In the Light of What We Know: A Novel

by Zia Haider Rahman

  * * *

  Zafar’s conversation seemed that day to amble here and there, but as I come to consider it again, I find two strands joining together—the impossibility of correcting the misperception of optical illusions and the question of authority for truths. In his notebooks is this note: In order to catch even a fleeting glimpse of the world, we must break with our familiar acceptance of it. Is such a goal beyond our ability, beyond mine?

  My parents were born in West Pakistan, one half of an improbable state established at the partition of India in 1947 amid the hurried retreat of the British Raj. Pakistan consisted of two regions separated by all of twelve hundred miles, the width of modern India. East Pakistan was to become Bangladesh, where Zafar was born. These were, as he described them, two wheels unconnected by an axle, two wheels that were bound, and not only in hindsight, to go their own ways. The peoples did not share a language, they did not share the same food, they did not even share the same religious attitudes.

  In 1971, West Pakistan sought to suppress what it saw as rebellion in the East. My father and mother, then recently arrived in the U.S., opposed the militarism of the West Pakistani junta and made their feelings known to fellow Pakistanis in Princeton and farther afield.

  All this had come out before I went to Oxford. At a certain point I started to ask and my father answered, at first with a trickle of information. When I returned with more questions, he and my mother spoke about it extensively, even when, I must say, to recall those days caused visible discomfort.

  My father once asked Zafar where he was born. It was late in the spring of Zafar’s final year at Oxford, and we had both been invited to supper at my parents’ house. As I recall, the evening was unusually warm and so we sat in the garden, although every few minutes my mother asked whether we should move inside.

  By that time, the years of my parents turning their backs on Pakistan had long ended. Talk of Pakistan and events there had been brought back into the home. When my father asked Zafar where in Bangladesh he was born, I saw that the past, Pakistan’s past and his past, were not so distant, for it struck me that my father had never before asked Zafar what was an obvious and natural question, especially among South Asians. I had been foolishly slow about all this. The war of 1971 and the holocaust of West Pakistan’s conduct in East Pakistan, his criticism of his homeland, the ostracism and then my parents’ disengagement—all of this was a history of personal suffering that my father carried with him.

  I had never connected the dots before, but when I considered at that moment my father’s affection for Zafar, my friend who was born in Bangladesh, I could trace back the warmth of feeling to their very first encounter, and I saw that my father’s attitude had always possessed an aspect of hope.

  I was born in the northeast, in Sylhet, replied my friend.

  I know Sylhet, said my father.

  Your grandfather, said my mother, directing her comment to me, was stationed there briefly in 1943, in the dog days of the Raj. I believe it was a staging post for the British campaigns in Southeast Asia, she added. Sylhet was part of Assam in those days, I think, she said, turning to Zafar and my father for confirmation.

  It was, said my friend. As a matter of fact, in 1947, two parts of British India were allowed referendums to decide whether or not to join Pakistan. One was North-West Frontier Province, whose Pakhtoon majority threw in their lot with Pakistan rather than neighboring Afghanistan. The second was Sylhet, which was cut out of Assam after the population decided to join Pakistan’s eastern wing. But the referendum wasn’t quite a resounding victory for accession to Pakistan; in fact, the part of Sylhet where I was born voted against joining Pakistan and for remaining within Assam and therefore within India.

  This I did not know, said my father.

  Loyalties were quite divided but in a way that was masked by outcomes.

  That can’t have helped the people there in 1971, said my father.

  When East Pakistan seceded? I asked, keen to join the conversation.

  Yes, said my father.

  No, I expect it didn’t help, said my friend.

  Over the course of the evening, we talked about South Asia, about its troubled history, about my grandfather’s service for the British during the Second World War, and about the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, which led to the Indo-Pakistan War at the end of that year.

  My father explained that in 1971 he was a critic of West Pakistan’s military suppression of East Pakistan. Although he himself had nothing to apologize for, there was a note of regret in his voice.

  In the first few months of the war, he explained, he wrote a letter to The New York Times—we were in Princeton then—condemning West Pakistani aggression. To its credit, The Times published it. Why, he continued, should the editors have bothered? After all, this was a war in faraway lands of which they probably knew nothing and cared less. British necks, not American ones, carried the chain of colonial guilt, and America had nothing to do with Pakistan.

  But the truth of the matter was somewhat different, as we now know, said my father. In 1971, while the butchery was in full swing, Pakistan was a conduit for secret negotiations with China. In July, Kissinger detoured to China in total secrecy while visiting Pakistan to clear the way for Nixon’s visit. The Americans, you see, were relying on Pakistan as an intermediary, even as the slaughter was raging.

  We all listened to him quietly.

  On the morning of March 25, 1971, under plans drawn up on five sheets of paper by two majors in two days, the army put into action Operation Searchlight. Perhaps Zafar knows about this, said my father.

