Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

Tell me about the UN bar. Did you meet Emily?

I did, replied Zafar.

And what happened?

I should tell you first about the supper I had with the colonel and his guests.

Before you went to Kabul?

You should know what I’d been hearing in Islamabad.

And then you’ll pick up the story in Kabul?

Then I’ll pick up the story in Kabul.

Listening to Zafar, I was like a child hearing a story at bedtime, interrupting and impatient to hear all its mysteries impossibly revealed at once.

A member of his staff showed me upstairs, continued Zafar, to a well-appointed bedroom at the back of the house, with its own bathroom off to one side.

I took a nap — though perhaps I didn’t actually sleep — and I got up refreshed and ready. After washing and putting on a clean shirt, I stood in front of the mirror and considered whether to wear my tie. The colonel had been dressed in traditional Pakistani costume, so I decided a tie would be inappropriate. I thought of the custom in Iran, where men wear Western suits and shirts but do not wear ties, ties being regarded as the ultimate symbol of Westernization. Such a fine distinction seemed to me comical at that moment when of course I had in my mind the colonel’s observation concerning Gaddafi’s Western military uniform. Forswearing ties looked like a petty and childish act of defiance, and yet there it was, imbued with enormous meaning. I left the tie in my jacket pocket.

Before opening the doors to the dining room, a uniformed soldier sheepishly asked for permission to frisk me. When he patted a pocket, I took out my digital voice recorder and, responding to his quizzical look, I said it was a phone. These days phones do everything, but in 2002 cell phone technology was just getting going — and this was Pakistan. The soldier rolled his head from side to side, maintaining an inane grin on his face. I moved toward the dining room when he stopped me. Please, sir , he said and disappeared behind a door. He returned carrying a tin, holding its lid open. Please, sir, we will keep phone safe only.

The guests were gathered in a large dining room, standing about with drinks in hand. They were all men, all older and gray haired, from a generation before mine, more than one generation yet not quite two. The room was made out in an English Victorian mode, but the furniture was all repro, nothing worn or scuffed about the wood, a little too even in tone. On the walls were unremarkable paintings, landscapes was my impression. Dominating the room was a large painting on the far wall: a ship caught in a storm, a galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, below an improbably large moon. The painting was positioned between two vast windows, whose curtains weren’t drawn even though daylight was fast fading. This room was an unloved space, and I could not imagine the colonel dining there alone.

Ah, Zafar, exclaimed the colonel. Come, come, my boy.

The colonel was dressed in a dark gray suit, no Nehru collar this time but a double-breasted English cut and a shirt with a high collar. There was no tie but instead an ostentatious crimson cravat.

We took our seats at the oval table, the colonel directing me to a seat opposite his. There were three other guests.

Let me make introductions, Zafar. The rest of us know each other. This here is General Firdous Khan, said the colonel, indicating the man on my right, a richly mustachioed gentleman in khaki uniform with immensely broad shoulders and signs of a healthy appetite. I thought of a tank.

Most pleased to make your acquaintance, said the general.

Firdous, continued the colonel — and you may call him General Khan — Firdous is a splendid fellow, despite his utter lack of cultural sensibility, which of course does his Pakhtoon brethren proud. He’s actually a three-star general, only three stars, a lieutenant general, you see, but they like to be addressed as General. He will have much to tell you — what is it you know, Firdous? he asked, turning to the general. Anyway, continued the colonel, he can talk to you about something or other, provided we keep him stocked with food and drink.

Mohammed Ahmed Hassan, said the colonel, gesturing toward the man on my left, who was smoking a cigarette (and would stop only to eat), is with ISI.* He’s a spy and he looks it, don’t you think? Hassan-bhai, welcome, we don’t judge you. Unlike everyone else.

And finally, let me introduce you to the least among us, a chap on whom you needn’t waste too much time since he’s barely sober, I daresay, though sobriety would, in his case, hardly guarantee lucid conversation. Dr. Reza Mehrani is a distinctly shifty sort. No, not because of his Irani ancestry — we are modern people here — but because he’s a scientist of some description concerning himself with atoms and suchlike. They call him the god of small things. Rumor has it he’s also a first-class bridge player, but since we play only chess in this house, I’ve no idea why he’s here. How is the lovely wife? And remind us what in God’s name she sees in you.

Ricky, said General Khan, pass the bloody whisky.

Khan outranked the colonel by a notch, but rank gave way here to a leveling informality. Ricky, evidently, was the colonel’s nickname among friends. The men obviously had a shared ancient history. In fact — and I’m getting ahead a little — over the course of the conversation they slipped into Urdu here and there, and when they did, they used the very informal second person form of you. English has lost something of value, I think. It’s still there in German, in the informal du , in the French tu , and in the Spanish tú. English used to have it in thou , and it remains in the Lord’s Prayer: thy will be done, thine is the Kingdom.*

Even before I said anything, I became rather self-conscious. There was of course the unfamiliarity of my circumstances — the middle of 2002 in a staging post for a war to avenge the destruction of the towering icons of America, and I am in Islamabad, the guest of a Pakistani colonel — but this in itself was not the cause. I might, instead, have been uncomfortable to be in the presence of the Pakistani military, men of an age to have sullied their hands in 1971. But even that was not on my mind. It was a rather trivial matter, now that I consider it. These men had rather thick Pakistani accents and I was conscious of my own voice, its decidedly educated English sound. To my mind’s ear — I had barely spoken — it already sounded out of place, even false and presumptuous.