A Million People, Hadley Read online

  AND WHOOSH, WE WERE immediately and snappily in action, heading west for the ancient city of Peshawar, beyond which was lawless tribal land heading into the Khyber Pass. Years earlier, a Westerner could pass through to Torkham, the Afghan border crossing. Now it was much too dangerous.

  “A Westerner, Mister Hadley, like you – he would be shot dead and hung up like a dog,” Sultan said, looking at me in his mirror. He ran his forefinger across his throat and made a “kerr-rick” noise and laughed.

  Very funny man. Why would I be hung up like a dog? What was the Islamic hatred of dogs all about? Who would want to hang one anywhere?

  “Where’s Gary?” I asked,

  “Out meeting sources.”

  We drove though barren, dusty fields dotted with brick factories apparently made of mud with satanic, circular kilns and tapering chimneys belching out smoke. Girls in bright headgear carried piles of the finished product in rows in sub-Dickensian squalor. We came off the highway, passed the five-star Pearl-Continental Hotel, bombed in 2009 and since rebuilt, and turned left into a long straight street of busy traffic where immediately our fancy four-wheel drive was a stationary sore thumb, taller, brighter and prouder than all the other cars, taxis, buses and horse-pulled carriages around us.

  “We are a shooting target,” Sultan said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We should have driven old shit car. This is the road where they see us. They radio ahead. They say we are a shooting target.”

  “You mean a sitting duck.”

  “Yes. A sitting shooting target duck. They arrange men on rooftops, on motorcycles. They warn their friends by phone. This is not good.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “There is nothing to do. We cannot move.”

  Well, maybe not, but if I made a dash for it, I could skedaddle back to the Pearl-Continental and order a stiff G&T by the pool. Just joking. That wouldn’t be allowed. I looked out the window. There was a sign for sanitary pipeware above a shop selling DVDs with posters of movies starring men in their sixties (at least). They all had big moustaches and gripped two or three cigarettes in each hand and were drooling over some hugely overweight women who looked completely bonkers. What the fuck was all that about?

  “Pashto cinema,” Sultan said. “Complete crap movies which rip out your heart and soul and burn your ears and feed to the dogs hanging from the trees between the porno shit with the devil.” He unwound his window and spat into the street.

  “I see,” I said.

  “Meanwhile, we are stuck,” Palakorn said. “We’re far too conspicuous.”

  I should point out that Palakorn went to Gordonstoun, the fancy but brutal Scottish school where Prince Charles and his father and a couple of other royals went and got the shit beaten out of them. Palakorn got kicked out for plotting to rearrange the face of one of the younger royals. The plan was that all his life, when the maimed royal appeared on the telly, he could tell whichever girl was in his bed at the time: “I did that.”

  “What should we do?” I asked. I mean, Palakorn did this sort of a thing for a living. He knew this stuff. He had been to wars and emerged without hating anyone who hadn’t. He was very classy.

  “We jump out,” he said. “Sultan is safer without us.”

  “The driver will be safe,” Sultan said. “You foreign shits fuck off and make me safe.”

  We jumped out of the car and were off, dodging and weaving in between crap cars and side stalls selling more of the same DVD nonsense with the moustachioed old men. Palakorn led the way down a side street, where two old men were bent over and appeared to be strangling a cat, raising a lot of khaki dust. Within a minute we were in the back of a tiny, battered cab on another road and going another way.

  There was a white arched sign “St John’s Cathedral High School (English medium)”, with high, red, brick walls each side and a grim two-storey building behind with its windows shuttered. There wasn’t a child in sight. It didn’t look like a busy hive of learning and play. Nearby was a “directorate of education – diocese of Peshawar, church of Pakistan” behind the same red brick wall, with blossom tumbling over the side. This was the town where the Taliban had targeted a high school run by the army and massacred 132 children in cold blood, going from classroom to classroom and shooting under the desks when the children tried to hide. How could anyone do that? Children. Soon we were in a hubbub of commercial activity, surrounded by garishly painted buses with shot tyres and grown men too big for the seats, their bare, sandaled feet at an uncomfortably high level, visible though the mud-spattered windows. They looked at us and scowled. One bus was painted with stylised Egyptian-style bird designs. One picture had “well come” written above it, another “super star”. Then a bigger sign: “WAQASCOH” with “VIP” written underneath. Fuck knows what that was about.

