In the Light of What We Know (46 page)

Before bringing in the food, an orderly went around the table with a jug of water and a large bowl, and every man washed his hands. The meal was a surprisingly simple affair of two meat curries and dhal with a platter of rotis and a bowl of rice, and the men were oddly restrained in the portions they served themselves, even the general, his girth notwithstanding. I thought of the Bangladeshis and Pakistanis in Britain, among whom it is apparently a matter of statistical record that the incidence of heart disease and diabetes significantly exceeds the British national average. I met a doctor once who worked at the Royal London Hospital in the East End and who explained to me that there was a growing consensus that Bangladeshis and Pakistanis in Britain were eating too much and eating the wrong kinds of food, too many fats and sugars.

As I watched these men eat, while I myself ate, I thought of animals driven by the instinct to survive. You may speculate that this attitude—seeing animals—came from some kind of alienation, a rupture with society. My own understanding was more prosaic. The news wasn’t making sense to me. Which is to say, I had difficulty following the arguments. One argument, underpinning so much then, ran as follows: The Taliban had harbored Bin Laden, Bin Laden headed Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda had executed the attacks. But there were matters of proof, not necessarily conclusive proof, but a requirement that these steps be borne out in evidence. Bin Laden’s proud owning of responsibility was to come two years later, for instance. And even if the evidence was there, even if such evidence was to be found, there remained the question of whether it all amounted to an ethical justification for the actions now being undertaken. However, if I were to tell you that in the very first month I opposed the war, then I’d be every bit a liar as the liars who take us into wars. My emotions ran high when I recalled the collapse of the towers. America had my heart and she had been wounded. Geologists apparently call our geological era the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. It made more sense to me to think of the private goals of beasts, each alpha male, from the Blairs and Bushes to the Cheneys and Rumsfelds, consolidating his power and securing his personal material future with the unthinking frightened herds following. I had no time for conspiracy theories.

The men ate quickly, as soldiers might, tearing off chunks of bread and mopping up sauces. They didn’t touch the rice, and I speculated that it might have been put out for my benefit; I was Bangladeshi, after all, from a people who ate rice—I’d never seen roti in my village—and whose land was a checkerboard of rice fields. I served myself a scoop.

All the men ate with their hands, save the colonel, who used a spoon. It wobbled a little as he raised it, his fingers no longer obeying him to the letter. Perhaps my eye lingered on this a moment too long, for the general commented: If you play chess with Ricky, he’ll get you to move his pieces.

I smiled embarrassedly and engaged my food. Only much, much later did I perceive the art in the general’s remark.

The conversation moved in desultory fashion through family matters, births, deaths, and marriages, the business ventures of some or other child and the educational achievements of a grandchild. It was all, I later understood, a deferral of the real topic, the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan. In those days, that must have been the only talk of the town.

Afterward, we washed our hands and, carrying the idle conversation with us, moved to the lounge, where the colonel had received me earlier. We settled into armchairs and sofas. I noticed that the pieces on the chessboard, on the table in the corner of the room, had moved, a defeated few now standing at the edge of the board. A game had been played, though at my distance it was not possible to tell if it had resulted in a victor.

You’ve been very silent, Reza-bhai, said the general. What is ticktocking in that cranium?

Mehrani looked around the room.

Drones, he said, letting the one word hang melodramatically.

Mohammed Hassan, the ISI official, exhaled a plume of smoke that drifted across Mehrani’s face. I wanted to laugh, and for a few moments my whole being was dedicated to restraining the muscles around my mouth and my eyes.

That’s it? asked the general. You say nothing and then expect one word to suffice?

The Americans cannot stomach casualties, said Reza Mehrani. When the body bags are airlifted by the dozen to their Dover air base, that’s when they pack up and leave their wars. So this time, they will be using drones. The technology is ready for it.

You are a very scary fellow, said the general. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not what you say but how say it. You could order a chapati and I would be scared.

