by Mohsin Hamid
At equal remove, but unknown to you, and in the opposite direction along the coast, is the residence of the pretty girl. She is sitting beside her lap pool, in the shade of a tree, wearing a fawn swimsuit and retro dark glasses while sipping a sugar-free cordial through a bendable straw. She has just returned from a journey through a series of peninsulas and archipelagos, the latest of the monthlong procurement trips she now embarks upon semi-annually, which typically require, for each week of travel, at least two in visa processing.
She and you reconnect on your visit, tangentially at least, through an executive who works in his family’s freight-forwarding business by day and is a fixture of the contemporary art and fashion scenes by night. In his office, as he tells you how lucky you are that your bureaucrat intervened with colleagues in customs to speed your goods through import inspections and minimize your demurrage charges, you see on his desk a photo of him at an award ceremony with a group of celebrities. You ask seemingly casually if he knows the pretty girl, and he says, why, yes, as a matter of fact he does.
Through him you learn, for she has not been on TV in some time, that she is well, and indeed busy, running a high-end home furnishings boutique, and also, since he has a keen eye for such things and knows at once your claim of being merely an old acquaintance is less than the entire truth, that she is the lover of a prominent and recently widowed architect.
For you these remarks bring her clearly into focus, even if that focus is a product only of memory and imagination, and you feel strongly, exactly what you are not sure, whether happiness or sadness or neither or both, but strongly, a breath-halting feeling, a sensation, like asthma, of being unable to empty your lungs. Her own response is not dissimilar, when, a few weeks later, the freight forwarder spies her at an afternoon seaside reception and glides up to her, eager to chat, certain she will be more than surprised at the name he is about to let slip, as by a gurgling fart during a passionate embrace.
So the pretty girl discovers that you are a father, the juxtaposition ironic, in a way, though she never desired children, for she has recently entered menopause, and also that your business is flourishing, and further that you continue to have a sexy little something about you, a rustic manliness, a touch of the uncouth, a hip-shaking coarseness common to people from your inland backwater, and so filthily hot and lacking around here. She smiles at this description and asks for more, but decides against divulging the details of her shared past with you, if for no other reason than that she has not discussed it with anyone before, and after all these years it seems unnatural to start. She says only that you and she had a thing, once upon a time.
She herself is tolerably content. Her transition from television chef to designer-kitchen showroom owner to retailer of one-of-a-kind international furniture and expensive bric-a-brac has not been without its moments of difficulty. But now her establishment is humming along nicely, she has an excellent assistant, a well-educated and divorced woman free to accompany and translate for her on her lengthy travels abroad, travels the pretty girl enjoys, seeing them as adventures, and as for her romantic entanglements, well, they may not have been especially fiery of late, but at least they do persist.
As she speaks of you with the freight forwarder, watching two traditionally clad waiters struggle to reposition a massive orchid sculpted of ice, you too are watching men toil away, standing at the construction site of your water-mining plant with your brother-in-law at your side. Despite the modest size of your project, he has had hard hats issued to your employees, an innovation you value because it adds a veneer of professionalism. Your scalp sweats under this plastic second skull, the sun bearing down mercilessly, and rivulets of perspiration sting your eyes and stroke saltily the corners of your mouth.
Below your feet is the ever-dropping aquifer, punctured by thousands upon thousands of greedily sipping machine-powered steel straws. Your installation is not the largest of its kind, but it is brighter than most others, shiny and pristine and new. Yet, standing there, for an instant you catch a whiff of something quite inexplicable, or at least you think you do, a scalding breeze carrying to your nose the blood-like aroma of rust.
Today your wife will doubtless be intervening with her women’s group to help another beaten spouse or homeless divorcee or disinherited widow, actions that are all for the good and have nothing to do with you, but contain a degree of implicit reproach. You shut your eyes, briefly seized by a strange regret, maybe for the delays to this project, or for the state of your marriage, or for becoming so late a father to your son, for being, in all likelihood, destined to overlap too limitedly with the span of his life. But the mood passes. You master yourself, spit a clot of parched sputum into the dirt, and carry on, exhorting your welding crew to make good time.
