don’t want to throw up. The cell is small and I have no idea how long I am going to be here.

“You are the cream of our nation,” he says shaking his head. “You have been the pride of our Academy. I have just recommended you for the sword of honour. You are going to receive it from the President of Pakistan. You have two choices: graduate with honour in four weeks or go out front-rolling to the sound of drums. Tomorrow. Clap. Clap. Tony Singh style.” He brings his hands together twice, like those Indian film extras in a qawwali chorus.

They did that to Tony Singh. Drummed the poor bugger out. I never figured out what the hell Tony Singh was doing in the air force of the Islamic Republic anyway. Before meeting Tony Singh (or Sir Tony as we had to call him since he was six courses senior to us), the only Tony I knew was our neighbour’s dog and the only Singh I had seen was in my history textbook, a one-eyed maharaja who ruled Punjab a couple of centuries ago. I thought the Partition took care of all the Tonys and the Singhs, but apparently some didn’t get the message.

Tony Singh didn’t get the message even when they found a transistor radio in his dorm and charged him with spying. Top of the Pops was Sir Tony’s defence. They reduced the charge to un-officer-like behaviour and drummed him out anyway.

A lone drummer — a corporal who, after carrying the biggest drum in the Academy band all his life, had begun to look like one — led the way; keeping a thud, thud, thud-a-dud marching beat. More than one thousand of us lined both sides of Eagles Avenue that leads from the guardroom to the main gate.

At ease, came the command.

Tony Singh emerged from the guardroom, having spent a couple of nights in this very cell. His head was shaved, but he still wore his uniform. He stood tall and refused to look down or sideways.

Clap, came the command.

We started slowly. 2nd OIC removed Sir Tony’s belt and the ranks from his shoulder flaps and then he took a step forward and whispered something into Sir Tony’s ear. Sir Tony went down on his knees, put both his hands on the road and did a front roll without touching his shaved head on the ground.

The bugger was trying to be cocky even when his ass was raised to the skies.

His journey was painfully slow. The drumbeat became unbearable after a while. Some cadets clapped more enthusiastically than others.

I glanced sideways and saw Obaid trying hard to control his tears.

“Sir, I swear to God I have no knowledge of Cadet Obaid’s whereabouts,” I say, trying to tread the elusive line between grovelling and spitting in his face.

2nd OIC wants to get home. An evening of domestic cruelty and Baywatch beckons him. He waves my statement in front of me. “You have one night to think this through. Tomorrow it goes to the Commandant and the only thing he hates more than his men disappearing is their clever-dick collaborators. He is looking forward to the President’s visit. We are all looking forward to the visit. Don’t fuck it up.”

He turns to go. My upper body slumps. He puts one hand on the door handle and turns; my upper body comes back to attention. “I saw your father once, and he was a soldier’s bloody soldier. Look at yourself.” A leery grin appears on his lips. “You mountain boys get lucky because you have no hair on your face.”

I salute him, using all my silent drill practice to contain the inner cadence, which is saying, “Fuck your mother too.”

I wonder for a moment what Obaid would do in this cell. The first thing that would have bothered him is the smell 2nd OIC has left behind. This burnt onions, home-made yogurt gone bad smell. The smell of suspicion, the smell of things not quite having gone according to plan. Because our Obaid, our Baby O, believes that there is nothing in the world that a splash of Poison on your wrist and an old melody can’t take care of.

He is innocent in a way that lonesome canaries are innocent, flitting from one branch to another, the tender flutter of their wings and a few millilitres of blood keeping them airborne against the gravity of this world that wants to pull everyone down to its rotting surface.

What chance would Obaid have with this 2nd OIC? Baby O, the whisperer of ancient couplets, the singer of golden oldies. How did he make it through the selection process? How did he manage to pass the Officer-Like Qualities Test? How did he lead his fellow candidates through the mock jungle survival scenarios? How did he bluff his way through the psychological profiles?

All they needed to do was pull down his pants and see his silk briefs with the little embroidered hearts on the waistband.

Where are you, Baby O?

Lieutenant Bannon saw us for the first time at the annual variety show doing our Dove and Hawk dance. This was before the Commandant replaced these variety shows with Quran Study Circles and After Dinner Literary Activities. As third-termers we had to do all the shitty fancy-dress numbers and seniors got to lip-sync to George Michael songs. We were miming to a very macho, revolutionary poem. I, the imperialist Eagle, swooped down on Obaid’s Third World Dove; he fought back, and for the finale sat on my chest drawing blood from my neck with his cardboard beak.

Bannon came to meet us backstage as we were shedding our ridiculous feathers. “Hooah, you zoomies should be in Hollywood!” His handshake was exaggerated and firm. “Good show. Good show.” He turned towards Obaid, who was cleaning the brown boot polish from his cheeks with a hankie. “You’re just a kid without that warpaint,” Bannon said. “What’s your name?”

In the background, Sir Tony’s ‘Careless Whisper’ was so out of tune that the speakers screeched in protest.

Under his crimson beret, Bannon’s face was beaten leather, his eyes shallow green pools that had not seen a drop of rain in years.

“Obaid. Obaid-ul-llah.”

“What does it mean?”

“Allah’s servant,” said Obaid, sounding unsure, as if he should explain that he didn’t choose this name for himself.

“What does your name mean, Lieutenant Bannon?” I came to Obaid’s rescue.

“It’s just a name,” he said. “Nobody calls me Lieutenant. It’s Loot Bannon for you stage mamas.” He clicked his heels together and turned back to Obaid. We both came to attention. He directed his over-the-top, two-fingered salute at Obaid and said the words which in that moment seemed like just another case of weird US military-speak but would later become the stuff of dining-hall gossip.

“See you at the square, Baby O.”

I felt jealous, not because of the intimacy it implied, but because I wished I had come up with this nickname for Obaid.

I make a mental note of the things they could find in the dorm to throw at me:

One-quarter of a quarter-bottle of Murree rum

A group photo of first-termers in their underwear (white and December-wet underwear actually).

A video of Love on a Horse .

Bannon’s dog-tags, still listed as missing on the guardroom’s Lost and Found noticeboard.

If my Shigri blood wasn’t so completely void of any literary malaise, I would have listed poetry as Exhibit 5, but who the fuck really thinks about poetry when locked up in a cell unless you are a communist or a poet?

There is a letter-box slit in the door of the cell, as if people are going to send me letters. Dear All Shigri, I hope you are in the best of health and enjoying your time in…