Shame (38 page)

'General Hyder,' the Angrez television interviewer asks Raza,
'informed sources opine, close observers claim, many of our
viewers in the West would say, how would you refute the argu-
ment, have you a point of view about the allegation that your
institution of such Islamic punishments as flogging and cutting-off
of hands might be seen in certain quarters as being, arguably,
according to certain definitions, so to speak, barbaric?'

Raza Hyder smiles at the camera, a courteous smile, the smile
of a man of true good manners and no little decorum. 'It is not
barbaric,' he replies. 'Why? For three reasons.' He raises a finger
for each reason and counts them off. 'Number one,' he explains,
'is that, kindly understand, a law in itself is neither barbaric nor

Shame ? 260

not barbaric. What matters is the man who is applying the law.
And in this case it is I, Raza Hyder, who am doing it, so of course
it will not be barbaric.

'Number two, let me say, sir, that we are not some savages
down from the trees, you see? We will not simply order people to
stick out their hands, like this, and go fataakh! with a butcher's
knife. No, sir. All will be done under the most hygienic condi-
tions, with proper medical supervision, use of anaesthetic etcetera.

'But the third reason is that these are not laws, my dear fellow,
which we have plucked out of the wind. These are the holy
words of God, as revealed in sacred texts. Now if they are
holy words of God, they cannot also be barbaric. It is not possible.
They must be some other thing.'

He had chosen not to move into the President's House in the new
capital, feeling more comfortable in the Commander-in-Chief's
residence, in spite of the noisy hordes of motherless children bul-
lying ayahs in the corridors. At first he had been willing to spend
some of his nights under the Presidential roof, for instance at the
time of the Pan-Islamic conference when Heads of State arrived
from all over the globe, and they all brought their mothers along,
so that all hell broke loose, because the mothers in the zenana
wing embarked at once on a tooth-and-nail struggle for seniority,
and they kept sending urgent messages to their sons, interrupting
the conference's plenipotentiary sessions to complain about mortal
insults received and honour besmirched, which brought the world
leaders close to starting fist-fights or even wars. Raza Hyder did
not have a mother to land him in hot water, but he had worries of
his own, because he had discovered on the first night of the con-
ference that while he was in this airport of a palace the voice of
Iskander Harappa became so loud in his ears that he could hardly
hear anything else. The monologue of the hanged man buzzed in
his skull, and it seemed that Isky had decided to give his successor
some useful tips, because the disembodied voice had started
quoting liberally and in an irritatingly sing-song accent from what
it took Raza a long time to work out were the writings of the

In the Fifteenth Century ? 261

notorious infidel and foreigner Niccolo Machiavelli. Raza lay
awake all that night with the spectral buzzing in his head. 'In
taking a state,' Iskander was saying, 'the conqueror must arrange
to commit all his cruelties at once, for injuries should be done all
together, so that being less tasted, they will give less offence.' Raza
Hyder had been unable to prevent an exclamation � 'Ya Allah,
shut up, shut up!' � from getting past the Presidential lips, and at
once guards came running into his bedroom, fearing the worst,
namely an invasion by the endlessly complaining mothers of the
world leaders; Raza was obliged to say with shame, 'Nothing,
nothing. A nightmare, a bad dream, nothing to worry about.'

'Sorry, Raza,' Iskander whispered, 'only trying to help.'

The moment the conference was over and the mothers had
been pulled apart Raza rushed back to his other home, where he
could relax, because there Maulana Dawood's voice in his right
ear was louder than Isky's in his left. He learned to concentrate all
his attention on his right side, and as a result it became possible to
live with the ghost of Iskander Harappa, even though Isky kept
trying to make his points.

