A Case of Exploding Mangoes

by Mohammed Hanif

  Under the late-afternoon sun the Fort looks like a very old king taking a siesta. The shadows of the crumbling arches of the Court for the Commons stretch across the lawns, the sunflowers are in full bloom and stand tall with their heads bent like turbaned courtiers waiting for their turn at court. In the underground interrogation centre someone is probably being thrashed with such abandon that the ceiling is getting a fresh splattering of blood. We are sitting in lawn chairs, in front of a table laden with fine china crockery and the best afternoon snacks that Lahore has to offer.

  Life can take a good turn if you are from a good family and if your meeting with General Akhtar has gone well.

  ‘Anybody can catch a thief or a killer or a traitor,’ Major Kiyani says, munching on a chicken patty. ‘But what is satisfying about my job is that I have to stay one step ahead of them.’ I nod politely and nibble at my Nice biscuit.

  A Dunhill is offered and accepted with a restrained officer-like smile.

  The prisoners circle the marble fountain outside the Palace of Mirrors, their shaved heads bobbing up and down behind the manicured hedges covered in purple bougainvillea.

  They haven’t been brought out to have tea with us.

  They look like betrayed promises; broken and then put back together from memory, obscure names crossed out of habeas corpus petitions, forgotten faces that will never make it to Amnesty International’s hall of fame, dungeon-dwellers brought out for their daily half-hour in the sun. The prisoners start to form a line with their backs towards us. Their clothes are tattered, their bodies a patchwork of improvised bandages and festering wounds. I realise that the ‘no marks’ rule is applied selectively in the Fort.

  The tea cosy in front of me has an air force insignia on it, a simple, elegant design: a soaring eagle with a Persian couplet underneath it: Be it the land or the rivers, it’s all under our wings.

  ‘There are many ways of serving one’s country,’ Major Kiyani waxes philosophical, ‘but only one way to secure it. Only one.’ I put the cup on the saucer, move forward in my chair and listen. I am his attentive disciple.

  ‘Eliminate the risk. Tackle the enemy before it can strike. Starve it of the very oxygen it breathes.’ He takes a very deep puff on his Dunhill.

  I pick up my cup and drink again. Major Kiyani might be a good tea-party host but he is no Sun Tzu.

  ‘Let’s say you caught somebody who wasn’t really a threat to national security. We are all human, we all make mistakes. Let’s say we got someone who we thought was going to blow up the Army House. Now, if after the interrogation it turns out that no, he really wasn’t going to do it, that we were wrong, what would you do? You would let him go, obviously. But in all honesty would you call it a mistake? No. It’s risk elimination, one less bugger to worry about.’

  My eyes keep glancing towards the prisoners who are shuffling their feet and swaying like a Greek tragedy chorus that has forgotten its lines. Their shackles chime like the bells of cows returning home in the evening.

  Major Kiyani’s hand disappears under his qameez. He pulls out his pistol and places it between the plate of biscuits and a bowl of cashew nuts. The pistol’s ivory handle looks like a dead rat.

  ‘Have you been inside the Palace of Mirrors?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘But I have seen it on TV.’

  ‘It’s right there.’ He points to the hall with arches and a cupola on top. ‘You should have a look before you go. Do you know how many mirrors are there in this palace?’

  I dip my Nice biscuit in lukewarm tea and shake my head.

  ‘Thousands. You look up and you see your face staring at you from thousands of mirrors. But these mirrors are not reflecting your face. They are reflecting the reflections of your face. You might have one enemy with a thousand faces. Do you get my point?’

  I don’t really. I want to go and have a look at the prisoners. To look for a secretary general. ‘Interesting concept,’ I say.

  ‘Intelligence work is a bit like that. Sorting out the faces from their reflections. And then reflections of the reflections.’

  ‘And them.’ I point towards the prisoners and take my first proper look at them. ‘Have you sorted them as yet?’

  ‘They were all security risks, all of them. Neutralised now but still classified as risks.’ The prisoners are standing in a straight row, their backs towards us.

