Obaid, who has never been to a hill station in his life, punches a passing cloud and breaks into a grin when his hand turns slightly moist.
The Burnol on his head has dried up and the burnt side of his scalp appears cobalt blue through the cracks. I wonder if it’s the healing process or the beginning of an infection. Inside, the house is a glorious mess as if kids have had a non-stop party. Carpets are rolled up and thrown about, floorboards have been lifted and put back clumsily. We walk through heaps of clothes pulled out of cupboards and dumped in the corridors.
Those buggers didn’t leave this place alone even after its occupants did. The only thing I am sure about is that they didn’t find what they were looking for.
The main living room has a wall-to-wall glass window covered in drapes. I open the curtains and I can feel Obaid catching his breath at what he sees beyond the glass. The window opens on the ridge and the mountain falls away steeply. We are standing on the edge of the deep bowl of a lush green valley through which runs a silver snake of a river.
“Who built this place?”
“I don’t know, my grandfather’s father perhaps. It has always been here.”
“It’s a shame that you’re not interested in your family history,” says Obaid, then probably remembers my family history and doesn’t wait for an answer. “It’s out of this world.” He stands with his nose to the glass.
We sit in front of the fireplace and look at the stars outside the windows. They hang low and burn bright. The mountains sleep like giants who have lost their way.
“The night is different here,” says Obaid.
“I know. It’s very quiet. No traffic.”
“No. It arrives suddenly. Then it travels at a slow pace. It’s like a boat that moves across the valley. Listen, you can hear it move, you can hear it row. The gentle splash of water…”
“That’s the river below in the valley. It doesn’t sleep at night. But I am sleepy,” I say.
The day arrives like somebody giving you a friendly thump on the shoulder. The sun is a mirror playing hide-and-seek with the snow-covered peaks; one moment a silver disc ablaze in its own white fire, the next moment veiled in a dark wisp of cloud. Obaid stands in front of the window, contemplating a cloud that is gently nudging at the glass. “Can I let it in? Can I?” Obaid asks me as if borrowing my favourite toy.
“Go ahead.”
He struggles with the window latches. By the time he slides the door open the cloud has dissolved into a puff, leaving behind a fine mist.
“What should we cook today?” Obaid shouts from the kitchen. It wouldn’t have occurred to me but Obaid had bought a month’s worth of groceries on our way here.
Colonel Shigri stays out of my dreams. Obaid doesn’t ask me about his last night in the house. He doesn’t ask me where and how I found him. I think he knows.
The study is unlocked but I stay away from it. Obaid wants to see the pictures. They are all there on the wall, all mixed up, out of order, as if Colonel Shigri’s career progressed at random: General Akhtar and Colonel Shigri surrounded by Afghan mujahideen commanders with shawls and rocket launchers draped around their shoulders; Colonel Shigri with his bearded ISI officers in civvies holding the bits from the wreckage of a Soviet helicopter like trophies; Colonel Shigri with Bill Casey’s arm around his shoulder, looking over the Khyber Pass. Then the earlier pictures: his fellow officers are thin, moustaches clipped, medals scarce and not a beard in sight.
“A comrade in uniform is potentially the deadweight that you’ll have to carry one day.” Colonel Shigri had sipped slowly at his whisky, twelve hours before he was found hanging from the ceiling fan. He had returned from another of his duty trips with a coffin-sized Samsonite and was teaching me Pakistan’s military history through its falling fitness standards. “You owe it to your fellow soldiers to stay fit, to keep your weight down because one day you’ll take a hit in battle and somebody will have to carry you on his back. That’s what one soldier owes to another; the dignity of being carried back to one’s own bunker even if near-dead. Hell, even if dead.” His voice rose and then he went quiet for a moment. “But look at them now, look at their bloated bodies. Do you know why they let themselves go?”
I stared at him. I stared at the suitcase and wondered what he had brought home this time.
“Because they know they are not going to be fighting battles any more. No, sir, they are drawing-room soldiers, sitting on their comfy sofas and getting fat. That is the first thing they think of — that they will never have to be in a battle again. But they also know in their heart of hearts that even if they were to end up in a battle, even if they got hit, nobody is going to carry them back to their bunkers. Do you understand?”
I didn’t. “Why wouldn’t anyone carry them back?”
“Because they are too goddam fat to carry.”
I had carried Obaid on my back during our jungle survival course after a mock ambush. He dug his heels into my thighs, his arms around my neck kept getting tighter. I flung him down to the ground when he nibbled at my earlobe.
“Cadet Obaid. The first rule of survival is that you shall not screw your saviour.”
“Not even if it feels so good?” he had asked with his eyes half closed.
On our last night in the house Obaid discovers a half-empty bottle of Black Label in the kitchen. I stare at him. I don’t tell him that I found the bottle in his study the morning the Colonel was found hanging from the ceiling fan.
We drink it with large quantities of water. “It’s very bitter,” says Obaid, pulling a face. “Can I put some sugar in it?”
“That would be disgusting.”
He takes a sip, makes a face as if somebody has punched him in the stomach.
He likes it after the second glass. “It doesn’t taste that bad, actually,” he says. “It’s like drinking liquid fire.”
One more drink and there are tears in his eyes and truth on his drunk lips.
“I gave them your name. I told them about you. I told them you were practising with the sword.”
I take his hand into my hands. “I would have done the same thing.”
I don’t tell him that I did do the same thing.
“Why did they let you go then?” he mumbles.
“The same reason they let you go.”
Stars start to go out one by one as if God has decided to close His parlour for the night.
“They were never interested in what we were going to do and why. They just wanted our names on their files,” says Obaid, insightful like only a first-time drunk can be. “We were General Akhtar’s suspects, General Beg will find his own.”
“What if they actually liked my plan?” I say, draining the last dregs from the bottle. “What if they just wanted to see if I could carry it out?”
“Are you saying that the people who are supposed to protect him are trying to kill him? Are they setting free people like us? Are you drunk? The army itself?”
“Who else can do it, Baby O? Do you think these bloody civilians can do it?”
Colonel Shigri had kept talking even after his sixth drink. I had tried to interrupt him in the middle of a long story about his latest trip behind the enemy lines in Afghanistan. He had asked me to start a fire in the living room but seemed to have forgotten about it. “We don’t have any ice.”