He’s right, said Hassan, the man from the ISI.

See, said the general. Even the spymaster thinks you’re scary.

They will use drones on a massive scale, added Hassan.

You think science and technology are just instruments of war, said Mehrani, directing his remarks to the general and the colonel, but science and technology actually change the game.

How will it change the game, dear boy? asked the general. The Americans have always fought their wars by proxy. Drone attacks are simply a variant.

If they so much as launch one drone attack in Pakistan, I’ll personally put my boot in the American ambassador’s behind, said Hassan.

What nonsense! You wear soft slippers. You want to tickle the good ambassador? said the general.

They want their wars but they don’t want to shed American blood.

You think Kissinger cared about American blood in Vietnam?

In the American Civil War it was possible to buy your way out of serving in the Union Army for three hundred dollars. A commutation fee, they called it. All legal and aboveboard.

The price of patriotism.

The poor who have nothing else to sell, they are the ones who become soldiers. They are the organ donors.

The military contractors are already coming in.

They were there
ahead
of everyone.

Bhai, mercenaries have been fighting wars since before the pharaohs.

I don’t see American elites joining the U.S. Army. So tell me, where is the loyalty in the West?

Come now. Since time immemorial, soldiers the world over have never lifted a finger for country. Everyone knows that a soldier fights for his comrades.

You mean to say that our boys will do America’s bidding simply because a soldier will fight for his regiment?

For his platoon. I’m saying that at the sharp point of battle that is why they fight. Whether it comes to the point of battle is another matter.

That is
my
point.

They’d sooner desert than fight their kin.

Why have you agreed to U.S. bases on Pakistani soil? I asked, speaking for the first time.

I’m sorry, I quickly added. That was meant as a question and not an accusation.

I said the same thing to that American lackey
Busharraf
, said Dr. Mehrani, and I most certainly meant it as an accusation.

Tell the boy what the man said, said the colonel.

These things are more complex than the Western press would have you think, added Mehrani.

It’s important that the boy should have a complete picture, said the colonel. Tell him what Musharraf said.

He said,
Go fuck a dog
, interjected the general, and turning to Mehrani added: A direct order from your commander in chief.

We are in a bind, explained Hassan. If we say no to America, they’ll fight their war anyway—they’re straining at the leash—but they’ll fight from bases in India. And that way lies ruination for Pakistan. Not only would we lose the support of America, but we would be entering the nightmare vision of an India allied militarily to America. And later, with Afghanistan conquered, we would have no strategic depth.

Zafar, do you know what he’s talking about? the colonel asked me.

Because if you do, perhaps you’d care to explain it to us, said the general.

Strategic depth? I replied.

Do you really think they can conquer Afghanistan? the general asked Hassan.

Conquer, perhaps not, not in any comprehensive sense, replied Hassan. But if you think they’ll leave the country altogether, if you think for a moment they won’t maintain permanent bases, right in the thick of it, a slingshot’s distance from Central Asian oil wells, and on the border with Iran, then, my friends, you’ve been taking too much Afghani opium.

Strategic depth, said the colonel, addressing me, is the very idea of Afghanistan, in particular the border country, providing a hospitable environment for our troops should we need to regroup after an Indian military advance, so that India would never rest easy if, God forbid, it ever mounted a serious foray into Pakistan. The Indians merely knowing that we have such depth is enough.

That’s one way to describe strategic depth, said Mehrani.

What’s yours?

It’s an aspect of the lunatic obsession we have with India, he replied. India doesn’t care about us. We spend so much time talking about India. It’s the staple of our cocktail parties. But do you think for a moment they talk about us quite so much in Delhi? Their military budget is seven times ours. Are they remotely afraid of us? asked Mehrani.

You think we should spend more?

We should spend less. Look at our country. It’s a total disaster. Sixty percent of our children are born significantly stunted, physically stunted! Male illiteracy is at forty-one percent, female at seventy percent. Virtually no health care for the poor. Tax collection is at ten percent, the lowest in the subcontinent, lower than that of Bangladesh, for heaven’s sake.

