To think that the hands that cradled you also put electrical wires to someone’s testicles is not a very appetising thought. A shudder of loathing runs through my body. My stomach feels bloated.
“They put me back in this dungeon after his transfer. He believed in dialogue. The only man in khaki I have had a decent conversation with. I wonder if he got his promotion or—”
“He is dead. He hanged himself.” I want Secretary General to shut up. He does for a few moments.
“He didn’t seem like the kind of person—” Secretary General’s voice comes out all broken.
“I know,” I say curtly. “They made it seem like he hanged himself.”
“How do you know? They have brainwashed you into believing anything they want you to believe.” I don’t like his dismissive tone.
“Just because I am wearing a uniform, just because they gave me chicken to eat, you seem to think I am a fool. You think I am just another idiot in uniform. Listen to me, Mr Secretary General, I don’t need your lectures. There are certain things in life called facts, empirical realities I think you call them. I do not need to look at some little red book written by a Chink in a funny hat. I don’t need any communist pamphlets to tell me what the facts of my life are. I can find them for myself.”
I slam the brick back in the wall and tell myself that it’s over. I don’t need lectures from a civilian nutter any more. I don’t want one more loser telling me that Colonel Shigri changed his life.
Shirtless, I lie back on the floor. The sand and stone underneath my naked back feel good. I grab sand in both my hands and play the sand clock; I let it trickle out of my fists slowly, trying to coordinate the flow from both my hands. It is difficult, but I have time to practise.
There is a blind spot behind you, announced a red banner, one of the many dotting the flight line to mark the annual Flight Safety Week. HIDDEN HAZARDS HURT, screamed the giant orange letters on the tarmac. There was a bright new take-off line painted down the middle of the runway and new yellow markings for taxi routes. Even the rusting cut-out of the rooster on the windbag sported a new bronze crown.
“Our guest must be getting bored. Take him for a joyride on your next flight,” the Commandant suggested after unveiling a plaque carrying this year’s motto for the flight safety campaign: Safety is in the eye of the beholder.
“Love to,” Bannon said. “Show me some of that pilot shit you do.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll arrange a picnic for you in the skies.”
It was time to run some safety checks on Colonel Shigri’s past.
I placed an order with Uncle Starchy for one of his specials that evening. Uncle Starchy produced a crumpled cigarette from under his shirt: “Smoke one every day and you’ll never get a headache and your wife will never complain.” Uncle Starchy winked.
I straightened the cigarette and slipped it into the little pocket on the sleeve of my flight suit.
“Uncle, you know very well that I am not married. Hell, nobody is married here.”
“Preparation. Preparation,” he muttered before whipping his donkey gently and driving off with his bales of laundry.
Bannon turned up wearing an orange scarf, a flying jacket and a baseball cap with a bald eagle on it. He watched me closely as I carried out the pre-flight checks and prepared for take-off. Bannon seemed disappointed at the size of the cockpit, but he ran his hand over the canopy and said, “Sweet little bird.” After harnessing his safety belt, he rummaged under his seat then looked puzzled.
“No parachutes?” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We won’t need them.”
Safety…Here, There and in the Air another banner greeted us at the end of the runway as we took off and started climbing towards the training area.
Against the backdrop of a cloudless sky-blue sky, our twin-seater MF17 seemed not to move, as if hanging by invisible threads in an aviation museum. I checked with the air traffic control tower. It was one of those rare days when there is no head- or tailwind. Beneath us Pakistan was breathtakingly symmetrical, green squares of vegetation divided by flat rivers reflecting the gentle rays of sun.
“Want to see the Black and White Valley?”
Bannon sat tense in his seat as if not sure whether to trust my flying skills.
“Been in too many whirlybirds with my dead men. Too many memories,” he said, fidgeting with his safety harness.
“This ain’t no chopper and I ain’t dead,” I mimicked him in an attempt to cheer him up. He forced a nervous smile. “Here. I have got your favourite.” I produced the joint from my pocket and held it towards Bannon. “Climbing to ten thousand for manoeuvres,” I said into my mouthpiece, eased the stick backwards and trimmed the controls again. We were now rooted to our seats as the plane climbed steadily. The G meter read 1.5, gravity tugged softly at our cheeks.
Bannon sat there, unsure whether or not to light up. “Go ahead, be my guest,” I said. “Safety is in the eye of the beholder.” I took out a lighter, stretched out my left hand, flipped open the air vent on his side of the glass canopy and sparked the joint. The plane shuddered slightly, the vibration pattern changed, and the sound of the propeller slicing the air at zioo revolutions per minute filtered through.
The Black and White mountain range appeared on our left. The Black Mountains were covered with lush green pine trees and thick shrubs, while the White Mountains formed a series of grey barren ridges. The altimeter read six thousand feet, the propeller pointed just above the horizon; a cow-shaped cloud nudged the tip of our right wing, dived below and disappeared. Bannon, in his nervousness, smoked more than half the joint in two long puffs. The cockpit was full of aircraft fuel and hash fumes. I held my breath. I was responsible for the safety of the ship. He extended the last bit of the joint towards me. “The machine knows who is flying it,” I said, shaking my head. His eyes laughed a stoned laugh.
“Want some fun?” Without waiting for an answer I put the plane into a thirty-degree dive, trimmed my ailerons, gave some right rudder and yanked the stick to the right. Bannon tried to jump in his seat but the plane was pulling hard, the gravity pinned him down. The right wing kept rolling up and soon we were inverted, hanging from our safety harnesses. I decided to hold the plane there and pressed the intercom button.
“Who shafted Colonel Shigri?”
It’s a great vantage position to see the world from; with your feet pointing at the sky, neck stretched and eyes staring at earth, just the way I used to hang upside down from the apple tree in our backyard on Shigri Hill.
“Fuck,” Bannon said, his voice sounding metallic on the intercom. “Get my fanny back on the ground.”
I obliged. I eased the stick to the left and pushed the right rudder in; the plane completed a roll. I checked the altimeter. Six thousand feet. Exactly where we had started.
“Wasn’t that a perfect roll?” I looked towards Bannon, my left hand working the trimmer. Bannon’s face was yellow, and his forehead had broken into sweat. His burp filled the cockpit with the smell of Coca-Cola and half-digested omelette.
“Fury Two levelling off at six thousand.”
The tower babbled on for a few seconds.
“Roger,” I said, without listening.
Bannon was talking.
“Nothing to do with us. I heard stuff but that’s all bullshit. You’ve got to look at the context and the context in this case was this.” He counted invisible money with the thumb and forefinger of both his hands. “There was a lot of moolah going into Afghanistan. This whole jihad against communism was nothing but loads and loads of mazuma. The mujahideen just loved their greenbacks, you know. And yes we brought them mules from Argentina and ack-acks from Egypt and AK47’s from China and stingers from Nevada but what really worked with them was the dollar. Not questioning their motives here, mind you. Your average muj is happy with a shawl on one shoulder and a rocket launcher on the other, he is the best guerrilla fighter we have got — God, I could have used some of them in Nam — but what I am saying here is that the leadership, the commanders with their villas in Dubai and their cousins trading in Hong Kong, I mean nobody could keep track of anything. Although money wasn’t their basic motive, the muj just loved their dollars. But so did your brass and it’s only natural that in a situation like this some of it went missing.” He was still holding the end of the joint in his hand. I took it and flicked it out of the air vent; it ballooned up before dancing away into the space.