Zia in fact and fiction

After feasting on ripe mangoes, a crow takes off on a full stomach from an orchard on a hot June afternoon. The mangoes have dulled its senses and it is simply too lazy to notice the giant steel bird in front and flies straight into the engine of Pak One.

Its final shriek is heard by none, but it brings down the plane of General Zia-ul-Haq. The remains of the occupants — Brown, White, Punjabi, Pathan — will be picked up over the next few days from all over the Baluchistan desert. Meanwhile, state television has started playing verses of the Qoran recited by old Mullahs.

Sub-continental morality refuses to see any evil in the dead and demands such incidents be treated with the utmost solemnity. No joke on the dead, more so if he happens to be a national leader, is ever to be cracked. Obituaries must almost always gloss over the follies of the dead. Death, it would appear to anybody from a different part of the world, buries all the sins of a lifetime over here.

Good news is finally here. A Case of Exploding Mangoes breaks the straitjacket and treats public figures and death with the disdain and irreverence only western writers could have so far laid claim to. This is beyond any doubt the first literary effort of its kind in not just Pakistan but the whole of South Asia including “liberal” India.

Mohammed Hanif’s humour is wicked and his insights into the then military establishment incisive — he served in the Pakistani Air Force before becoming a journalist. Whiskey-drinking Generals and their hatchet men in Toyotas without licence plates is just the stuff readers have wanted to read for long. The result is a delightfully funny novel. Hanif takes his readers to a level of experience where any historian would dread to tread.

Having ruled Pakistan for 11 years, Zia is paranoid that his enemies want to kill him. He trusts none, except his head of security, searches guidance from the Qoran and seeks relief from the doctor of a Saudi prince on the constant itch on his buttocks.

His Begum he can scarcely tolerate, after more than three decades of marriage. There is an American journalist who helps Zia raise money to fight the evil Soviets in Afghanistan. So much so, the General gives up his shervani for a safari suit when she comes to meet him in a US hotel!

Unknown to Zia, his Intelligence chief keeps a tab on his movement — he even has a spy camera fitted behind Jinnah’s eye in a portrait in Army House! When the security chief, Brigadier Tahir Mehdi, discovers it, he pays for it with his life. His parachute on the national day parade fails to open and he falls with a thud in front of Zia.

Parallel to Zia’s paranoia and misadventures runs the first person account of Junior Officer Ali Shigri. He is the son of a Pakistani Army Colonel who has been on several missions to Afghanistan. After six drinks at their home in Shigri hill, he asks his son to throw into the fireplace a suitcase-full of dollars. The next morning he is found hanging from the ceiling fan.

Picked up by the ISI for abetting the escape of his room mate, Shigri is locked in a prison in the Lahore Fort, next to a Communist who once tried to organise a trade union for the country’s sweepers.

The plot thickens fast in the last few chapters. The entire brass along with the US Ambassador travels to a remote location at Baluchistan to see at work the latest American tanks for the Pakistani Army. The tanks do miserably, missing all the field targets. Yet, nobody utters a word of protest. Welcome to the world of military purchases!

The Zia years were a turning point in the history of Pakistan. After 150 years of the Great Game, the Russians finally began their southward march into the continent and occupied Kabul. It was only then that the US discovered Pakistan and Zia. This placed awesome power in the hands of the Pakistani Army. To justify their war against the Soviets, Zia fed liberally his subjects hardcore Islam. Hanif brings to life those very moments.

Hanif couldn’t have announced a more thumping arrival on the literary landscape — his book is an excellent opportunity to laugh at the misfortunes and their violent consequences that have visited the Indian sub-continent so very often.

A CASE OF EXPLODING MANGOES

Mohammed Hanif
Random House India
Pages: 298; price: Rs 395