Shame (34 page)

Sufiya Zinobia stiff as a board in bed. Trying to bring the good
things out of her head, babies, her father's smile. But instead there
is only the thing inside Shahbanou, the thing that husbands make,
because he did not give me the baby she took it inside her instead.
She, Sufiya, possessed by fault and shame. That woman who loved
me. And my husband, who can blame him, he never had a wife.
Overandover in her empty room; she is a tide rising towards
flood, she feels something coming, roaring, feels it take her, the
thing, the flood or perhaps the thing in the flood, the Beast
bursting forth to wreak its havoc on the world, and after that
she knows nothing, will remember nothing, because it, the thing,
is free.

Insomnia into somnambulism. The monster rises from the bed,
shame's avatar, it leaves that ayah-empty room. The burqa comes
from somewhere, anywhere, it has never been a difficult garment
to find in that sad house, and then the walk. In a replay of the
turkey disaster she bewitches the nocturnal guards, the eyes of
the Beast blaze out of hers and turn the sentries to stone, who
knows how, but later, when they awake, they are unaware of
having slept.

Shame walks the streets of night. In the slums four youths are
transfixed by those appalling eyes, whose deadly yellow fire blows
like a wind through the lattice-work of the veil. They follow her

Shame ? 232

to the rubbish-dump of doom, rats to her piper, automata dancing
in the all-consuming light from the black-veiled eyes. Down she
lies; and what Shahbanou took upon herself is finally done to
Sufiya. Four husbands come and go. Four of them in and out, and
then her hands reach for the first boy's neck. The others stand still
and wait their turn. And heads hurled high, sinking into the scat-
tered clouds; nobody saw them fall. She rises, goes home. And
sleeps; the Beast subsides.

General Raza Hyder searched his daughter's room himself. When
he found the burqa it was crackly, starched by the dried-on-blood.
He wrapped it in newspaper and burned it to ashes. Then he
threw the ashes out of the window of a moving car.
It was election day, and there were many fires.

11

Monologue of a
Hanged Man

Chairman Iskander Harappa developed a toothache thirty sec-
onds before the jeeps surrounded his home in the capital of
unwanted airport terminals. His daughter Arjumand had just said
something that tempted fate, and whenever anybody did that it
made all of Iskander's betel-blackened teeth howl with supersti-
tious anguish, especially after midnight, when such things are even
more dangerous than they seem in the daylight. 'The steam has
gone out of the opposition,' Arjumand had suggested, much to
her father's alarm. He had been musing in a contented after-
dinner fashion about the rumoured escape of an albino panther in
the wooded hills of Bagheeragali some forty miles away; forcing
his thoughts out of those haunted woods he scolded his daughter,
'God knows how to wash off this optimism of yours; I'll have to
dunk you in the reservoir behind the Barrage Dam.' Then his
teeth began giving him hell, worse than ever before, and he said
aloud in his surprise what he had suddenly thought: 'I am smoking
the last but one cigar of my life.' No sooner had the prophecy left
his lips than they were joined by an uninvited guest, an Army
officer with the saddest face in the world, Colonel Shuja, for six

233

Shame ? 234

years ADC to General Raza Hyder. The Colonel saluted and
informed the Prime Minister of the coup. 'Beg for pardon, sir, but
you must accompany me at once to the Bagheeragali rest house.'
Iskander Harappa realized that he had failed to grasp the meaning
of his reverie, and smiled at his own stupidity. 'You see, Arju-
mand,' he said, 'they want to feed me to the panther, isn't it so?'
Then he turned to Shuja and asked who had given such orders.
'Chief Martial Law Administrator, sir,' the Colonel replied. 'Gen-
eral Hyder, sir, beg for pardon.'

'Look at my back,' Iskander told his daughter, 'and you will see
a coward's knife.'

Thirty minutes later General Salman Tughlak, the Joint Chief
of Staff, was hauled out of a noisy nightmare, in which the debacle
of the East Wing war was being replayed in slow motion, by the
insistence of his telephone bell. General Tughlak was the only
member of President Shaggy Dog's high command to have
escaped the Harappa overhaul of the upper echelons of the
Defence establishment, and for a moment the bad dream refused
to leave him, so that he yelled distractedly into the telephone,
'What's up? Have we surrendered?'

