“You are coming in with me, Under Officer,” he says.
“My clothes are not clean, sir.” I trot out the same half-truth that I have used for months to avoid compulsory prayers.
“Don’t worry, we just need to talk.”
My stomach pulls a negative g. Sun Tzu knew his element of surprise, but he never wrote about what it felt like to be on the receiving end of it.
The mosque is empty at this time except for a few cadets dressed in white shalwar qameez and skullcaps and absorbed in what seems like a very intense game of cards. I don’t recognise their faces but I can tell from their clothes that they are the latest victims of the ongoing starch war. Our Commandant wants everyone to wear double-starched uniforms, even in June, which leads to regular outbreaks of rashes and ugly skin infections. There are always long lines of cadets at the sickbay, legs straining hard to avoid the razor-sharp creases of the trousers, hands trying to itch in impossible places. The Medical Squadron considers it a health hazard and has hit back with its own Standard Operating Procedures for Dealing with the Outbreak of an Epidemic. Anyone who gets a skin infection because of his starched uniform gets a prescription which says ‘no starched uniforms’. The Commandant won’t have any non-starched uniforms on active duty and he can’t really allow them to stay in their dorms, so they have all been ordered to spend their day in the mosque.
“Is that a punishment or a reward?” Obaid used to ask. The only clear winner in this running feud between the medical establishment and our Commandant is God Himself. The mosque these days has more worshippers than ever before.
When our boys in white see the 2nd OIC approaching they scramble to collect their cards and coins and transform themselves from a bunch of one-rupee rummy-rascals to devout young men. 2nd OIC gives them an appreciative look as if merely by pretending to pray they have absolved themselves in his and Allah’s eyes. I don’t get it even when he picks up a copy of the Quran from the book racks along the wall in the main prayer hall, hands it over to me and stands there staring. I wait for his next command.
“Now put your right hand on it and tell me that you don’t know why Obaid went AWOL. Tell me you have no knowledge of his whereabouts.”
If I wasn’t in the mosque I could have told him where to go.
“I can’t swear, sir, not on the Quran,” I say.
“So you do know about this,” he says. “By refusing to swear you are admitting your guilt? Look, it’s just you and me and our Allah.” He puts his own right hand on the Quran. “Tell me the truth and I swear on the holy Quran I’ll get you out of this mess.”
“My father made me promise never to swear on the Quran, even if I was telling the truth. In fact, specially if I was telling the truth,” I say in a weary voice, my fingers numb around the velvet cover on the Quran.
“Your father never said a prayer in his life,” he says.
“You are right, sir, but he was a very spiritual man. He respected the sacred Quran and never involved it in worldly affairs,” I say, wondering how Colonel Shigri would have liked being described as a spiritual man.
The Colonel did go through a hectic spiritual phase during which he terminated his whisky sessions at midnight and spent the rest of his nights reciting the Quran. And he did tell me never to swear on the holy book. But his spiritual journey didn’t last long enough for anyone to know whether it was, in his own words, ‘a change or for a change’. His copy of the Quran was lying open on his study desk the morning he was found hanging from the ceiling fan by his own bed sheet.
Ceiling fan.
Bed sheet.
His eyes popping out of their sockets.
The Colonel weighed a bloody ton. Where were the laws of physics?
“Some people insist on digging their own grave.” 2nd OIC snatches the Quran from my hand and puts it back on the shelf.
“Sir, I really don’t know, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help you find out,” I say, trying desperately to inject my own element of surprise into the proceedings.
“Don’t f—,” he starts to say, but realises that he is in the mosque.
“Get out and fall in outside the mosque,” he shouts at the starch victims.
“I don’t know why the Commandant wants to involve ISI in this,” I say. “Because, sir, you know that Obaid is my friend and I want to find out as much as you do where he went and why,” I say, trampling over everything Sun Tzu has taught us trainee warriors.
“Shut your trap,” he barks. “I am not interested in your sentiments.”
He goes out and has a go at the cadets in white.
“You are turning God’s house into a bloody gambling den…”
One good thing about visiting the mosque is that sometimes it can calm even sinners like me. It is in His hands now, Colonel Shigri used to say in his spiritual phase.
Second night in the cell and I am already feeling at home. Dinner is served. I slip the first-termer a five-rupee note and busy myself with chicken curry, rice and cucumber salad. By the time I finish, the duty cadet is back with a bottle of Coke and two Gold Leaf cigarettes. I finish the bottle in two long gulps and light a Gold Leaf, saving the other one for later.
“You got any magazines?” I ask the duty cadet.
He disappears and returns with a year-old copy of Reader’s Digest. I was hoping he’d bring something less intellectual. But then prisoners can’t choose their own entertainment. The duty cadet leaves with the dinner tray, forgetting to take the matchbox from me.
One day this asshole is going to be court-martialled.
Stubbing out the Gold Leaf, I take off my shoes and belt and shirt and settle in for the night. I read ‘Humour in Uniform’ first. Nothing very funny. The only female pictures are in a black-and-white photo feature about Nancy and Ronald Reagan entitled ‘When They Were Young’. Even at twenty-eight she had the face of an old cat’s arse. The Academy censors have done a good job of obliterating her non-existent breasts with a black marker. Even in times as desperate as these I skip the photos and start reading the condensed version of Escape from Colditz.
I leave it halfway through and compare my situation with Lieutenant Anthony Rolt’s. It’s obvious to me that I am worse off. Even if I do make a hang-glider out of this foam mattress and some matchsticks, where the hell am I going to jump from?
I flick the pages in a last attempt to find inspiration. In ‘Life is Like That’ there is a five-line anecdote about someone called Sherry Sullivan who washed her car wearing an overall and her neighbour mistook her for her husband. The name does something and my armies are suddenly on the march. I avoid the hole in the mattress. These holes are like highway whores, filthy and tired.
My encounter with Sherry Sullivan ends in such violent throes of passion that the second Gold Leaf is forgotten and I enter a sleep so blissful that in my technicolour dreams the 2nd OIC is shining my boots and the Commandant is polishing my sword with the tip of his tongue. Captain Rolt’s hang-glider lands safely in Trafalgar Square.
The morning is even more glorious. I am woken by a waft of Old Spice. Loot Bannon is standing at the door. “Wakey-wakey, dear inmate.”
There are about one thousand and fifty things that I need to ask him. But he is in too cheerful a mood.
“Nice pad you got here,” he says.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I say. “You found yourself a new Silent Drill Commander?” My attempt at sarcasm is ignored. I light up my second Gold Leaf.
“I see your supply lines are secure.” His turn to be witty.