NINE
PATRONIZE THE ARTISTS OF WAR
We’re all information, all of us, whether readers or writers, you or I. The DNA in our cells, the bioelectric currents in our nerves, the chemical emotions in our brains, the configurations of atoms within us and of subatomic particles within them, the galaxies and whirling constellations we perceive not only when looking outward but also when looking in, it’s all, every last bit and byte of it, information.
Now, whether all this information seeks to comprehend itself, whether that is the ultimate goal to which our universe trends, we obviously don’t yet know for certain, though the fact that we humans have evolved, we forms of information capable of ever-increasing understandings of information, suggests it might be the case.
What we do know is that information is power. And so information has become central to war, that most naked of our means by which power is sought. In modern combat, the fighter pilot, racing high above the earth at twice the speed of sound, absorbs different streams of information with each eye, radar reflections and heat signatures with one, say, and the glint of sunlight on distant metal with the other, a feat requiring years of retraining of the mind and sensory organs, a painstaking human rewiring, or upgrade, if you will, while on the ground the general sees his and disparate other contemporary narratives play out simultaneously, indeed as the emergingmarket equity trader does, and as the rapid-fire TV remote user and the multiple-computer-window opener do, all of us learning to combine this information, to find patterns in it, inevitably to look for ourselves in it, to reassemble out of the present-time stories of numerous others the lifelong story of a plausible unitary self.
Perhaps no one does this with more single-minded dedication or curatorial ferocity than those at the apex of organizations entrusted with national security. These artists of war are active even when their societies are officially at peace, quests for power being unrelenting, and in the absence of open hostilities they can be found either hunting for ever-present enemies within or otherwise divvying up that booty always conveniently proximate to those capable of wanton slaughter, spoils these days often cloaked in purchasing contracts and shareprice movements. To partner in such ventures is to be invited to ride the great armor-plated, signal-jamming, depleted-uranium-firing helicopter gunship to wealth, and so it is only natural that you are at this moment considering clambering aboard.
From the perspective of the world’s national security apparatuses you exist in several locations. You appear on property and income-tax registries, on passport and ID card databases. You show up on passenger manifests and telephone logs. You hum inside electromagnetically shielded military-intelligence servers and, deep below pristine fields and forbidding mountains, on their dedicated backups. You are fingertip swirls, facial ratios, dental records, voice patterns, spending trails, e-mail threads. And you are one of a pair of suited figures seated in the rear of a luxury automobile now approaching a combat-uniformed MP at an entry checkpoint to your city’s cantonment.
This MP has only seconds to determine which vehicles to pull aside for his unit to search. Trucks, buses, and those cars that have three or more exclusively male passengers under the age of fifty are mandatorily inspected. For all others he relies o
n instinct and also on randomness, predictability being a fatal flaw in any defensive system. He decidedly does not like the looks of you. Wealthy civilians, in his view, are a subcategory of thief. They have robbed this country blind for generations. But wealthy civilians are also likely to have contacts with generals, and so they stand partly outside the otherwise clear five-tier hierarchy of officer, NCO, enlisted man, loyal citizen, enemy. His eyes scan your expression, taking in your calm air of control, and the expressions of your colleague and of your driver. He waves you through.
A series of CCTV cameras observes various stages of your progress through the cantonment. Through their monochromatic optical sensors the expensive metallic finish of your sedan dulls to a ratty gray. Behind you are scenes little changed since independence, images of well-manicured lawns, mess halls with regimental insignia, trees painted waist-high in skirts of white. Homes of the descendants of corps and division commanders abut those of oligarchic commercial magnates, and everywhere is a sense of unyielding order and arboreal grace increasingly atypical of your city, much of the rest of which seethes outside this fortified garrison enclave like some great migratory horde besieging a royal castle.