'We've done it,' the voice of Raza Hyder said in some confu-
sion.

General Tughlak was equally puzzled: 'Done what, for God's
sake?'

'Ya Allah,' Raza Hyder panicked, 'didn't anybody tell you?'
Then he began to stammer, because of course the Joint Chief was
his superior officer, and if the boss refused to bring the Navy and
Air Force out in support of the Army's initiative things could get
pretty nasty. Thanks to the indecipherable stammer of his fear and
the lingering mist of sleep enveloping General Tughlak, it took
Raza Hyder over five minutes to make the Joint Chief understand
what had happened that night.

'So?' Tughlak said at last. 'What now?'

Hyder's stammer improved; but he remained cautious: 'Excuse
me, General,' he used delaying tactics, 'how do you mean, sir?'

In the Fifteenth Century ? 235

'Damn it, man,' Tughlak exploded, 'what orders are you going
to give?'

There was a silence during which Raza Hyder understood that
it was going to be all right; then he said meekly, 'Tughlakji, you
know, with your previous martial law experience and all. . .'

'Spit it out,' Tughlak commanded.

'. . . frankly, sir, we were hoping you could help us with that.'

'Bastard amateurs,' old Tughlak muttered happily, 'take over a
government and you don't know your pricks from your sticks.'
The opposition had never accepted the election results. Mobs in
the cities cried corruption; there were fires, riots, strikes. The
Army was sent to fire on civilians. Jawans and young officers mur-
mured mutinous syllables, which were drowned at first by rifle-
shots. And Arjumand Harappa tempted fate.

It is said that General Hyder was at first reluctant to move,
doing so only when his colleagues gave him the choice of
deposing Harappa or falling with him. But President Hyder
denied this: 'I'm the type,' he said, 'who sees a mess and can't help
cleaning it up.'

On the morning after the coup Raza Hyder appeared on
national television. He was kneeling on a prayer-mat, holding his
ears and reciting Quranic verses; then he rose from his devotions
to address the nation. This was the speech in which the famous
term 'Operation Umpire' was first heard by the people. 'Under-
stand,' Raza said briskly, 'the Army seeks to be no more than an
honest ref or ump.'

Where was Raza's right hand while he spoke? On what, while
he promised fresh-elections-within-ninety-days, did his fingers
rest? What, leatherbound and wrapped in silk, lent credibility to
his oath that all political parties, including the Popular Front of
'that pluckiest fighter and great politician' Iskander Harappa,
would be allowed to contest the rerun poll? 'I am a simple
soldier,' Raza Hyder declared, 'but scandal is scandal, and
unscandalling must be accomplished.' The television camera trav-
elled down from his gatta-btuised face, down along his right

Shame ? 236

arm, until the nation saw where his right hand rested: on the
Holy Book.

Raza Hyder, Harappa's protege, became his executioner; but
he also broke his sacred oath, and he was a religious man. What he
did later may well have been the result of his desire to cleanse his
sullied name in the eyes of God.

That was how it began. Arjumand Harappa was packed off to
Rani at Mohenjo; but Haroun Harappa was not caught. He had
fled the country or gone underground . . . whichever it was, it
seemed, in those first days, like a considerable over-reaction. Raza
Hyder joked to General Tughlak: 'That is one heck of a stupid
boy. Does he think I'm going to cut off his thing just because he
wasn't good enough to marry my daughter?'

Chairman Iskander Harappa was detained in some comfort at
the government rest house in Bagheeragali, where of course he
was not eaten by a panther. He even retained the use of a tele-
phone, for incoming calls only; the Western newspapers found
out the number and Iskander gave long, eloquent interviews to
many overseas journalists. In these interviews he made detailed
accusations, casting numerous doubts on Raza Hyder's good faith,
moral fibre, sexual potency and legitimacy of birth. Still Raza
remained tolerant. 'That Isky,' he confided to Colonel Shuja,
'highly-strung bloke. Always was. And the chap is naturally upset;
I'd be the same in his shoes. Also one must not believe everything
one reads in the Christian press.'

'Suppose you hold elections and he wins, sir,' Colonel Shuja
ventured as his face acquired the most dolorous expression Raza
had ever seen on that unhappy countenance, 'beg for pardon, sir,
but what'U he do to you?'

