General Zia sighed, pressed the Quran against both his eyes, kissed its spine and replaced it on the shelf. He hugged himself to control the shivers running through his body. The same verse from two different volumes, so early in the morning. That had never happened before.
Starting with the night of the coup, he had always consulted the book for guidance and always found the answers he was looking for. Eleven years ago, moments before ordering his troops to carry out Operation Fairplay that removed Prime Minister Bhutto and installed him as the head of the country, he had opened the Quran and found He it is who hath made you regents in the earth.
Then two years later, between fending off world leaders’ pleas to not to hang Bhutto and signing his death warrant, Zia had opened up the holy book and found this: And the guilty behold the fire and know that they are about to fall therein, and they find no way of escape thence.
He had read enough Muadudi to know that the Quran wasn’t a book of omens, to be used in worldly affairs, but like a child taking a peek at his surprise birthday presents, General Zia couldn’t resist the temptation.
What is a lone man standing at the crossroads of history to do?
After eleven years he was feeling a creeping habit setting in. For he had started consulting the holy book daily as if it was not the word of God but his daily horoscope on the back page of the Pakistan Times. This morning he felt like an addict who looks himself in the mirror after a long time and doesn’t recognise what he sees. He felt a strong urge to have another go. He picked up another volume of the Quran, but with trembling hands put it back on the shelf without opening it. He realised he needed help; he needed to speak to the imam at the Army House mosque.
Walking along the corridor that led to the mosque, he passed his bedroom. He opened the door gently and took a peek. The table lamp was on and his wife was sleeping with her ample back towards him. Every time he saw her like this he remembered what Prince Naif had told him about why Bedouins had such huge organs. According to the Prince they had evolved in response to the huge derrieres of their women.
“Evolution happens very fast in the desert,” General Zia had joked.
His wife stirred in her sleep, the huge mounds that were her buttocks quivered and the General shut the door gently and went to his own room which doubled as his late-night office as well as a walk-in cupboard. He had decided to change before prayers. He didn’t want to keep the ISI Chief waiting.
His room was sparsely furnished, a standard wooden army-issue double bed, a stack of morning newspapers on one bedside table, on the other a glass of milk covered with an embroidered napkin.
The glass of milk was one of those domestic routines that had changed its meaning during the thirty-four years of his marriage. As a newly-wed captain his wife put it on his side table as an innocent domestic aphrodisiac. When, as a major, he experimented with whisky to impress his superiors, it became a cure for his hangovers. Through his days as a colonel and brigadier it took care of his ulcers caused by promotion anxiety. Now it was a mere talisman. The First Lady recited some verses, blew on the milk and plonked it on his side table knowing fully well that he wouldn’t drink it. “For your long life,” she would say. “To foil the conspiracies of your enemies.” He hadn’t touched it for years but he didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop. Who could argue with women? If three Special Services Group platoons surrounding his residence, a battery of anti-aircraft guns, and six different-coloured phones representing six different hotlines arranged on a table in his bedroom couldn’t save him, how was a glass of milk going to protect him against the conspiracies that the First Lady kept dreaming about? But who could argue with a First Lady who was always complaining of cramped housing and nothing good on the national television?
He looked at his watch and realised that if he started changing into his uniform he would be late for his prayers. Not that it mattered, because the imam would wait for him to turn up before starting the prayer, but Jonah’s verse had induced palpitations in his heart and he felt that he would be able to find peace in the mosque.
As he stepped out of the side door of the Army House that led to the mosque, two commandos standing in the shadows saluted. General Zia, absorbed in muttering the verse that he always recited before stepping out in the morning, was startled by the thud of the boots landing on the concrete. He stumbled at the doorstep and took a step backward. He stepped out again and instead of returning the salute nodded at them. He tried to recite the verse again but his mind seemed to have returned to Jonah’s incessant pleas.
The imam started the prayers as soon as General Zia took his place behind him. The Chief of the Inter Services Intelligence, General Akhtar, stood on his left, his movements a fraction of a second slower than General Zia’s, as if, even when prostrating himself before Allah, General Akhtar wanted his cue to come from his boss. For General Zia, it was reassuring to have someone as his eyes and ears who prayed with him. He knew he had a brother in faith, and also that the brother was here with him and not somewhere else nurturing some dark ambition.
Like most people who pray five times a day, General Zia was finding it difficult to concentrate on the actual prayer. His lips muttered the right verses, his hand went up to his ears, his knees bent to the imam’s call and his forehead touched the ground with practised efficiency, but his mind was stuck with Jonah, inside the whale. There were gushing noises and giant bubbles and Jonah’s flailing arms in the darkness. He swallowed hard and felt a swarm of little fish nibbling their way towards his heart. He retched and gulped for air as the whale plunged deeper into the sea. General Zia skidded through a sea of slime before coming to rest against a thick wall of warm flesh. So absorbed was he in the innards of the whale that it took him some time to realise what the imam was saying.
General Zia had been the army chief for only sixteen months when he launched the coup and installed himself as the Chief Martial Law Administrator. He wasn’t sure how much the eight generals who formed his council trusted him or — more important — respected him. They all saluted him, called him Chief even in their private conversations according to the telephone transcripts that General Zia had seen, and carried out his orders. But could he really trust this clean-shaven, whisky-swilling, elitist bunch? Given his mistrust of anyone with more than two stars on their shoulders, it was understandable that in the first Corp Commanders’ meeting after the night of the coup, General Zia was a bit shaky, not sure what these generals wanted from him, not sure what they wanted him to do with this country. They had carried out the coup as if they were reporting for a drill inspection, but General Zia knew that he couldn’t take their loyalty for granted. He would have to kill the cat at the very beginning.
General Zia had married when he was a captain in the armoured division. He was also a virgin. One of his maternal uncles took him into a corner on his wedding night and whispered an old Persian proverb in his ear: “Kill the cat on the first day.” Uncle squeezed his shoulder, laughed a vulgar laugh and pushed him into the room where the future First Lady waited on a bed, a bundle of red silk. Zia didn’t know any Persian and found no cat to kill that night.
“Would you like to change into something more comfortable?” General Zia had asked, twirling the embroidered hem of her red silk shirt. “This is comfortable enough,” she had answered, snatching the hem away from his hands. She turned her back to him and went to sleep.
The fumbling failure of that first night, he knew, had resulted in a marriage in which his authority was never fully established. Twenty-three years later, the morning after his midnight coup, he knew the meaning of the proverb. He intended to kill the cat, bury it and hoist his flag over its grave. He just wasn’t quite sure how he would go about it. Allah will help me, he thought, before entering the conference room.