When he couldn’t find the truth about Gen. Zia’s mysterious death as a journalist, Mohammed Hanif cooked up some entertaining yarns about it as a fiction writer
“When Zia died, the nation (Pakistan) was shocked—for about 15 minutes,” says author Mohammed Hanif. “Then there was dancing on the street.”
Hanif is referring to Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, dictatorial president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988, whose death is at the centre of his first book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes.
Hanif was in Australia recently as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) and gave some interesting insights into the country that is seen as India’s nemesis and the breeding ground for the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists.
“In Pakistani elections 1 year ago, the people voted for exactly what people in Sydney vote for—development, better health services, clean roads. Less than 5% voted for Islamist parties,” he says.
One of the greatest myths about the country is the idea of Pakistan as a ‘failed state’, he believes. “It is a lazy construction. What do you mean by a failed state? The trains run, planes take off, there are poor and rich people. Pakistan has problems—insurgencies, mini civil wars—it has dysfunctional bits. Developing countries have those problems, but it doesn’t add up to the doom and gloom that the media portray.”
Hanif recently moved back to Pakistan, after living in London for almost a decade, to find some major changes. “There are more mobile phones and traffic jams. There are more women in public places.”
“There is a new force in Pakistan,” he says. “The 24/7 media. Everything is scrutinised. Pakistan is today a noisy place—people say what they want to say. No longer are there the periods of long silences.”
The long period of silence did however exist during Gen. Zia’s tyrannical rule. And then it ended—quite suddenly, under mysterious circumstances. On August 17, 1988, the C-130 Hercules, Pak One, carrying him, a number of his senior army generals, as well as the then American ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphel, crashed minutes after take-off. With no investigation and no suspects, conspiracy theories of a planned assassination were rife.
“If random people can create theories, I thought, why can’t I,” says Hanif about his book which, instead of narrowing down suspects, only gleefully adds to the theories.
“An American ambassador who was in India at the time, recently contacted me via email about a non-fiction book he is writing about the event. The theories in his non-fiction book are way more bizarre than anything in my book!”
Hanif, currently the head of BBC’s Urdu service, as a young journalist at the time of the plane crash, tried to investigate the event, but without much luck. “The book is like a failed journalist’s revenge. If I can’t find the truth, I will fictionalise it,” he says. “There were so many conspiracy theories at the time, it was full off possibilities for a plot.”
The official documents that he referred to as part of research for the book, were not much help, he said. “ All the official records portrayed him as a fairly decent man. He used to give little trinkets like carpets to the diplomats he met. So when I asked them about Zia, they would say, ‘Oh he was nice to me’.”
When traditional sources turned out to be undependable, Hanif turned to the common Pakistani’s perception of Zia as his inspiration. “I looked at some of the cartoons by my cartoonist colleagues and what people on the streets of Pakistan said about him. When he was alive, there were a lot of rude jokes about him on the street—about his wife and his bedroom,” he said. “So my inspiration was no literary source, but rude jokes on the streets. I wanted to portray a man that the West adores, but people in his own country loathe.”
Zia, he agrees was a major force in talibanisation and the growing the hold of fundamental Islam in Pakistan. “Zia and his best friends in America had a major role. He was the front man in implementing the ideal of a good Muslim. He started that process,” says Hanif. “And we are still struggling with what he unleashed.”
However, Zia and his assassination is only one of the stories—or rather, the culmination of the other stories in the book. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is also the love story of Under Officer Ali Shigri. Through Shigri’s narrative, Hanif provides a glimpse into cadet life.
Hanif, who graduated from Pakistan Air Force Academy as Pilot Officer, denies there is any biographical element in Shigri’s character. “I knew about the texture of life and the rituals. But nothing exciting ever happened to me,” he says. “I was an outsider, who at the first opportunity would go into the library,” says Hanif, recollecting his time in the Academy. “But to those who are interested in marching up and down, the academy may not have been boring. ”
Shigri’s life of course is anything but boring. “I was so fascinated with him being in prison that I kept moving him from one prison to another, and more bizarre things keep happening to him each time,” he says.
Shigri’s adventures seem to have gone down well with readers as well as critics. “When you can buy pirated copies of a book on the streets of Pakistan, you know it is doing well. I have bought pirated copies of my book in Pakistan,” he says. A Case of Exploding Mangoes won him the best first book award at the recently announced 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize.
It was also long-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. He talked about his experience with the Man Booker at the SWF: “The only reasonable response I got for being long-listed, came from a friend. He said, ‘If there are three judged on the booker panel, you must be pleased that at least three people have read your book’.”
I ask Hanif if there has been criticism of the book in Pakistan, as there is often in India about books that paint a self-deprecating picture of the country. “Pakistanis are never shy of criticising themselves—they don’t see it as a matter of national pride. The book has been a bestseller in India and Pakistan,” he says. As an afterthought he adds, “It is a little freaky—India and Pakistan don’t agree on anything.”
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