In the fifteenth century General Raza Hyder became President
of his country, and everything began to change. The effect of the
ceaseless monologue of Iskander Harappa was to drive Raza into
the ectoplasmic arms of his old crony Maulana Dawood. Around
whose neck had once been placed, by mistake, a certain necklace
of shoes. Raza Hyder with his gatta bruise was, you recall, the type
of mohajir who had arrived with God in every pocket, and the
more Iskander whispered the more Raza felt that God was his
only hope. So when Dawood whined, 'Here in holy Mecca much
evil can be seen; the sacred places must be cleansed, that is your
first and only duty,' Hyder paid attention, even though it was
clear that death had not managed to disabuse the divine of the
notion that they had come to the holy heart of the faith, Mecca
Sharif, the city of the great Black Stone.

What Raza did: he banned booze. He closed down the famous
old beer brewery at Bagheera so that Panther Lager became a fond
memory instead of a refreshing drink. He altered the television

Shame ? 262

schedules so drastically that people began summoning repair men
to fix their sets, because they could not understand why the TVs
�were suddenly refusing to show them anything except theological
lectures, and they wondered how these mullahs had got stuck
inside the screen. On the Prophet's birthday Raza arranged for
every mosque in the country to sound a siren at nine a.m. and
anybody who forgot to stop and pray when he heard the howling
was instantly carted off to jail. The beggars of the capital and also
of all the other cities remembered that the Quran obliged the
faithful to give alms, so they took advantage of the arrival of God
in the Presidential office to stage a series of enormous marches
demanding the establishment by law of a minimum donation of
five rupees. They had underestimated God, however; in the first
year of his rule Raza Hyder incarcerated one hundred thous-
and beggars and, while he was at it, a further twenty-five hun-
dred members of the now-illegal Popular Front, who were not
much better than mendicants, after all. He announced that God
and socialism were incompatible, so that the doctrine of Islamic
Socialism on which the Popular Front had based its appeal was the
worst kind of blasphemy imaginable. 'Iskander Harappa never
believed in God,' he declared publicly, 'so he was destroying the
country while pretending to hold it together.' The incompati-
bility doctrine made Raza very popular with the Americans, who
were of the same opinion, even though the God concerned was
different.

' "Of those who have attained the position of prince by vil-
lainy," ' Iskander's voice whispered in his ear, 'II Principe, chapter
eight. You ought to read it; it's very short,' but by this time Raza
had worked out how to ignore his sinister or left-sided dead angel.
He blotted out Isky's mischief-making, and instead of noting the
historical precedents offered by the histories of Agathocles the
Sicilian and Oliverotto da Fermo he listened to Maulana Dawood.
Iskander refused to give up, claiming that his motives were selfless,
trying to remind Raza of the difference between well and badly
committed cruelties, and of the need for cruelties to diminish with
time, and for benefits to be granted little by little, so that they

In the Fifteenth Century ? 263

might be better enjoyed. But by now Dawood's ghost was in its
stride; it had gained in confidence, on account of its preferential
treatment by the President, and ordered Raza to ban movies, or at
least imported ones for a start; it objected to unveiled women
walking the streets; it demanded firm measures and an iron hand.
It is a matter of record that in those days religious students started
carrying guns and occasionally taking pot-shots at insufficiently
devout professors; that men would spit at women in the street if
they went about their business with their midriffs showing; and
that a person could be strangled for smoking a cigarette during the
month of fasting. The legal system was dismantled, because the
lawyers had demonstrated the fundamentally profane nature of
their profession by objecting to divers activities of the state; it was
replaced by religious courts presided over by divines whom Raza
appointed on the sentimental grounds that their beards reminded
him of his deceased adviser. God was in charge, and just in case
anybody doubted it He gave little demonstrations of His power:
he made various anti-faith elements vanish like slum children.
Yes, the bastards were just rubbed out by the Almighty, they van-
ished, poof, like so.

