“Son, you are the only person in this country I can really trust.”
General Akhtar grimaced. He had heard the same thing over and over again for the past two months, minus the word ‘son’ of course.
“Sir, your security is my job and this is the kind of job where I can’t take orders from anyone else. Not from General Akhtar, not from the First Lady and sometimes not even from you.”
Suddenly Brigadier TM’s head filled the screen. “Sir, all these changes, without my security clearance.”
A hand appeared in the picture and handed General Zia a piece of paper. General Zia looked at the paper through his glasses, put it in his pocket and got up. The other figure entered the frame, they both met in the centre of the screen and General Zia spread his arms. General Akhtar moved forward in his chair and tried to listen to their voices, which because ol their embrace had become even more muffled. He heard sobbing. General Zia’s body was shaking. He moved a step back and put both his hands on Brigadier TM’s. “Son, you don’t have to take orders from anyone, not even from me.”
There was a knock on the door. General Akhtar pushed the stop button on the video recorder and asked the operator to come in. Then the General stood up and paced the room as the operator got busy with one of the five phones on his table.
General Akhtar stood in front of the mirror and looked at his face and upper body. He was three years older than General Zia but physically in much better shape. Unlike General Zia, who hated the outdoors and had gone all puffy in the cheeks, General Akhtar still managed a weekly game of golf and an occasional field trip to the army divisions posted at the border. The golf gave him the chance to get some exercise and catch up with the US Ambassador on matters of national security.
General Akhtar’s hair was thinning from the sides but his barber did a good job of mixing his crew cut with a clever camouflage for his expanding bald patch. He had stood here many times, in front of this mirror, put a fourth star on his shoulder and struck a pose for the cover of Newsweek. He had rehearsed his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. “All the wars I have fought, all the liberty that the people of the region enjoy, the cold war that has turned into warm, glowing peace…”
“Would you like me to activate the monitor, sir?” the operator asked him. The operator had shown no curiosity, had resisted the temptation to snoop around and had behaved like a professional spy. Never ask why, just who, where and when. The operator was pleased with himself.
General Akhtar gave out a phone number without turning away from the mirror and watched the operator’s face closely. He noticed a shadow cross the operator’s face as he finished writing down the number. His hands, which had been moving with such professional concentration before, shook as he fed the number into the little black box. General Akhtar wondered what the operator would make of it. He was sure that he would not say anything, not that anyone would listen to a telephone operator, but he looked hard in the mirror at the operator’s reflection. The operator was now back to his professional self and busy putting away his instruments in his toolbox.
He was thinking of getting out of this office and then finishing the remaining two hours of his shift before starting his part-time job as a signboard painter at a cinema. He was thinking that even if he was given a full-time job at the agency he would continue painting over the weekend. The operator was not thinking at all about the fact that the second most powerful man in the country had just ordered him to put a tap on the telephone line of the most powerful man in the country.
Many of General Akhtar’s fellow generals described him as cold, calculating, even a cruel man. But in reality, General Akhtar’s cruelty was always a second thought, almost incidental to his job. He didn’t like his job because he could listen to people’s most intimate conversations or get people killed. He didn’t feel any real sense of power when he picked up his phone and gave his agents a list of people who were becoming a threat to national security. But when he did pick up the phone, he liked his agency to respond like a properly oiled weapon. He would have liked it if these situations never arose, but when they needed to be dealt with, he wanted it to be done efficiently. He didn’t like the stories about bullets stuck in the chamber or targets disappearing at the last moment.
When the operator reached the door and put his hand on the handle, General Akhtar said: “Thank you.”
The operator hesitated for a moment, looked back and smiled, and that’s when General Akhtar realised that he didn’t know his name.
“What is your name, operator?”
The operator, who had rehearsed the answer in his mind for the whole eleven months that he had worked here, replied with a flourish, almost sure that he was taking a step further in his life; hoping to be appointed the senior operator, hoping to be embraced by the organisation, elevated to an officer rank, maybe given one of the old Corollas that the officers discarded every year when the new models arrived.
“Same as yours. Akhtar, sir. But with an E. Akhter Masih.”
General Akhtar wasn’t impressed. There are probably a million Akhtars in this country, he thought, and two million Masihs. And this smartass can’t keep his mouth shut about as ordinary a coincidence as that. Could he be expected to keep his mouth shut at all? Could he be expected to forget the numbers, the names, the transcripts of the phone calls that he handled all day? Was it wise to hire a Christian when everybody knows they love to gossip? The only other Christians who worked in General Akhtar’s agency were sweepers. Must be a reason, he thought.
“Do you know what Akhtar means?”
“Yes, sir, a star. A very bright star.”
“You are quite intelligent for an operator. But remember some of the stars that you see at night are not really stars. They died millions of years ago but they were so far away that their light is beginning to reach us only now.”
There was a certain spring in Operator Akhter’s footsteps as he walked to the bus stop after work that clay. He was aware of being alive. The fume-filled air was fragrant in his lungs, his ears were alive to the chirping of the birds, the bus horns were love tunes in the air, waiting to be plucked and put to words. Not only did he share a name with his boss, his inherent intelligence had also been recognised; ‘quite intelligent for an operator’, ‘quite intelligent for an operator’, General Akhtar’s words echoed through his head. Those who thought that the General was arrogant had obviously not been worthy of his attention, Operator Akhter thought.
It can be said that Operator Akhter was a bit careless — careless like people are who have just heard the good news they have been waiting for all their lives. It also must be said that Operator Akhter wasn’t intoxicated, nor was he reckless. He stepped onto the road like a person whose luck had just turned. It can be said that he didn’t look left or right; it was almost as if he expected the traffic to part for him. These are facts and cannot be denied. But the car that came at Operator Akhter was determined, and when it locked onto its target it didn’t hesitate; it didn’t want to punish him for his bad pedestrian-crossing manners, it didn’t want to break his legs or leave him a cripple as a punishment for feeling optimistic. No, the driver of this car was very clear-headed and far too determined for a casual roadkill. Before the life went out of his eyes, after his broken ribs punctured his lungs and his heart frantically pumped blood in a last futile attempt to keep him alive, Operator Akhter was surprised to see, the last surprise of his life, that the white Corolla that crushed him had no number plate.