Another unit of MPs sees you exit the cantonment, and ten minutes later private wardens watch as you pass below the arch that signals the start of an elite housing society marketed, developed, and administered by one of a comprehensive network of military-related corporations. At the headquarters of this enterprise the gaze of a rooftop sniper follows you and the brother-in-law who is your deputy and chief operating officer as you both dismount. Inside, a retired brigadier shakes your hands, leads you to the boardroom, and tells you with proprietary pride about their latest scheme.
“Phase ten is big,” he says. “It’s bigger than phases one to five put together. Bigger than seven and eight combined. Bigger even than six, and six was huge. Ten is a milestone. A flagship. With ten we’re taking it to the next level. Ten will have its own electricity plant. No blackouts in ten.”
He pauses, waiting for a response.
“Incredible,” your brother-in-law offers. “Unbelievable.”
“But that’s not all. Other premier housing societies are installing electricity plants. We’re rolling them out across all our phases, in all our cities. No, what’s going to make ten unique, and why you’re here, is water. Water. In ten, when you turn the tap, you’ll be able to drink what comes out of it. Everywhere. In your garden. In your kitchen. In your bathroom. Drinkable water. When you enter phase ten, it’ll be like you’ve entered another country. Another continent. Like you’ve gone to Europe. Or North America.”
“Without leaving home,” your brother-in-law says. “Exactly. Without leaving home. You’ll still be here. But in a secure, walled-off, impeccably maintained, litup-at-night, noise-controlled, perfectly regulated version of here. An inspiration for the entire country, and for our countrymen abroad too. Where even the water is as good as the best. World class.”
“Fabulous.” Your brother-in-law salutes for added emphasis.
“Can it be done?”
“Yes.”
The brigadier smiles. “Right answer. We know it can be done. What we want to know is who can do it. Who can be our local partner. We’re setting up a water subsidiary. We’ll have top international consultants. But we need someone who can execute, someone with a track record in this city. Which is why you’re on our shortlist. It’ll be our brand, our face to the public. Naturally. But we can’t do it alone, not yet. So there’s excellent money to be made working with us, especially while we’re getting up to speed.”
“We’re thrilled to have the chance.”
“Are you?” The brigadier looks pointedly in your direction, where you have thus far been absorbing the conversation in silence. He recognizes a canny old hand when he sees one, and he believes he knows what you are thinking. There are serious technical challenges, not least that the aquifer below the city is plummeting and becoming more contaminated every year, poisonous chemicals and biological toxins seeping into it like adulterants into a heroin junkie’s collapsing vein. Powerful water extraction and purification equipment will be needed, plus, in all likelihood, a plan to draw water from canals intended for agricultural use, fiercely contested water itself laden with pesticide and fertilizer runoff.
Yet he suspects it is not these obstacles giving you pause. No, the brigadier thinks, you are wary because you know full well that when we military-related businesses advance into a market, the front lines change rapidly. We get permissions no one else can get. Red tape dissolves effortlessly for us. And reappears around our competitors. So we can move fast. Which makes us dangerous commercial adversaries. But it also makes our projects more exciting. And in this case we are going ahead whether you partner with us or not. Better, surely, to be close to us than to be yet another incumbent we swat aside. Besides, at least in the near term, we are simply offering too much cash for you to walk away.
“Yes,” you say inevitably, and as expected.
The brigadier nods. “Very good. We’ll have the RFP delivered to you by the start of next week. Gentlemen.”
He rises and the meeting comes to an end.
That evening one of your four pump-action-shotgunwielding uniformed security guards leaves the kiosk abutting your steel gate for a patrol along the perimeter of your property. In two twelve-hour shifts of two, along with barbed-wire-topped boundary walls and a personal nine-millimeter automatic in your locked desk drawer, guards are a key component of the measures you have taken to defend your mansion against would-be robbers, kidnappers, and underhanded business rivals, the constant threats your wealth engenders. This guard, a retired infantryman, subsists on a combination of his wages from a protection-services firm, his holiday bonuses from you, and his military pension. In exchange for the last, or perhaps out of a less transactional patriotism, his eyes and ears remain at the disposal of national security, making him a tiny part of those vast hives of clandestine human assets abuzz not just in your city but in all cities and in all countries, throughout the world.
