General Akhtar looks towards Major Kiyani. “This is the height of inefficiency. You are still holding that stupid sweeper revolutionary. I think you should let him go.” He picks up his cap, gives me that ‘my dear son, I did what you asked me to, now go be a good boy’ look and leaves the room.
I get up from my chair, give Major Kiyani a triumphant look and salute General Akhtar’s back.
TWENTY-TWO
The military band struck up ‘wake up the guardians of our frontiers’—a tune that General Zia would have hummed along to on another occasion, but now he looked anxiously towards an approaching column of tanks. He was inspecting the National Day Parade from the presidential dais and the red velvet rope around it suddenly seemed an inadequate defence against the obscenely long barrels of the M41 Walker Bulldogs. He tried not to think about the late Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, who had been slain standing at a dais like this, inspecting a parade like this, accepting a salute from a column of tanks like this.
General Zia shared the dais with General Akhtar who, with his passionate arguments about sending the right signals to the nation, had convinced General Zia to attend this parade, but now General Akhtar himself seemed bored by the proceedings. This was the first time General Zia had stepped outside the Army House since the morning he had stumbled on Jonah’s prayer. The parade was being held under Code Red and even an uninvited bird trying to invade the airspace above it would find itself the target of a sharpshooter. Zia had gone through the lists of invitees himself, taking out all unfamiliar names. Then Brigadier TM had crossed out all the names of people who in the distant past might have been related to someone who might have said something negative about General Zia’s moustache or his foreign policy. There were no crowds to mingle with after the parade. General Zia wanted it to end even before it began. The parade seemed like a serene blur of gold braid, starched khaki uniforms and row after row of shiny oxford shoes. He felt exposed without Brigadier TM at his side; there was no one to keep the crowds away, no one to come between him and an assassin’s bullet. His anxiety was captured in all its sweaty detail by the television cameras recording the parade for Pakistan National Television. In stark contrast, General Akhtar’s face betrayed no emotion, only the quiet pride of a silent soldier.
The cameras showed the approaching column of tanks. The television commentator, handpicked by the Information Minister for his flair in describing military hardware in metaphors borrowed from Urdu ghazals, said, “These are the tanks. The moving castles of steel that put the fear of Allah in the heart of our enemies.” As the moving tanks started to turn their barrels towards the dais to salute him, Anwar Sadat’s bullet-ridden torso flashed in front of General Zia’s eyes. He looked towards General Akhtar, whose eyes were fixed on the horizon. General Zia didn’t understand what General Akhtar was looking at, because the sky was a spotless blue and the air display was still hours away. For a moment, General Zia suspected that Akhtar was more interested in posing for the TV cameras, trying to look like a visionary.
General Zia was familiar with the routine of the parade and knew that Brigadier TM would land in the white circle right in front of the dais with his team of paratroopers after the march past. He wished he could fast-forward this parade and have Brigadier TM at his side. The tanks crawled past the dais with their barrels lowered. General Zia took the salute with one eye on the approaching Rani howitzers that were lowering their barrels towards the dais. He didn’t feel threatened by the artillery guns. They seemed like giant toys and he knew there was no ammunition on board. “The President, himself a veteran of the armoured corps, appreciates the tough life that the tank commanders lead,” the commentator said as the screen showed the General offering a sombre salute with a limp hand. “It’s the life of a lonely hawk who never makes a nest. The President salutes their courage.”
General Zia glanced towards General Akhtar again. He was beginning to wonder why he was avoiding eye contact.
General Zia began to feel better as the trucks carrying eighteen-foot-long ballistic missiles started to roll past. They were huge but they were also harmless in this context. Nobody would launch a ballistic missile at a target twenty feet away. Asleep on their launchers these missiles looked like giant models prepared by a school hobby club. It had been General Zia’s idea to name these missiles after Mughal kings and birds of prey. He noted with some pride that the names he had given them were written in giant letters in Urdu and English: Falcon 5 and Ghauri 2. His heart suddenly jumped as the military band started to play the infantry’s marching tune and the soldiers began to march past on foot, their naked bayonets pointed towards the sky. The infantry squadrons were followed by the very exuberant commando formations; instead of marching they ran, raising their knees to chest level and stomping with their heels on the ground. Instead of saluting, the commandos extended their right hands and waved their rifles as they passed the dais. “These brave men crave martyrdom like lovers crave the arms of their beloved,” the television commentator said in a voice choked with emotion.
General Zia began to breathe easy as the military band finally shut up and the civilian floats came into view. Not a gun in sight on these ones. The first float represented rurai life: men harvesting and pulling in their nets brimming with paper fish, women churning milk in fluorescent clay pots under the huge banners of Pepsi, sponsor of the floats. Another float passed by carrying drummers and Sufi singers in white robes and orange turbans. General Zia noticed that their movements were stilted and that they seemed to be lip-syncing to recorded music. He used the noise to lean towards General Akhtar and ask in a furious whisper: “What is wrong with them?”
General Akhtar turned his head in slow motion, looked at him with a winner’s smile and whispered back calmly in his ear: “They are all our boys in civvies. Why take a risk?”
“And the women?”
“Sweepers from General Headquarters. Highest security clearance.”
General Zia smiled and waved his hand to the men and women on the float who were now performing a strange mixture of military drill and harvesting dance.
Pakistan National Television showed a close-up of the two smiling Generals and the commentator raised his voice to convey the festive mood. “The President is visibly pleased by the colourful vitality of our peasant culture. General Akhtar is delighted to see the sons and the daughters of this soil sharing their joy with the defenders of this nation. And now our Lionhearts in full colour…”
The cameras showed four T-Bird jets flying in a diamond formation, leaving behind streaks of pink, green, orange and yellow smoke on the blue horizon, like a child drawing his first rainbow. Their noses dipped as they flew past the dais making a colourful four-lane highway in the sky. They turned, executed a perfect lazy eight, a few loops; General Zia waved at them, the handful of civilian spectators waved their flags and the T-Birds flew away wagging their tails. General Zia heard the familiar rumble of a Hercules C13O approaching, an olive-green whale, floating slowly towards the parade. General Zia loved this part of the ceremony. Watching the paratroopers tumble out of the back door of a C13O had always been pure pleasure for General Zia and he couldn’t take his eyes away. The paratroopers fell out of the rear of the plane as if someone had flung a handful of jasmine buds against the blue sky; they fell for a few seconds, getting bigger and bigger, and any moment now they would blossom into large green-and-white silken canopies and then float down gracefully towards the parade square, their leader Brigadier TM landing in the one-metre-wide white circle right in front of the dais. General Zia had always found the experience purifying, better than golf, better than addressing the nation.