Raza Hyder looked surprised. 'What is this doV he cried. 'To
me? His old comrade, his family member by marriage? Have I tor-
tured him? Have I thrown him in the public lock-up? Then what
is there for him to do?'

'Family of gangsters, sir,' Shuja said, 'those Harappas, everyone
knows. Revenge crimes and what-all, it's in their blood, beg for
pardon, General.'

In the Fifteenth Century ? 237

From that moment Raza Hyder's bruised forehead acquired
deep furrows of thought, and two days later he announced to his
ADC, 'We're going to see that fellow pronto and just sort every-
thing out.'

Afterwards Colonel Shuja would swear that until the meeting
between Raza and Iskander the General had never thought of
assuming the Presidency. 'That stupid man,' he always stated
when asked, 'brought his fate on his own head.' Shuja drove with
General Hyder to Bagheeragali, and as the staff car climbed the hill
roads their nostrils were assailed by the sweet scents of pine-cones
and beauty, those aromas which had the power of lifting the
heaviest hearts and making one think that nothing was insoluble.
And at the Bagheeragali bungalow the ADC waited in an
antechamber while the fateful conference took place.

Iskander Harappa's premonition about the cigars had come true,
because in spite of all the air-conditioning units and cut-glass gob-
lets and Shirazi rugs and other creature comforts at the rest house
he had been unable to locate a single ashtray; and when he asked
the guards to have a box of his favourite Havanas sent from his
home they had politely told him it was impossible. The smoking
ban possessed Isky's thoughts, wiping out his appreciation of his
comfortable bed and good meals, because it �was plain that some-
body had ordered the guards to deny him his smokes, so he was
being told something � watch out � and he didn't like it, no sir. The
absence of cigar-smoke left a rancid taste in his mouth. He began
to chew betel-nut non-stop, deliberately spitting the juice out on
the priceless rugs, because his rage had begun to overcome the fas-
tidious elegance of his true nature. The paans made his teeth hurt
even more, so what with everything that had gone wrong inside
his mouth it wasn't surprising his words turned bad as well . . .
Raza Hyder could not have been expecting the reception he got,
because he went into Iskander's room with a conciliatory smile on
his face; but the moment he shut the door the cursing began, and
Colonel Shuja swore that he saw wisps of blue smoke emerging
from the keyhole, as if there were a fire inside, or four hundred and
twenty Havana cigars all smoking away at the same time.

Shame ? 238

Seducer of your grandmother's pet mongrel bitch, seller of
your daughters at low prices to the bastard offspring of pimps,
diarrhoeic infidel who shits on the Quran � Isky Harappa cursed
Raza for an hour and a half without permitting any interruption.
Betel-juice and the absence of tobacco added to his already enor-
mous vocabulary of imprecations a deadlier rancour than it had
ever possessed in the days of his rakehell youth. By the time he
finished the walls of that room were spattered from top to bottom
with betel-juice, the curtains were ruined, it looked as if a herd of
animals had been slaughtered in there, as if turkeys or goats had
been struggling wildly in their death-throes, rushing around the
room with the blood spewing from the red smiles on their throats.
Raza Hyder came out with paan-juice dripping off his clothes,
his moustache was full of it and his hands shook as the red fluid
dribbled off his fingertips, as if his hands had been washed in a
bowl of Iskander's lifeblood. His face was paper-white.

General Hyder did not speak until the staff car pulled up out-
side the C-in-C's residence. Then he said casually to Colonel
Shuja: 'I have been hearing some terrible things about Mr
Harappa's period in office. That man does not deserve to be set
loose. He is a menace to the country.'

Two days later Talvar Ulhaq made the statement in which,
under oath, he accused Iskander Harappa of arranging for the
murder of his cousin, Little Mir. When Colonel Shuja read this
document he thought, wonderingly: 'Just l��k where bad lan-
guage will get you.'

In those days the Chief Martial Law Administrator's home had
begun to resemble an orphanage more than a seat of government,
owing to Good New's inability to stem the annual flood of chil-
dren issuing from her loins. Twenty-seven children aged between
one and six puked, dribbled, crawled, drew with crayons on the
walls, played with bricks, screamed, spilled juice, fell asleep,
tumbled down stairs, broke vases, ululated, giggled, sang, danced,
skipped, wet themselves, demanded attention, experimented with
bad language, kicked their ayahs, refused to clean their teeth,