  In their tattered rags, they don’t seem like a risk to anyone except their own health and hygiene.

  But I don’t say that. I nod at Major Kiyani appreciatively. Why start an argument when you are sitting on a lush green lawn, the sun is going down and you are smoking your first cigarette after a century?

  ‘This has been an interesting case.’ Specks of chicken patty shine in Major Kiyani’s moustache. He looks at me appreciatively like a scientist would look at a monkey after inserting electrodes in its brain. ‘I have learned a lot from you.’

  The air of mutual respect that surrounds this ceremony demands that I return the compliment. I nod like a monkey with electrodes in its brain.

  ‘You didn’t forget your friends even when you were …’ Major Kiyani’s hand dives in the air. He has the decency not to name the places where he kept me. ‘But at the same time you were not sentimental. What is gone is gone, let’s cut our losses, move on. I think General Akhtar was impressed. You played your cards right. Lose one friend, save another. Simple arithmetic. General Akhtar likes scenarios where everything adds up in the end.’

  The prisoners now seem to be following some inaudible commands or perhaps they just know their routine. They shuffle left and they shuffle right, then sit down on their haunches. I hear groans.

  If they have been brought out for exercise, they are not getting much. If they are expected to put on a show for me, I am not entertained.

  ‘You always learn something.’ Major Kiyani licks a glacé cherry off the top of a jam tart. ‘In my line of work you always learn something. The day you stop learning, you’re finished.’ A bird’s shadow crosses the lawn between us and the prisoners.

  Is Secretary General among them? Probably all packed up, ready to go home and start the struggle all over again. It would be nice to say goodbye to him. I would like to see his face before they release him.

  ‘Turn round,’ Major Kiyani shouts. Then he looks towards me, his brown eyes howling with laughter over some joke that he doesn’t want to share with me. ‘Let’s see if you recognise anyone.’

  I am relieved that Major Kiyani hasn’t sidestepped the issue. My goodwill towards him blooms like the sunflowers. I pick up another Nice biscuit. I made a deal with General Akhtar – I sign the statement and they let Secretary General go – and that deal is about to be honoured. That’s the good thing about men in uniform. They keep their word.

  I am expecting to see a man in a Mao cap. It goes against Secretary General’s current political belief system, but my recently released prisoner’s instincts tell me that I should look for a Mao cap.

  I scan the faces, glazed eyes and sheep-sheared heads. There are no Mao caps. There are no caps at all. There is a woman in a white dupatta at the one end of the row. I don’t know what they have done with her. Her eyes are all white. No corneas.

  My eyes get stuck on a head with a glowing red patch in the shape of a triangle. Some weird skin infection, I think.

  No, the fuckers ironed his head.

  The head moves up, the eyes look at me blankly, a tongue caresses the parched, broken lips. Under the ironed eyebrows, his long eyelashes have been spared.

  Baby O closes his eyes.

  Major Kiyani extends a plate of patties towards me. I push it aside and try to get up. Major Kiyani grabs me by my shoulder and pins me down in my chair, his eyes mean business now.

  ‘I am very curious about one thing that you didn’t mention in your statement,’ he says. ‘Why did he try to use your call sign?’

  When someone dies, you are free to make up any old story about them. You can’t betray the dead
. If they come back from the dead and catch you betraying them, then you are trapped.

  It suddenly seems as if Obaid has cheated on me by being alive. I signed the fucking statement because you were dead. I cut a bloody deal because you were supposed to have been blown to bits because of your own stupidity. Now you are standing there asking for explanations. Couldn’t you have stayed dead?

  Suddenly, I want to strangle Baby O with my own hands.

  I pat Major Kiyani’s shoulder. I look into his eyes. I try to harness the tea-party camaraderie that we have both been fostering.

  ‘Major Kiyani, only a professional like you can appreciate this,’ I say, trying to keep my voice from choking, covering up the surprise that you get when you see someone who you thought had taken a hit from a surface-to-air missile. Also the bigger surprise: your own desire to see them dead. ‘It could only have been a case of professional jealousy.’

