It is a loo, that much is clear. There is a hole in the ground so full of indistinguishable faeces that bubbles are forming on its surface. The floor is covered with a thick slimy layer of some garish liquid. There is a water tap one foot above the ground but it has stayed dry for so long that it’s rusting. There is a grey WC with a broken chain, I open it and take a peek inside. There is two inches of water at: the bottom, reflecting its inner rusted orange surface.
My need to pee has disappeared forever. The stench is so strong that it’s difficult to think about anything else.
I stand against the wall and close my eyes.
They have a file on me somewhere, which says Under Officer Shigri can’t stand dirty bathrooms. I have done my jungle survival course, I have learned how to hunt snakes in the desert and quench my thirst. No one ever thought of designing a course on how to survive stinking bathrooms.
I charge at the door and start banging with both my clenched fists. “Open this bloody door. Get me out of this shithole. This place stinks.”
I bang my head on the door a couple of times and the stupidity of my actions becomes obvious to me. All the shouting takes the edge off the stench. It’s still the smell of piss and shit but somehow it’s become subdued. Or am I already getting used to it?
They are in no mood to interrogate me at this hour. This is going to be my abode for the night.
My back goes to the wall, I clench my toes in my boots and resolve to spend the night standing up. There is no way I am going to give these butchers the pleasure of watching me lie down in this pool of piss. There is scribbling on the wall but I can’t be bothered to read it. I can make out the words General Zia and his mother and sister, my imagination can connect the dots.
The idea that this place has hosted people who were angry enough at the General to write things about his mother and sister is puzzling. I might be down on my luck but the last time I checked I was still a trainee officer in uniform and the fact that they have put me in this shithole for civilians is the ultimate insult.
Colonel Shigri had tried to talk me out of joining the armed forces.
“The officer corps is not what it used to be,” he said, pouring himself the first whisky of the evening after returning from his umpteenth trip to Afghanistan.
“People who served with me were all from good families. No, I don’t mean wealthy families. I mean respectable people, good people. When you asked them where they were from, you knew their fathers and grandfathers were distinguished people. And now you’ve got shopkeepers’ sons, milkmen’s boys, people who are not good for anything else. I don’t want those half-breeds fucking up my son’s life.”
Daddy, you should see me now.
He knew in his heart that I was not convinced. He called me again when he was pouring his last whisky, his seventh probably. He was a three-whiskies-an-evening man but he felt unusually thirsty when he returned from his Afghan trips. There was bitterness in his voice now that I wasn’t familiar with at that point but which would become permanent.
“I have three war decorations, and wounds to prove them,” he said. “You go to any officers’ mess in the country and you’ll find a few people whose lives I saved. And now? Look at me. They have turned me into a pimp. I am a man who was trained to save lives, now I trade in them.”
He kept twirling his whisky glass in his fingers and kept repeating the word ‘pimp’ over and over again.
I doze off and dream of pissing in the cold clear stream that runs by our house on Shigri Hill. I wake up with my knees trembling and the grime from the floor seeping into my toes. The left side of my trousers is soaking wet. I feel much better.
Stay on your bloody feet. Stay on your bloody feet.
That is the first thing I tell myself before taking stock of my situation. What did they do to the renegade soldiers of the Mughal Army? A swift decapitation or being scrunched under the foot of an elephant would probably be a better fate than this.
The stench has grown fetid and hangs heavy in the air. I close my eyes and try to imagine myself back on Shigri Hill. The mountain air wafts in despite the iron doors and the underground prison and the walls of the Fort. It swirls around me, bringing back the smell of earth dug by goats’ hooves, the aroma of green almonds and the sound of a clear, cold stream gushing past. The silence of the mountains is punctuated by a humming sound, coming from a distance but not very far away. Somebody is singing in a painful voice. Before I can identify the voice a bucket of water is poured over my head and my face is pushed so close to a thousand-watt bulb that my lips burn. I don’t know who is asking the questions. It could be Major Kiyani. It could be one of his brothers without uniform. My answers, when I can muster them, are met with further questions. This is not an interrogation. They are not interested in my answers. The buggers are only interested in sex.
Did Lieutenant Bannon and Obaid have a sexual relationship?
They were very close. But I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Did you and Obaid have a sexual relationship?
Fuck you. No. We were friends.
Did you fuck him?
I can hear you. The answer is no, no, no.
He wasn’t in his bed the night before he disappeared. Do you know where he was?
The only person he could have been with is Bannon. They went on walks sometimes.
Is that why you marked him present in the Fury Squadron roll call?
I assumed he would come straight to the parade square. He did that occasionally.
Did Obaid have any suicidal tendencies? Did he ever talk about taking his own life?
I imagine a two-seater aeroplane going down on all its three axes and the hot white glare of the bulb begins to fade away.
He read poetry. He sang songs about dying but he never actually talked about dying. Not to me. Not in any suicidal way.
EIGHT
The large reception room in the Army House was reserved for receiving visiting foreign dignitaries from the USA and Saudi Arabia, the VVIPs. After winning his air dash from Saudi Arabia to Islamabad, Prince Naif was seated on a velvet sofa, smoking Marlboro Reds and boasting about the sound barrier that his F16 broke on his way to dinner. “Our brother Bill is probably still flying over the Arabian Sea.” Laughing, the Prince raised both arms and mimed the flight of a tired bird.
“Allah’s glory,” said General Zia. “It’s all His blessing. I went on a ride in one of ours and my old bones were aching for days. You, by the grace of Allah, are still a young man.”
General Zia kept looking out of the corner of his eyes at Dr Sarwari, who had accompanied Prince Naif at his request but seemed to have been forgotten in Prince Naif’s victory celebrations. General Zia wanted to have a word with the royal doctor about his condition.
General Zia’s condition, although he himself preferred to call it an itsy-bitsy itch, had been messing up his prayer routine. He had always been very proud of the fact that he was the kind of Muslim who could do his ablutions for his morning prayers and say his late-night prayers with the same ablutions. All the things that break an ablution had been eliminated from his daily routine; garlic, lentils, women who didn’t cover their heads properly. But since he had confined himself to the Army House this itch had started.