At this moment his eyes and ears, or his eyes, rather, the distance rendering his ears of somewhat diminished utility, would allow him to report that you are visible through a window, seated at the dining table of your wing of the house, awaiting, as is usual at this hour, the arrival of your son, who can be seen traversing the foyer that separates your wing from that of your wife. She is a lady well regarded for the charitable religious nonprofit she runs, and when the guard is working the day shift, by far his most frequent tasks are receiving the registered envelopes that stream to her with donations and opening and shutting the gate for her spirited band of piously attired female volunteers.
It is common knowledge among your guards and other household employees that the split between you and your wife extends beyond the floor plan of your house, encompassing domains sexual and financial as well. Your wife invariably sleeps alone, and insists on paying her bills herself, which she does out of the modest salary she draws from her nonprofit. She has been overheard by her cleaning girl saying that she will cohabit with you only until your child reaches adulthood, a situation now just a couple of years off, and for the guard, who is aware of this plan, she cuts a devastatingly romantic figure, chaste and determined, the sight of her undyed graying hair, a lock of which occasionally slips into view, reliably bringing his venerable heart to a canter.
The guard watches you embrace your son as the boy arrives for dinner. Your son is tall for his age, already almost as tall as you are, but slender and effeminate, an agonizingly antisocial teenager who spends inordinate amounts of time self-exiled in his room. Yet you gaze upon him as though he were a champion, strong of body and keen of mind, a born leader of men. In the one hour each day that you dine with your son, it is said often in the household, you smile and laugh more than in the other twenty-three.
Through a crack in the curtains of your study, later that night, the guard sees you turn on a
lamp and settle out of sight, alone. Your bearer enters with a tray containing your cholesterol and blood-thinning medications, a tablespoon of psyllium husk, and a glass of water. He leaves empty-handed. The light remains on, but from the guard’s vantage point there are no further signs of your activity.
Online, however, you can be tracked, and indeed you are tracked, as are we all, as you proceed through your e-mails, catch up on the news, perform a search, and wind up lingering, incongruously, on the web site of a furnishings boutique. There is little there, the site not offering ordering facilities or even a catalog. It merely has a home page with a few photos and text, a contact section with phone numbers, address, and a map, and a brief biography of the owner, a woman in her sixties, judging from her picture, with an unorthodox and varied career. All in all, an odd spot in the ether to capture the attention of a water industrialist. A log of your internet wanderings indicates you have not visited it before. Nor, subsequently, are you recorded visiting it again.
The web site in question is registered in another city, to the residential address of its owner, who like many, perhaps most, computer users has never concerned herself overmuch with such matters as firewalls, system updates, or anti-malware utilities. Accordingly, her laptop, sleek and high-end machine though it is, is simply teeming with digital fauna, much in the same manner as its keyboard is teeming with unseen bacteria and microorganisms, except that among its uninvited coded squatters is a military program that allows the machine’s built-in camera and microphone to be activated and monitored remotely, something no single-celled protozoan could likely pull off, transforming the laptop, in effect, into a covert surveillance device or, depending on the intent of the administrator of its monitoring software, into an originator of voyeuristic striptease and porn.
Currently, however, nothing so titillating seems to be in the offing. The computer sits open on a counter, and through its camera a woman can be seen by herself at a low table, finishing off a meal and a bottle of red wine. The pretty girl sits attentively, not looking at her hands or her food, but music is audible, and then conversation, and then a rainstorm, until it becomes obvious that she is watching a film. When it is over she turns off the lights and disappears from view. A running faucet can vaguely be heard. She emerges into her bedroom, visible through its open doorway, wearing pajamas and cleansing her face with a series of round cotton pads and liquid from a transparent vial. She shuts her bedroom door, locking it, the sound of a sliding bolt registering on her laptop’s microphone. A lamp is extinguished and the glow seeping out around her door frame comes to an end.