  Baby O opens his eyes and puts his hand above his missing eyebrows to block the sun that must be piercing his eyes. His hand is covered in a bloodstained bandage.

  ‘Which one of you is Colonel Shigri’s son?’

  If it hadn’t been Secretary General’s voice, I would have ignored it. If it hadn’t been his handcuffed hands raised in air, as if he were trying to raise a point of order in his central committee meeting, I wouldn’t have recognised him. I always imagined him to be old and shrivelled and bald, with thick reading glasses. He is much younger than his distinguished career would suggest. A tiny but milk-white shock in his short hair, a village tattooist’s idea of an arrow piercing an apple of a heart adorning the left side of his hairless chest. He has the physique of a peasant and a bright open face as if the years of living in dark dungeons have given it a strange glow. His eyes are flitting between me and Major Kiyani. Trust Secretary General to confuse me with Major Kiyani. His eyes scan the table brimming with food and then our faces. It seems he is trying to decide which one is the teapot and which one the cup. A cloud’s shadow travels across the lawn. My eyes squint. Major Kiyani reaches for his pistol. Before the shot rings out, I hear Major Kiyani’s booming voice.

  ‘I am, comrade. I am Colonel Shigri’s son.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE THREE-MEMBER TEAM of marines stationed at the gate of the ambassador’s residence was having a hard time matching their guests with the guest list. They were expecting the usual tuxedos from the diplomatic corps and gold-braided khakis from the Pakistan Army, but instead they were ushering in a steady stream of flowing turbans, tribal gowns and embroidered shalwar qameez suits. If this was a fancy-dress party, the ambassador had forgotten to tell the men guarding his main gate. The invitation did say something about a Kabul–Texas themed barbecue, but it seemed the guests had decided to ignore the Texas part and gone all native for the evening.

  The floodlight that hung on the tree above the marines’ guardhouse – a wooden cottage decked in red, white and blue bunting for the evening – was so powerful that the usually noisy house sparrows who occupied the surrounding trees in the evenings had either shut up or flown away. The monsoon had decided to bypass Islamabad this year and the light breeze carried only dust and dead pollen.

  The marines, commanded by twenty-two-year-old Corporal Bob Lessard and helped by a steady supply of beer and hot dogs sneaked out by their colleague on catering duty, managed to remain cheerful in the face of an endless stream of guests who didn’t look anything like their names on the guest list.

  The local CIA chief, Chuck Coogan, one of the first guests to arrive, sported a karakul cap and an embroidered leather holster hung from his left shoulder. The US Cultural Attaché came wearing an Afghan burqa, one of those flowing shuttlecocks that she had tucked halfway over her head to reveal the plunging neckline of her shimmering turquoise dress.

  The marines had started their celebrations early. They took turns going into the guardhouse to take swigs from bottles of Coors that were chilling in the cooler as Corporal Lessard crossed off another name on his clipboard and greeted the ambassador’s guests with a forced smile. He welcomed a hippie couple draped in identical Afghan kilims which smelled as if they had been used to pack raw hashish.

  ‘Freedom Medicine?’ he asked.

  ‘Basic health for Afghan refugees,’ said the blonde girl with neon-coloured beads in her hair. ‘For the muj injured in the guerrilla war,’ said the blond goateed boy in a low voice, as if sharing a closely guarded secret with Corporal Lessard. He let them in, covering his nose with his clipboard. He welcomed Texan nurses wearing glass bangles up to their elbows and a military accountant from Ohio showing off his Red Army medal, most probably taken off the uniform of a dead Soviet soldier by the muj and sold to a junk shop.

  Corporal Lessard’s patience ran out when a University of Nebraska professor turned up wearing a marine uniform. ‘Where do you think you are going, buddy?’ Corporal Lessard demanded. The professor told him in hushed tones that his Adult Literacy Consultancy was actually a programme to train the Afghan mujahideen to shoot and edit video footage of their guerrilla attacks. ‘Some of these guys have real talent.’

  ‘And this?’ Corporal Lessard fingered the shoulder epaulette on the professor’s crisp camouflage uniform.