  But Zafar said nothing. I’m not even sure that my father was expecting a response. My father was talking as if talking were necessary, and perhaps Zafar had understood this. I wondered how much my friend already knew about those events. I myself was ignorant of so much about Pakistan. That day I told myself I would set aside time to remedy this, but the years came and went and I never did. I’d made the same promise to myself before but never kept it. Only now, prompted by Zafar’s return and the circumstances of work and marriage, not to mention the world’s new interest in that region, have I gone back over the past and taken time to discover more.

  Under Operation Searchlight, my father continued, every Hindu and every potential opposition element in Dhaka was to be killed. Journalists and lawyers were systematically hunted down. Doctors and engineers were killed, academics and other professionals.

  You spoke out against this, didn’t you? I interjected.

  Many others also did. There were American diplomats who wanted their government to condemn Pakistan, but Nixon was playing Cold War games.

  It must have been very difficult for you in the Pakistani community, said Zafar.

  It’s all past now, but yes, it was hard at the time. I’m afraid to say we were shunned by Pakistanis in Princeton and New York.

  We received threatening letters, said my mother. But, she continued, your father knew he had to speak out.

  My father poured us all some more tea. The garden air was perfectly still.

  When India intervened in December, I was relieved. Of course, I was sad for my countrymen, sad for the poor soldiers, as ever fighting wars for idiotic leaders, but I believed that it would be over soon, which it was, and that Pakistan would emerge from it all, from its own moral reckoning, a wiser and less belligerent nation. It was naïve idealism.

  My father stopped there and poured some milk into his tea. The rest of us were silent.

  But you know, even two days before the final surrender, when Pakistan had no hope of victory, the army carried out one last operation in Dhaka, rooting out as many intellectuals as they could and killing them.

  From her slight leaning toward him, you could tell that under the table my mother had taken my father’s hand.

  Well, the war ended, continued my father, but Pakistan’s troubles were only to carry on in one shape or another. As for Bangladesh, with three million dead, hundreds o
f thousands of women raped, and an entire generation of its professionals, its engineers, its doctors, its thinkers and doers exterminated, that poor country was hobbling on its infant feet.

  The estimates vary, said Zafar.

  How, asked my father, does the expression go? Truth is the casualty of war, slaughtered by victors and vanquished alike. I know they’ll argue till the cows come home about the numbers, but the estimates don’t vary enough to alter the magnitude of the horror.

  In the quiet, I became aware again of the garden. Late spring in Oxford, the first floral scents, the sound of the brook, and these things my father and Zafar discussed, they seemed to belong to another time and place. At the time, I knew nothing, of course, about the facts of Zafar’s origins. Now, when I look back on that evening, I am a little disturbed by what I see was Zafar’s enormous restraint. The discussion must have been close to the bone and yet he held back so much. It seems to me now that Zafar’s conversation had a tendency to take on an academic tone when it hit something emotionally charged, by way perhaps of a defense mechanism. If that’s not too facile.

  I haven’t read very much about this period, said Zafar, but one thing that did strike me when I read about India’s intervention is that the Indian military leadership was an extraordinarily diverse group of people.

  You mean Manekshaw and the rest? asked my father.

  Who was Manekshaw? I asked.

  Sam Manekshaw was the head of the army, my mother replied. He was a Parsee from Zoroastrian Iranians who migrated to India way back. And there was Jacob, of course. You meant Jacob also, didn’t you? she asked, looking at Zafar.

  My friend nodded.

  Jacob was an Indian Jew, his family originally from Iraq, said my mother. He was second-in-command of Indian forces in the east. And there was Jagjit Singh Aurora, a Sikh, who accepted the Pakistani instrument of surrender. Yes, it was quite a diverse bunch at the top of the Indian military.

  I wouldn’t let that diversity deceive you, said my father, speaking to Zafar.

  What do you mean? I asked.

  They were all really the same, Hindu, Jew, Sikh, Zoroastrian. They were all educated in the same military college founded by the British, you know?

  My father also studied with them, said my mother. Before the British left, she added.

  As a matter of fact, continued my father, there’s a fascinating letter you absolutely must read, from a Pakistani officer to his Indian counterpart on the eve of a conflict. The Pakistanis are under siege, they’ve suffered huge casualties, and their cause is lost, but despite this the Pakistani officer is goading the Indian officer to join battle. The language is superb. It’s in English, of course—it’s pure Victorian Rajput English. He writes to the Indian officer as if they both went to the same public school.* They’re all from the same social group. I’ve heard this before and, if you don’t mind my saying so, Zafar, everyone makes so much of this diversity in the Indian army, when really they are focusing far too much on religion and race and not seeing the reality, which is that these officers come from the same class. Good Lord, all the generals, even the Pakistani ones, went to military college together, under the British. In the most important respect of all, they weren’t remotely diverse.

  Some of the Indians and Pakistani generals had earlier fought side by side in the Second World War. Manekshaw fought alongside those formidable Gurkhas, now part of the British army.

