In the first meeting after General Zia’s coup, eight generals, including the heads of the navy and the air force, sat around a table in the conference room of General Headquarters. Keeping in mind the historic nature of the session, the orderlies had sprayed rose-scented air freshener generously and the room smelled like a freshly sealed coffin. The Adjutant General, General Beg — a two-star general given to unpredictable fits of sneezing — sat in a corner with a white handkerchief over his nose, ready to record every word that was uttered in the conference. A copy of the agenda lay before each of them in a green leather folder embossed with golden crossed swords cradling a thin, new moon. General Zia noticed that although all eight of them stood up and saluted, they all sat down without waiting for him to take his chair first. They shifted in their seats and before he could declare the meeting open the Naval Chief said, “I want to bring it on the record that I was informed about the coup when it was already under way…”
The Adjutant General’s suppressed sneeze distracted everyone for a moment and General Zia found the opening he badly needed. He fixed the Naval Chief with a benevolent stare and spoke in a pleading voice. “Of course we’ll hear your protest and of course we’ll need your guidance in what we have set out to do. But since we are all meeting for the first time after we were able to save our country without spilling a single drop of blood, should we not start the meeting with a recitation from the Quran? May Allah guide us in all our endeavours.”
They shifted in their seats, not knowing how to deal with this. They were all Muslims and they all knew that the Chief had a religious bent. Some of them even called him ‘the mullah’ when talking on secure telephone lines. But a meeting was a meeting and mixing religion with the business of running the country was a concept not comprehensible to them. A quarter of a century of military training had prepared them for many tasks; they could make toasts in five different languages, they could march in step and hold joint military exercises with the best armies in the world. If they chose to shed their uniforms they could take up diplomatic careers or run universities. But all their staff-and-command courses and all their survival skills were not enough. They didn’t know how to say no to an offer of a recitation from the Quran from their own Chief. They shifted some more in their seats. They breathed in some more rose-scented air.
General Zia took out a slim, magenta-coloured copy of the Quran from his folder, put on his reading glasses and started to recite. All the commanders looked down respectfully and listened in silence; some put their hands in their laps, wondering whether the time had come for them to face the consequences of their godless ways.
The recitation didn’t last more than three minutes. General Zia’s voice was croaky but something about reading the Quran aloud makes even the most toneless voice sound bearable. He finished the recitation and handed the Quran to the General on his left.
“Since General Akhtar speaks very good English, I’ll ask him to read out the translation for those of us who don’t understand Arabic.”
Utter nonsense, the Naval Chief thought. None of us understands Arabic.
General Akhtar started reading haltingly: “‘I begin in the name of God, the holiest, the most merciful.’” General Zia stared at him without blinking as the translation was read out. As soon as he finished General Zia grabbed the copy from him and held it up to his generals.
“What do you think it says here in this part that I just recited?” There was a moment’s silence. General Beg snivelled behind his handkerchief. “Come on, speak up.” General Zia raised his voice. Then he obeyed his own command: “In Arabic it says ‘In the name of Allah’. It doesn’t say in the name of God, it doesn’t say in the name of gods, it doesn’t say in the name of some nameless deity. It says: ‘In the name of Allah’.” He left a dramatic pause. “Let me remind my brothers here that the very first thing that a non-Muslim has to say to become a Muslim, the very first article of faith that every believer has to profess is: There is no God but…” He paused again and looked around the table expecting them to complete the first katima. No one spoke up. He repeated. “There is no God BUT…”
“Allah,” they all murmured, like schoolchildren unsure if they were being asked a trick question.
“Yes.” General Zia brought down his fist on the table. “My dear generals, let’s get one thing clear before we hear your protests and your suggestions: There is no God but Allah. And since Allah Himself says there is no God, let’s abolish the word. Let’s stop pretending God is Allah. It’s a Western construct, an easy way to confuse who is the creator and who the destroyer. We respect all religions, especially the religions of Christianity and Judaism. But do we want to become like them? Christians call Jesus the son of God. Are we to understand that some god came down while Mary was fast asleep and…” Here he made a circle with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and poked at it with the middle finger of his right hand. “Jews are pretty close to calling Moses their God. You might think that it’s all the same to our people, God, Allah, same difference?” He mimicked the clipped English accent many of his generals preferred. “But who should be telling them that we believe in Allah and not in any other god? Didn’t Allah choose us to clear up this confusion?” Then as an afterthought he appealed to the patriotism of his fellow generals. “Even Hindus call their six-armed monsters their gods. Isn’t that a reason enough to stay away from this word? And if any of you have any concerns that people will not appreciate the difference between God and Allah, I suggest we leave it to Allah.”
The complete silence that followed his short speech satisfied General Zia.
“Can’ we now hear the Naval Chief’s protest?”
The Naval Chief, still reeling from the lecture about God’s nomenclature, suddenly felt very small. He was worrying about a breach in protocol when the whole nation was calling God by all sorts of wrong names.
The generals who had called Zia a mullah behind his back felt ashamed at having underestimated him: not only was he a mullah, he was a mullah whose understanding of religion didn’t go beyond parroting what he had heard from the next mullah. A mullah without a beard, a mullah in a four-star general’s uniform, a mullah with the instincts of a corrupt tax inspector.
The others sat stunned around the table, still trying to comprehend what they had just heard. If General Zia could have read their minds this is what he would have read:
What did they teach him at Sandhurst?
A country that thinks it was created by God has finally found what it deserves: a blabbering idiot who thinks he has been chosen by Allah to clear his name.
He really makes sense. How come I didn’t think of it before?
Who is he going to appoint as his deputy?
Am I in an army commanders’ meeting or a village mosque?
I am going to prohibit the word God at home.
Who would have thought there was a theocratic genius in that uniform?
Can we get on with the agenda? We have just toppled an elected bloody government, how the hell are we going to run this country? Is Allah going to come down and patrol the bloody streets?