A child bolts out of a golden, harvest-ready wheat-field and Major Kiyani presses the car horn and keeps it pressed for a mile.
The traffic is thin at this time of the evening, mostly trucks and night buses, an occasional tractor with a few tonnes of sugar cane on an overloaded trolley with some urchins following along, trying to pull out a sugar cane or two. We pass a bull cart crawling along the side of the road; the pair of bulls pulling it are blinded by our car’s headlights; the dog walking by the cart yelps just once before ducking to avoid the speeding monster.
Slowly, very slowly, answers begin to emerge in my head, answers to the questions that Major Kiyani will inevitably throw at me. He needs to find out what I know. I need to make sure that every bit I give him widens the gap between what he knows and what he would like to know. The premise for my optimism is a philosophical notion: Major Kiyani would not be taking me away if he knew. I wouldn’t be sitting on a starched white cover of the comfy seat of this Corolla listening to ghazals, if he knew. I would be in the back of a jeep, handcuffed and blindfolded and charge-sheeted and sentenced by now. Or maybe hanging from my own bed sheet in my own dorm.
Where is Major Kiyani from?
Inter Services Intelligence.
What does the agency do?
Investigate.
What do they investigate?
What they don’t know.
Before falling off the edge of the cliff, I am sure, everyone tells himself a story which has a happy ending. This is mine.
The optimism goes straight to my bladder and I want Major Kiyani to get us to our destination, wherever it is. The road signs tell me that we are headed towards Lahore, but there are half a dozen turns in the road leading to various parts of the country and Major Kiyani probably travels in the opposite direction to where he wants to take you. We sit for a long time in a traffic jam caused by roadblocks set up by the police, as a convoy of black limousines crawls past.
“Everything I know about this profession your dad taught me,” he says, looking ahead. “But it seems you never learned anything from him. Americans are trouble. I know your friend Bannon is behind this mad adventure.”
“Then why isn’t he travelling with you instead of me?” I ask.
“You know why,” he says. “He is an American, our guest. He shouldn’t be mixed up with the likes of you. Drill is for the parade square. What he does off the square is my business.”
“Have you found the plane?” I say, careful not to mention Obaid.
He turns his face towards me; a truck comes at us; I jump in my seat and hold the dashboard. With the slightest movement of the steering wheel, he swerves the car into a service road and parks at a roadside restaurant. He opens the glove compartment, takes the gun and tucks it under his shirt.
He opens the car door then looks back at me. “You and your friend probably think you invented buggery, but it existed long before you started wearing this uniform.”
He orders food. I order dal, he asks for chicken karahi. “Make his special,” he tells the waiter. “Our young man needs nourishment.” We eat in silence. The food is too spicy for my mountain tastes. I need to go to the loo. I am not sure whether I should just get up and go or ask for his permission.
I get up, pointing towards the loo. He signals with his eyes for me to keep sitting. “Maybe you should wait. We won’t be long.”
I look at the turbaned man guarding the restaurant loo and think maybe he is right. Roadside restaurants’ loos are generally filthy and I’d rather be relieving myself in an open field under a star-filled sky rather than in a room full of piss and the smell of spicy shit.
A waiter hovers around us after we finish our dinner, expecting further orders. Major signs his name in the air, the waiter brings the bill, Major scribbles something on it and gets up to leave without paying anything.
He must be a regular here, I think. He must have an account with these people.
The rest of the journey is a battle between the muscles that control my bladder and Major Kiyani’s sudden fit of patriotism. I nod my head enthusiastically when he reminds me that the last time anyone tried to disappear with a plane the country broke into two. I squeeze my thighs and practically jump in my seat when he talks about my dad’s illustrious career. “You know what they said about your dad? That he was one of the ten men standing between the Soviets and the Free World.” I nod my head enthusiastically when he goes on and on about the sacrifices that invisible soldiers like him and my dad have to make for the sake of national security.
I squeeze my thighs. I want to say, “Can I pee first and then we can save the world together?” Our car takes its final turn into a narrow road that leads to the majestically sombre gate of the Lahore Fort.
In the historic city of Lahore, the Fort is a very historic place. It was built by the same guy who built the Taj Mahal, the Mughal King Shahjahan. He was thrown into prison by his own son, a kind of forced premature retirement. I have never been to the Fort but I have seen it in a shampoo ad.
Do I look like the kind of person who needs a lesson in history at midnight? The Fort is clearly closed to tourists. I am sure the Major can get after-hours access anywhere, but shouldn’t he be taking me to an interrogation centre or a safe house or wherever it is that he takes people when he wants to have a chat?
As the car approaches the gate two soldiers emerge from the shadows. The Major slides his window down and stretches his neck out but doesn’t speak. The gate, probably built to accommodate an elephant procession, opens slowly and reveals an abandoned city dreamed up by a doomed king.
Parts of the Fort are dimly lit, revealing bits of its stone walls so wide that horses can gallop on them, gardens so vast and green that they disappear and appear again after you have driven for a while. The Court for the Commons and the Ladies’ Courtyard stand in their crumbling, faded glory. I wonder where the famous Palace of Mirrors is. That’s where they did the shampoo advert.
The only signs of life in this deserted sprawl of useless splendour are two army trucks with their headlights on and engines idling. Major Kiyani parks the car beside these trucks. We get out of the car and start walking towards the Court for the Commons. It’s dimly lit and I can’t really see the source of the light. I expect spear-carrying Mughal soldiers to appear from behind the pillars to take us to the King, who, depending on his mood, would either ask us to join in his late-night debauchery or have our heads chopped off and thrown from the walls of the Fort.
Major Kiyani takes an abrupt turn and we start descending a stairway made of concrete, definitely not built by the Mughals. We enter a vast, empty hall that looks eerily like an aviation hangar. Right in the middle of the hall, sitting under what must be a thousand-watt bulb, is a subedar major who gets up and salutes Major Kiyani as we approach his metal table, which is piled high with heaps of bulging yellow folders.
Major Kiyani nods his head but doesn’t speak a word. He pulls up a chair, grabs a file and starts flicking through the pages as if oblivious to my presence.
Then he remembers.
“Show Under Officer Shigri to the toilet,” he says without looking up from his file. I walk behind the Subedar Major down a well-lit corridor lined with iron doors on both sides, with stencilled white numbers on them. There is absolute silence in the corridor, but behind the doors I can hear the muted snores of dreaming men. At the end of the corridor there is a small rusted iron door without a number. The Subedar Major produces a key, opens the lock and moves aside. I open the door and take a step inside. The door hits my back and is locked behind me. That terrible smell of the closed toilet which has not seen a drop of water for ages welcomes me, my head hits the wall, a thousand-watt bulb is switched on. So bright is the light, so overpowering the stench, that I cannot see anything for the first few moments.