  Manekshaw, my mother interjected, said that any soldier who says he’s not afraid of dying is a liar or a Gurkha. Anyway, all this will come out, my mother concluded. It’s only two decades since the war, but it will all come out, including the American role in it. They have a thirty-year rule, don’t they? I mean their official documents are released after thirty years, no?

  She looked around for confirmation, but no one seemed to know.

  So, she continued, American shenanigans in Pakistan will come out in 2001 and 2002 and then questions will be asked. These days no one needs Pakistan as an intermediary for anything.

  9

  Dressage and the Common Touch

  My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs. Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothing whatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows.

  —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

  Anyone thus compelled to act continually in accordance with precepts which are not the expression of his instinctual inclinations, is living, psychologically speaking, beyond his means, and may objectively be described as a hypocrite, whether he is clearly aware of the incongruity or not.

  —Sigmund Freud, “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death”

  Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

  —W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

  The conversation that day in the drawing room in the home of Penelope Hampton-Wyvern went on and on. Which is not to say that it dragged on; quite the contrary, when I consider how much felt communicated, I marvel at how scarcely two hours could have contained it. Perhaps the elites run to a different beat of time.

  When Emily came back into the room after her phone call, she said, Mother dear, Zafar won the Patrick Hastings scholarship.

  I was surprised by Emily’s apparent pleasure. When I informed her the week before that I’d been awarded the scholarship, a scholarship for which she, too, had applied, her face had turned white. Emily had offered no congratulations, and without a word she had walked away, and the following week she winced when she saw my name in the announcements at the back of The Times, near the crossword. I had thought then: What could she possibly envy? This was a woman who had had all the blessings of life, who had been born to wealth and privilege, had gone to the finest schools in the world, a tall and slender lady possessed of a sufficient beauty and the quietly confident charm of upper-class women. Beside her, others seemed shrill.

  But my understanding changed. I think that in Emily’s eyes, her proudest achievements had been tainted by the same social favoritism that cleared her path to those achievements, nepotism and favoritism, which give with one hand and take with the other. The esteem to which she felt she was entitled, by virtue of her talents, was always sullied, either because others saw only the privilege and access that aided her successes or because, even when they didn’t see those links, she did.

  Emily sought absolution and found in me a confessor, an outsider to whom to depose the truth of her tainted advantage, renouncing the lie without giving up its gains. She told me, for instance, that the panel that awarded her a scholarship to Harvard had included a family friend. I heard from her about the barrister tasked with deciding on her admission to chambers, a man who was at the time seeking promotion to the rank of Queen’s Counsel, a status that commands huge fees and on whose behalf Emily’s father was writing a testimonial. Did she think her confession necessary? Did conscience compel her to disclose the professional conflict (even at the cost of disclosing her father’s own indiscretion in telling her that he was writing a letter on behalf of her boss)? Was she driven to present the Emily she despised so that the better Emily could be loved? Loved by me?

  Sitting in the gaze of the three-way mirror on her dresser, Emily Hampton-Wyvern, I imagine now, saw herself as three Emilys, one who longed to be loved, respected, and admired for her notional self; another, a less-reflective Emily, who seized every advantage given to her and took others that weren’t; and a third Emily, one I shudder to think of, one whose existence I think even she could acknowledge only glancingly, one capable of cruelty darker than you or I can imagine.

  Righteous indignation might have been enough motivation on that particular afte
rnoon for Emily to advertise her new beau’s successes, independent and hard earned. Perhaps mine might have sanctified hers, by association. Nevertheless, something else was at play. Emily had a visceral drive to attack her mother. I know how we indict our parents for heinous crimes long before we see them as flawed human beings. And of course it’s easier to bring wisdom, the best of it borrowed, to account for the lives of others than to apply the same in the measure of one’s own. But I think Emily held her mother at fault for everything because she blamed her for her parents’ divorce, so that in all things her mother drew Emily’s ire. The privilege that robbed Emily of quiet enjoyment in her successes, while clearing her way to them, did after all come from birth, and the woman she called “Mother” was certainly responsible for that.

  So I’ve heard, said Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern. Did you know that Emily’s father won the award? Some years ago, of course.

  No, I did not, I said, glancing at Emily.

  Congratulations, said Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern. Shouldn’t we crack open some bubbly?

  Not at all—these things are random, I replied.

  Do you think five Court of Appeal judges would make random decisions?

  Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern, I thought, knew quite a bit about it already, more, in fact, than I’d told Emily. On the other hand, perhaps the award was judged in her husband’s day as it was in mine. The English bar is hardly famous for changing fast.

  Maybe their lordships felt pressured to spread these awards around a little, I replied.

  She meant to flatter me and I think, in retrospect, I might have been more gracious.

  What the dickens can you mean by that? she asked.

  Mother, you of all people can’t deny these awards always go to the same people, said Emily.

  I don’t. They go to those who deserve them.

  They go to the well connected, said Emily.

  That’s plainly not true, since Zafar was awarded one, answered her mother.