  ‘Well, we are at war. Ain’t we?’ The professor shrugged and tucked both his thumbs into his belt.

  Corporal Lessard had little patience for soldiers behaving like civilians and none whatsoever for civilians pretending to be soldiers, but he found himself powerless in this situation. This evening he was nothing but a glorified usher. He’d had no say in deciding the guest list, let alone the dress code, but he wasn’t going to let this joker get away with this.

  ‘Welcome to the front line,’ he said, handing his clipboard to the professor. ‘Here you go. Consider yourself on active duty now.’ Corporal Lessard retreated into the guardhouse, positioned himself on a stool from where he could keep an eye on the professor and joined the beer pot contest with his staff.

  * * *

  Beyond the guardhouse, the guests could choose between two huge catering tents. In the first one the central spread was a salad the size of a small farm, red cabbage and blueberries, giant ham sandwiches with blueberry chutney, all arranged in the shape of an American flag. Before a row of gas-powered grills, marines stood in their shorts and baseball caps, barbecuing hot dogs, quarter-pounders and piles of corn on the cob. Pakistani waiters in bolo ties and cowboy hats roamed with jugs of punch and paper glasses, dodging children who had already started hot-dog fights, and offering drinks to the few people who had bothered to venture into this tent. A long queue was forming outside the adjacent tent, where eight whole lambs skewered on long iron bars were roasting on an open fire. An Afghan chef was at hand to reassure everyone that he had slaughtered the lambs himself and that everything in the tent was halal.

  The ambassador’s wife had been feeling sick to her stomach ever since seeing the Afghan chef put an inch-thick iron rod through the first of eight baby lambs that morning. It was Nancy Raphel herself who had come up with the Kabul–Texas theme, but she was already regretting the idea because most of the guests were turning up in all kinds of variations on traditional Afghani clothes and suddenly her own understated mustard silk shalwar qameez seemed ridiculous. The sight of so many Americans decked out like Afghan warlords repulsed her. She was glad that her own husband had stuck to his standard evening wear, a double-breasted blue blazer and tan trousers.

  She had planned an evening of culturally sensitive barbecue; what she got was a row of small carcasses slowly rotating on iron skewers, her guests queuing up with their Stars and Stripes paper plates, pretending they were guests at some tribal feast. Under such stressful circumstances Nancy almost collapsed with the sense of relief when her husband took a call from the Army House and told her that President Zia ul-Haq would not be turning up. She excused herself to the wife of the French Ambassador, dressed like an Uzbek bride, and retreated to her bedroom to calm her nerves.

  * *
*

  The marines at the guardhouse could afford to party while on active duty not because it was the Fourth of July but because the security for the premises was being managed by a contingent of the Pakistan Army. Five hundred metres before the guardhouse, on the tree-lined road that led to the ambassador’s residence, the guests were required to stop at a makeshift barrier set up by Brigade 101. The troops, under the watchful command of a subedar major, greeted the guests with their bomb scanners and metal detectors. They slipped their scanners under the cars, asked their non-white guests to open the boots of their cars and finally waved them towards the guardhouse where an increasingly cheerful group of marines welcomed them. The army contingent had set up their own searchlights to illuminate the road. Here, too, the trees were awash with light so intense that the birds’ nests on the trees lining the road lay abandoned. A catering van sent by the district administration delivered their dinner early and the Subedar Major was livid when he discovered that the samovar which came in the van was empty. ‘How are my men going to stay awake without tea?’ he shouted at the civilian van driver, who shrugged and drove off without replying.

  Embassy functions were usually select affairs, but watching the guests arrive from the guardhouse, Corparal Lessard thought that the ambassador seemed to have invited everyone who had ever put a bandage on an injured Afghan mujahid and every Afghan commander who had taken a potshot at a Russian soldier. Corporal Lessard relieved the professor of his duty when he saw the first guest in a suit, a lanky man with a flowing beard. ‘OBL,’ the bearded man said, and raised his hand as if he wasn’t identifying himself to a party usher, but greeting an invisible crowd.