He had ordered a file on the place from the ISI when he did his routine risk assessment and they had sent him a photocopied page from a high-school Islamic Studies book.
It was the exact spot where Abraham had tried to slaughter his son, where Mohammed had smashed idols and declared that all non-Muslims who laid down their arms would be safe.
The only people carrying arms tonight were Saudi security people. Brigadier TM wondered if they even knew how to use them. The place hummed with respect and prayers and he took his hand off his holster. His gaze became that of a tourist, fleeting, slightly curious and not suspicious. He noted with interest that most of the worshippers were black but there were people from other nations. He saw a white woman sitting in a corner reciting the Quran. He couldn’t suppress his smile when he saw an old Chinese man holding his rosary with one hand and a walking stick with the other and dragging his feet around the black cubicle.
Brigadier TM thought that maybe after his retirement he would come here as a pilgrim and see if he could feel what others felt.
Their hosts, Saudi princes in gold-bordered silk kaffiyehs, led the way. He had lost count of how many princes there were in this kingdom.
As they approached the black marble cubicle in the centre, Brigadier TM moved in front of the posse, having suddenly realised that, after all, they were entering the unknown. The door opened and nothing happened. There was nobody ambushing them. There was nobody welcoming them either.
The room was empty.
There were no flashes of divine light, no thunder, the walls of the room were black and without a single inscription. And if it hadn’t been for General Zia’s choked voice seeking forgiveness, it would have been a quiet room full of stale air. Allah’s house was a dark, empty room. Brigadier TM shrugged his shoulders, stood at the door and kept an eye on the pilgrims going around the Khana Kaaba.
Brigadier TM felt the Founder’s eye blink at the back of his head again. General Zia realised that TM was not in the mood for small talk. He wrapped his nightgown tightly around himself and left the room muttering something, of which Brigadier TM could only make out ‘get some sleep’. What General Zia was saying was, “Who can get any sleep on a bitch of a night like this?”
Brigadier TM walked towards the frame, trying to avoid eye contact with the Founder. His hands slipped into both his pockets and came out wrapped in white handkerchiefs. He held the frame by its edges and removed it from the nail from which it hung. He held the frame in front of his chest, carried it to the sofa and placed it carefully with the Founder facing down. He pulled his trouser leg up with his right hand and produced a dagger from a leather sheath clipped above his ankle. He removed the hooks one by one, inserted the tip of the dagger under the cardboard, lifted it and tossed it aside. A thick green velvety cloth covered the back of the portrait. His fingers traced the area where he thought the Founder’s face was. Behind the Founder’s monocle-covered eye his fingers found a hard round object. He took his dagger again, cut a neat hole around it and picked out a grey metal disc slightly thicker but not bigger than a fifty-paisa coin. He picked it up with his handkerchief-covered hand and held it away from his body as if it was about to explode.
As Brigadier TM was still examining both the sides of the disc, trying to decide whether it was some artistic contraption that the painter of the portrait had used or a lethal device set to blow him away, the metal surface parted from the middle, like the curtains on a miniature theatre, and a concave little lens blinked at him. The metal curtains immediately shut again.
Brigadier TM closed his palm around the spy camera and tried to crush it until his knuckles hurt.
Remote-controlled bombs, reinforced bullets, daggers thrown from a distance, the glint from a marksman’s rifle, shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles, bodyguards with grudges and itchy fingers: Brigadier TM could handle it all without his heart beating a beat faster. But this sneaky little camera made him so angry that he forgot his duty for a moment; instead of calling in the forensic experts and trying to track down the camera feed, he walked towards General Zia’s bedroom. He hesitated outside the door of his bedroom for a moment, took three deep breaths to compose himself and then knocked.
First Lady opened the door, installed herself in the middle of the frame and looked at him with mocking eyes, as if he was a child who had knocked on his mother’s bedroom door after wetting his bed.
“What is it now?” she asked. “Does he have a midnight appointment with a foreign lady correspondent? Or is India about to attack us again?”
Brigadier TM really didn’t know how to answer back to a woman.
He opened his palm and showed it to the First Lady.
She gave him a withering look. “Your boss doesn’t live here any more.” Then she turned and shouted along the corridor. “Look, Zia, your friend has got a present for you.”
SEVENTEEN
“Do you like mangoes?” secretary General’s whisper is barely audible. His breathing is heavy. It seems he is in pain. The bastards haven’t given him any food either. How much time has passed? Can’t be more than three days. I crawl towards the hole in the wall, knocking down little sand pyramids I have been building to mark the days. Not that I know when the day starts or when it ends. There hasn’t been a single knock on the door. There hasn’t been a single sound from anywhere. “I don’t like mangoes,” I say. “Not worth the effort. We had apple trees in our backyard on Shigri Hill. I like apples. Pick them, rub them against your pants and eat them. No hassles.”
Secretary General is quiet for a long time as if collecting my words from the floor and trying to make a sentence out of them.
“You related?”
“Yes.”
“Brother?”
“Worse.”
He stays quiet, then his fists hit the wall. Thrice.
“You thought you could do it all by yourself? You have no sense of history. You should have joined hands with your fellow soldiers. Comrades-in-arms.”
If only Secretary General knew.
“I was his only son.”
As I walked from the parade square towards my dorm I could feel the asphalt surface of the road melting under my boots. In the distance the road evaporated into mirage after vaporous mirage, each of them disappearing as I came closer. Bannon and Obaid were still on the parade square, doing yet another session of extra drill. There was no point going to my dorm. I headed straight for the comfort of Bannon’s bunker. The air conditioner was on and my sweat-soaked shirt turned stiff within minutes. I took it off and sat there in my white vest looking around for something to take my mind off the drill commands still reverberating in my head. I lay down on the floor with my head on the mattress and put my boots next to the air-conditioner vent. I rummaged under the mattress and as expected found a brown envelope with the July issue in it. Thai beauty Diana Lang and Yasser Arafat shared the cover: Lang Shots and Arafat’s Guns and Poses, said the cover of Playboy’s World Special issue.