Mohammed Hanif - A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Coogan’s attention was divided between the misery that the Redskins were going through and this General who had been sitting there with his glass in his hands for ages without taking a sip. Coogan raised his glass to General Akhtar’s, one eye fixed on the Redskins’ quarterback who was demolishing the Buccaneers’ defence and the other winking at the General. Coogan shouted, “Go get him.”

General Akhtar knew he had his answer. He didn’t want to let this moment go. He raised his glass and clinked it with Coogan’s again. “By jingo. Let’s get him.” He took a generous sip from his glass and suddenly the liquid didn’t smell as horrible as it had a second ago. It was bitter but it didn’t taste as bad as all his life he had thought it would.

The Subedar Major looked at the tray, looked at the marine’s face and understood.

“Tea? Have some?” the Subedar Major asked.

“Tea?” Corporal Lessard repeated. “Don’t go all English on me. Here. Chow. Eat.”

The marine removed the aluminium foil from the tray, took a hot dog out and started chomping away.

The Subedar Maior smiled an understanding smile. “Dog? Halal?”

Corporal Lessard was running out of patience. “No. No dog meat. Beef.” He mooed and mimed a knife slicing a cow’s neck.

“Halal?” the Subedar Major asked again.

A house sparrow blundered into the floodlight and shrieked as if trying to bridge the communication gap between the two. Corporal Lessard felt: homesick.

“It’s a piece of fucking meat in a piece of fucking bread. If we can’t agree on that what the hell am I doing here?” He flung the tray on the ground and started running back towards the guardhouse.

Nancy Raphel buried her head in her pillow and waited for her husband to come to bed. “We should stick to our cocktail menu in future,” she said before falling asleep.

General Akhtar was greeted by a very disturbed major as he walked out of the gate of the ambassador’s residence.

“General Zia has gone missing,” the major whispered in his ear. “There is no trace of him anywhere.”

The night in the dungeon is long. In my dream, an army of Maos marches the funeral march carrying their Mao caps in their hands like beggars’ bowls. Their lips are sewn with crimson thread.

The brick in the wall scrapes.

Secretary General’s ghost is already at work, I tell myself. “Get some rest,” I shout. The brick moves again. I am not scared of ghosts; I have seen enough of them in my life. They all come back to me as if I run an orphanage for them.

I pull out the brick, put my face in the hole and shout at strength 5, “Get some sleep, Secretary General, get some sleep. Revolution can wait till the morning.”

A hand traces the contours of my face. The fingers are soft, a woman’s fingers. Sht passes me a crunched-up envelope. “I found it in my cell,” she says. “It’s not mine. I can’t read. I thought maybe it’s for you. Can you read?”

I shove the envelope into my pocket. “Nobody can read around here,” I say, trying to terminate the conversation. “This place is pitch dark. We are all bloody blind here.”

A moment’s silence. “This seems like a message from the dead man. Keep it. I think someone is about to start a journey. It’s not going to be me. You should keep yourself ready.”

General Zia decided to borrow his gardener’s bicycle in order to get out of the Army House without his bodyguards, but he needed a shawl first. He needed the shawl not because it was cold but because he wanted to disguise himself. The decision to venture out of the Army House was prompted by a verse from the Quran. To go out disguised as a common man was his friend Ceaucescu’s idea.

The plan was a happy marriage between the divine and the devious.

He had returned from Brigadier TM’s funeral and locked himself in his study, refusing to attend to even the bare minimum government work that he had been doing since ordering Code Red. He flicked through the thick file that General Akhtar had sent him on the ongoing investigation into the accident. The summary had congratulated General Akhtar for ensuring that Brigadier TM’s sad demise wasn’t broadcast live on TV. It would have been a big setback for the nation’s trust in the professionalism of the army.

General Zia cried and prayed non-stop in an attempt to stop himself from doing the inevitable, but like a relapsing junkie, he found his hands reaching for a volume of the Quran covered in green velvet. He kissed its spine thrice and opened it with trembling hands.

His knees shook with excitement when the book revealed not Jonah’s prayer as he had been dreading but a simple, more practical verse. “ Go forth into the world, ye believers …”

His tears dissolved into a knowing smile. Even the itch in his rectum felt like a call to action; he rubbed his bottom on the edge of the chair. In his relief, he remembered the advice Nicolae Ceaucescu had given him at a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit for the Non-Aligned Movement. It was one of those meetings where heads of states have nothing to discuss and which interpreters try to prolong with an elaborate, flowery translation of the pleasantries. The two leaders came from countries so far apart and so different that Ceausescu couldn’t even talk to General Zia about boosting bilateral trade as trade between Romania and Pakistan was non-existent. And General Zia couldn’t ask for his support on the Kashmir issue because Ceaucescu wasn’t likely to know where Kashmir was, let alone what the issues were. There was one fact General Zia knew about the man that did interest him though: Ceaucescu had been in power for twenty-four years, and unlike other rulers of his longevity and reputation who couldn’t get an invitation from any decent country, Ceaucescu had been welcomed by Secretary General Brezhnev and by President Nixon and had just been knighted by the Queen of Great Britain.

And here he was at the Non-Aligned Movement’s meeting when his country wasn’t even a member. Observer status they had given him, but clearly the man knew how to align himself.

General Zia was genuinely impressed and intrigued by anyone who had managed to stay in office for longer than he had. He had asked a number of veterans of the world stage what their secret was but nobody had ever given him the advice he could use in Pakistan. Fidel Castro had told him to stay true to his mission and drink lots of water with his rum. Kim Il-Sung advised him not to watch depressing films. Reagan had patted Nancy’s shoulder and said, “Nice birthday cards.” King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia was more forthright than most: “How would I know? Ask my doctor.”

With Ceaufjescu, General Zia had the comfort of being a total stranger so he could afford to be direct.

The meeting had taken place in a small conference room on the forty-third floor of the Manila Hilton. The interpreter, a plump, twenty-six-year-old woman in a shoulder-padded suit, was shocked when General Zia cut the pleasantries short and said he wanted to use their scheduled ten minutes to learn about statecraft from His Highness. Ceaucescu’s Dracula smile widened, he put a hand on the interpreter’s thigh and mumbled: “ Noi voi tot learn de la each alt .”

General Zia imagined that Ceaucescu was saying that we should all drink a pint of fresh blood every day.

“We must all learn from each other,” the interpreter interpreted.

“How have you managed to stay in office for such a long time?”

“ Cum have tu conducere la spre stay in servidu pentru such un timp indelungat? ” the interpreter asked Ceausescu, placing a leather folder on her lap.