Moustache half burnt but still twirled
Farida Shaikh spots Zia ul-Haq rising, ghost-like, in a tale
On August 17, 1988, a plane carrying President Zia ul-Huq, American ambassador Arnold Raphel, US Brig. General Herbert Wassom, and 28 Pakistani military officers crashed. Nearly twenty years after this catastrophic event, Mohammed Hanif presents a military satire. The book is based on home grown conspiracy theories, 'that a bomb or a canister of nerve gas hidden inside a gift of mangoes was responsible for bringing down the C130.' And the personal experiences of the writer, the views and opinions of friends and relatives. 'There was no mystery surrounding it, no bigger mission, no courage involved.' Working with not an original plot, Hanif decided to pick up on the fated crash of the Hercules C130. 'Trying to unlock the mystery of how a super fit C130 aircraft could come tumbling down from the skies only four minutes after take-off.' Hanif had no luck getting any facts from any quarters. He decided to turn it into a fictional piece of work. 'The only fact in the book is the plane crash. The rest is all the product of his imagination….and no hidden agenda, no hatred of the army, no revealing of secrets that became known to him through Deep Throat or anything like that.' Mohammed Hanif, a graduate of the Pakistan Air Force Academy Risalpur, took to journalism and creative writing. Now head of the BBC Urdu service, he commented recently, 'We still know nothing about the incident.' Himself a pilot, Hanif added, 'We know the make of the aircraft, we know the passengers who were on board and we know that four minutes after it was confirmed, and there was a wave of relief across Pakistan.' The book starts with a sad joke about 'these bloody squadron leaders ….without any squadron to lead.' Medals are like fruit salad, given to a person because he is there, for hard labour, like tree planting week and 'a haj medal too.' Hanif's work is an excellent military satire; much of it is narrated in typical armed forces lingo that makes vivid the regimented academy and mess life of the officers. Central to the novel is the country's defense establishment and more than a decade-long period of autocratic rule that resembled medievalism 'prompting young Muslim men to join the jihad in Afghanistan.' General Zia confined himself to Army House, fearing to shift to President's House. Obsession with assassination ruled the twilight period of the military dictator's life. The book captures the period, June 1988, accurately, with hyperbolic military discipline. After eleven years in power he is convinced that someone is planning to kill him. On 15 June General Zia paused while reading the Quran, his index finger hesitated on the verse 21:87 --- And remember Zun-nus ,when he departed in wrath: he imagined that We had no power over him! But he cried through the depth of darkness, ' There is no god but thou: glory to thee: I was indeed wrong !' Two months and two days later, he overruled the security alert, left Army House and was killed in an aeroplane crash. Afterwards, a soldier searching for signs to confirm the evidence on a 'decapitated head with glistening hair parted in the middle… moustache half burnt but still twirled' also noticed a copy of the Quran intact, opened on the same surah. Throughout the book Hanif is clear in blaming General Zia for the Islamisation of Pakistan's society and armed forces. He uses the case of a woman called Zainab, to mock shariah law. General Zia picks up the clipping of the New York Times with the heading, Blind justice in the land of the pure. Zainab has been accused of fornicating and must be stoned to death. General Zia would call the ninety-year-old Qadi in Mecca when confronted by legal dilemma. But the truth is that Zainab is a blind woman who has been brutally raped by four men. To turn from accused into victim, she must either visually identify her attackers or find four Muslim male witnesses of sound mind to testify to her innocence Hanif refers to the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who he says never performed the haj, while General Zia awarded medals to serving officers who undertook the journey. The famous slogan, 'Faith, Unity, Discipline,' appeared meaningless, and too secular, close to being heretical. The founder had civilians in mind and not the armed forces. To replace the motto befitting the soldier's mission, Zia thought of Allah and jihad. "Before General Zia, yes, we were a struggling democracy but a fairly secular state... There were problems before him, but nobody thought that bringing in religious laws would be the solution. They were imposed on Pakistan and we are still struggling with the bizarre laws.' The list of suspects included fellow generals, CIA, ISI, torture and deplorable cell conditions, RAW and under officer Shigri who wanted to avenge the death of his father, a colonel who was General Zia's chosen man to run operations with the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Also the geopolitics of that period gained new heights with the presence of Osama bin Laden at a July 4 party hosted by the US ambassador in Islamabad. The publishers make quite a pitch about homosexuality, especially the relationship that the main protagonist Shigri shares with fellow cadet Obaid-ul-llah, called Baby O. Same-sex relationships are common in every system, and Hanif overlooks the "naivety" of the publishers using this for a sales pitch. "It just happens. That a friendship that is born out of being thrown into situations away from families. There is only one person you can completely share everything with and rely on. Most boys do go through that phase at some point of time at military academies, madrassas or boarding schools." That explains the homosexuality in the PAF officers' living quarters, Of the three publications of the work, the European edition cover has been the most creative, with the dynamite sticking out of the mango and an overfed crow perched on the fruit. The Indian edition has the face of the dead general. A very limited number of copies of this edition were available during June-July in Dhaka. More than being a military episode, the book is a hilarious and humorous narrative on the claustrophobic social conditions that defined the decade long autocratic Zia rule. Hanif is a brilliant writer with an unusual ability to see small details, and make sense of all he hears. (This writing is in memory of my husband, Late Wing Commander A.M.M.Enayetullah, GDP, who introduced T-33 for jet conversion flying at the Pakistan Air Force Academy, Risalpur, in 1962-63).
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