General Zia brought back still again
Charles R. Larson finds a fictional account of some deaths riveting
It is never difficult to lampoon a particularly flamboyant politician. In the United States, Richard Nixon was the subject of numerous novels, both while he was in office and shortly thereafter. Bill Clinton was the hero of Primary Colors, published anonymously early in his presidency. George Bush has been satirized on stage in two devastating dramas--and certainly more are in the works. American (and Western) writers certainly have no lock on the tradition. One thinks immediately of Nigeria's greatest writers--Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka--both of whom have borrowed lead characters from real life. The list is actually endless, once it is opened up to Latin America and Asia. Where would Salman Rushdie be without the real-life models for the outrageous characters who appear in several of his novels? To the list of talented political satirists the name Mohammed Hanif (a Pakistani) must now be added. What's more, Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes pushes the boundaries of his story so close to reality that often the reader doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Enter Pakistan's General Zia ul-Haq, president and military ruler from 1977 until his death in August 1988. While Zia was still alive, Salman Rushdie attacked him mercilessly in his novel Shame (1983). Hanif has chosen another method: endless speculations about what and/or who killed General Zia when his airplane crashed near Bahawalpur on August 17, 1988. Others in the mysterious plane crash included the American ambassador, Arnold Raphel, resulting in innumerable conspiracy theories. Hanif, wisely, advocates no single theory. Rather, he suggests multiple explanations for General Zia's presumed assassination, a couple of them totally ludicrous and, therefore, the source of amusement for the reader. Hanif, it should be noted, graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy and must have heard numerous speculations about the general's death. The novelist has also worked as a journalist and as a playwright. The author's irreverent tone in a dazzling 'Prologue' provides an immediate context for what is about to unfold: "Third World dictators are always blowing up in strange circumstances, but if the brightest star in the U.S. diplomatic service (and that's what will be said about Arnold Raphel at the funeral service in Arlington Cemetery) goes down with eight Pakistani generals, somebody will be expected to kick ass…. 'The New York Times' will write two editorials, and sons of the deceased will file petitions to the court and then settle for lucrative cabinet posts. It will be said that this was the biggest cover-up in aviation history since the last biggest cover-up." Ostensibly, the major explanation for the airplane crash focuses on Ali Shigri, a rookie Pakistani Air Force pilot whose father, and one of Zia's colonels, purportedly committed suicide. Ali believes it was not a suicide and provides the initial motive for avenging his father's death by killing General Zia. As the events unfold, literally with hi-jinks that read more like farce than tragedy, the author cannot resist making barbs against not only Pakistan's leaders but everyone else too --- Gandhi, Nehru, the Russians, the Americans, the Saudi princes. Hanif is a master of the one-line put-down, often used as closure for individual chapters. From heads of state down, no one escapes his sarcasm. When Ali is temporarily incarcerated, he remarks about his country as a whole, "Our people get used to everything. Even the stench of their own garbage." Hanif is equally at home with characterisation and voice: the story is narrated from multiple points of view. Moreover, he can't resist the inclusion of scenes that have little to do with the actual plot but provide, instead, memorable vignettes of international diplomatic excess. There is an absolutely wild description of the American ambassador's Fourth-of-July party in Lahore that will leave anyone who has even observed such fanfare in hysterics. As the inevitable death of General Zia approaches, the author is relentless in whipping up still additional explanations for Ali's revenge plot/coup, a total tongue-in-cheek debacle. How all of this will play in Pakistan is the unanswered question. Still, credit must go to Mohamed Hanif for his exploding narrative.
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