Raza Hyder was a busy man in those years, with little time for
what remained of his family life. He ignored his twenty-seven
grandchildren, leaving them to their father and ayahs; but his
devotion to the concept of family was well-known, he made
much of it, and that was why he saw Bilquis regularly, once a
week. He had her brought to the television studios in time for his
broadcast to the nation. This always began with a prayer session,
during which Raza knelt in the foreground renewing his bruise,
while behind him Bilquis prayed too, like a good wife, in soft
focus and veiled from head to foot. He would sit with her for a
few moments before they went on air, and he noticed that she
always brought some sewing along. Bilquis was not Rani; she
embroidered no shawls. Her activities were both simpler and
more mysterious, consisting of sewing large expanses of black
cloth into shapes that were impossible to decipher. For a long time
the awkwardness between them prevented Raza from asking her

Shame ? 264

what the hell she was up to, but in the end his curiosity got the
better of him, and when he was sure nobody else was within
earshot the President asked his wife: 'So what is all this stitching?
What are you making in such a hurry that you can't wait till you
get back home?'

'Shrouds,' she answered seriously, and he felt a chill on his
spine.

Two years after the death of Iskander Harappa the women of
the country began marching against God. These processions were
tricky things, Raza decided, they needed careful handling. So he
trod cautiously, even though Maulana Dawood screamed in his
ear that he was a weakling, he should strip the whores naked and
hang them from all available trees. But Raza was circumspect; he
told the police to avoid hitting the ladies on the breasts when they
broke up the demonstrations. And finally God rewarded his vir-
tuous restraint. His investigators learned that the marches were
being organized by a certain Noor Begum, who was going into
the tenements and villages and whipping up anti-religious feelings.
Still Raza was reluctant to ask God to make the bitch disappear,
because you can't ask the Almighty to do everything, after all; so
he felt profoundly justified when he was given evidence that
his Noor Begum was a notorious character with a history of
exporting women and children to the harems of Arab princes.
Only now did he send his men off to seize her, because nobody
could object to such an arrest, and even Iskander Harappa compli-
mented him: 'You're a quick learner, Raza, maybe we all under-
estimated your skills.'

This was Raza Hyder's motto: 'Stability, in the name of God.'
And after the Noor Begum business he added a second maxim to
the first: 'God helps those who help themselves.' To achieve
stability-in-God's-name he placed Army officers on the board of
every major industrial enterprise in the country; he put Generals
everywhere, so that the Army got its fingers deeper into things
than it had ever done before. Raza knew his policy had succeeded
when Generals Raddi, Bekar and Phisaddi, the youngest and
ablest members of his general staff, came to him with hard and fast

In the Fifteenth Century � 265

evidence that General Salman Tughlak, in cahoots with Police
Chief Talvar Ulhaq, Raza Hyder's son-in-law, and Colonel Shuja,
his long-time ADC, was planning a coup. 'Stupid fools,' Raza
Hyder murmured, regretfully. 'Whisky addicts, you see? They
want their chota pegs and so they are ready to unmake everything
we have achieved.' He put on a lachrymose expression as tragic as
any of Shuja's; but he was secretly delighted, because he had
always been embarrassed by the memory of his inept nocturnal
telephone call to General Tughlak; and he had been trying to find
a reason for disposing of his ADC ever since the business in the
death-cell at the District Jail; and Talvar Ulhaq had ceased to be
trustworthy years ago. 'A man who will turn against one boss,'
Raza said to young Raddi, Bekar and Phisaddi, 'will turn against
two,' but what he really meant was that the clairvoyancy of Talvar
scared him stiff, and anyway the fellow knew all about Sufiya
Zinobia, and that meant he knew too much . . . Raza clapped the
young Generals on their backs and said, 'Well, well, now it is all
in the lap of God,' and by the next morning the three conspirators
had vanished without even leaving behind the tiniest little puffs
of smoke. The twenty-seven orphans of Talvar Ulhaq filled the
C-in-C's residence with a curious harmonized scream, all of them
shrieking at exactly the same pitch and pausing for breath at the
same time, so that everyone had to wear ear-plugs for forty days;
then they realized that their father wasn't going to return, and shut
up completely, so that their grandfather never noticed them again
until the last night of his reign.

The loyalty of his junior Generals showed Raza Hyder
that the Army was having too good a time to wish to rock the
boat. 'A stable situation,' he congratulated himself, 'everything
tickety-boo.'

It was at this point that his daughter Sufiya Zinobia re-entered
his life.