Reza-bhai likes statistics. He’s a scientist, said the general.

Here’s a statistic for you, Reza-bhai, said Hassan. Come to think of it, Zafar, you’ll also like this. It’s rather mathematical. Pakistan may be what you say, but she has a very low Gini coefficient.

You have read the
Dawn
editorial, said the general.

Was that a slip, I asked myself, or had the ISI officer intended to unnerve me by indicating that he knew I’d studied mathematics?

The Gini coefficient is the work of no less auspicious an institution than the United Nations Development Program. It measures national income inequality, the ratio of the income of the bottom ten percent to the income of the top ten percent. Pakistan’s Gini coefficient is lower than India’s, lower than America’s, lower than Nigeria’s, lower in fact than that of forty other countries.

I haven’t heard of the Gini coefficient, so I don’t know, I said, but I think you mean the other way around.

What?

Ratio of
top
ten percent to
bottom
ten percent—if your point is that Pakistan has lower income inequality, I explained.

Each of them considered this and a few moments passed as the four men stared into space while their brains turned over. Then in unison, they said,
You’re right
, before breaking into laughter.

How is that possible? How can income inequality be relatively low? I asked.

Indeed, replied the ISI official. Here, he continued, we have the heart of the matter. That which is the source of so many of our woes is also the source of strengths. Kinship and patronage.

As in Bangladesh.

As in India.

But even more so here, continued Hassan. Kinship and patronage. The two work together to make this country. Westerners never tire to point to our corruption; they never tire to highlight our moral failings. We are lawless, they say, and if you listened to them you would think we haven’t a shred of integrity. But that is the opposite of the case. You see, my boy, in Pakistan there are very powerful moral obligations at work, those of kinship. Loyalties to one’s family, to one’s clan, tribe, religion, and extended kinship networks—such loyalties override anything our elites bring in the form of laws. Our laws are largely inherited from the British and are no more the expression of the people’s voice than the laws imposed by a colonial power. But the loyalties that bind people together, these flow in the blood of Pakistanis.

How the blazes does that explain a low Gini coefficient? Now that you’ve let the Gini out of the bottle, I think you should explain that, said the general, quite evidently enjoying his pun.

The looting of the state is seldom for the sole benefit of an individual. That is very rare—

As in military contracts, added Dr. Mehrani mischievously, though none of the others seemed to take the bait. He was the only civilian among them.

When a man, a politician or a bureaucrat, takes a sum, a commission, or a payment, he is taking it into trust for the benefit of a wider group. He will pay servants, gunmen, supporters, political transport for supporters, political hospitality, and then he will share the rest among his relatives. Unlike countries such as Nigeria where a few plunder the treasury, siphoning off proceeds from oil that ought to benefit the nation and stashing them in Western bank accounts, in Pakistan the moneys get spread around. Therefore, income inequality remains relatively low. As for the military, the good doctor knows very well that the military is the only island of sanity in an ocean of madness, said Hassan.

Well put, said the general.

The army is industrious, it is efficient, and it gets the job done. Why else do you think Pakistanis have turned to the army time and again? For God’s sake, even elected governments seek our help. In ’99, Sharif
*
put the military in charge of water and power in order to restore order and enforce fee payment. And you know what else? asked Hassan, looking at me. The military is a meritocracy, he said, as if this was the clincher. No one can deny that. Do you know who’s going to head the ISI next? The director general of military operations, General Ashfaq Kayani, the son of an NCO, a lowly sergeant. And look at Musharraf, he’s the son of a Mohajir.
*

What is it Voltaire said of Frederick the Great’s Prussia? Where some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state, said Mehrani.

The Americans know nothing about the realities, the basic facts of this part of the world, the general added, ignoring Mehrani’s barbed comment.