  A crowd had gathered at an intersection where dozens of electrical wires ran haphazardly overhead. There were the flags of Marina’s party.

  “I want to get out here,” Palakorn said.

  “Sure.”

  He squeezed out of his seat and disappeared into the crowd with his cameras. I paid off the cab.

  “Where’s the taxi?” Palakorn asked, coming back into view.

  I glanced at the taxi crawling away through the crowd. “I thought…”

  “Get him back! Tell him to wait for us. I don’t want to be stuck here at sunset without a fucking beer. What were you thinking?”

  “How…?”

  “Tell him there’s another hundred rupees in it if he waits. Tell him it could be an hour, it could be ten hours. He’ll wait.”

  “Where?”

  “Get his cell phone number. Tell him to stay central and we will call him. Hadley, what’s the matter with you? This is basic stuff.” Why was this man shouting at me? I was distracted, that was all. “Oh, forget the taxi,” he said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  We set off along the edge of the crowd, taxis and big political SUVs with darkened windows brushing us as they passed. Crowds seemed to be pressing in on us from all sides and suddenly police whistles were blowing. I was feeling a little disconsolate, to tell the truth. A bit uneasy. I was frowning and thought briefly about a large gin and tonic in an aeroplane plastic glass to cheer myself up. And there was of course the chance that I would see Marina sooner rather than later. Of course I would see her, and maybe I would get to talk to her. And this was just my first full day back in Pakistan. My heart leapt lightly.

  “Hello again, Mister Hadley!” someone shouted. “Are you still with the press?”

  Marina Makhdoom, leaning out the window of a Range Rover, was now talking to someone else who tried to put a garland around her neck and was beaten back by police for his efforts. Now she had an old man’s hands in her hands and the crowd pushed nearer. I heard her say “bless you” twice in English. I looked at the long fingers, saw a heavy man’s watch on her left wrist and heavy gold rings. The car was moving slowly and steadily forward, police hitting anyone who got in the way. Palakorn was close now, snapping away within two feet of her face. I pushed nearer.

  “Jump in,” she said.

  “Really?” I caught Palakorn’s eye.

  “Please embark. You can interview me. We’ll soon be done here.” She turned and gave instructions in Urdu to her aides.

  “Can my photographer come?”

  “Of course. The more the merrier.”

  This was too good to be true. There were beads of sweat on Marina’s forehead and her lipstick was gently smudged. We climbed into the back, with minders either side. The doors slammed shut, drowning out the mass worshippers outside. The windows closed with a hum and there was air-conditioned silence. Marina turned and smiled.

  “Are you sitting most comfortably?”

  “Most comfortably,” I said, watching the crowd part in front of us, a strangely wild look in the eyes of two boys who spread red bauhinia petals over the bonnet.

  “Where is your usual reporter?
” Marina asked. “The Shrubs bureau chief?”

  “He’s out meeting sources.”

  “I see. So we are going to drive away from here, stopping along the way to speak to my loyal and long-suffering supporters,” Marina said. “To give them succour and hope. Nothing too exhausting. You want to ask me questions as we drive?”

  “That would be great, thanks.” Succour and hope? Was she taking the piss?

  “I remember you from Hong Kong,” she added.

  “I remember too,” I said. Lordy, lordy.

  “Yes. I seem to recall you saying you didn’t travel much in your job. And yet here you are in Pakistan. With your handsome photographer.”

  “I am flattered you remember,” I said. “I have always treasured my visits to Pakistan.” Treasured? Why did she say Palakorn was handsome?

  “I am happy to hear that,” she said. “And if the current government would spend less time lining its pockets with the people’s money and spend a little more on roads, education, hospitals and other desperately needed infrastructure, the visits could be even more of a treasure, I believe.”

  “I hear you,” I said. And yet my hearing had never been in question. She wasn’t a doctor. I liked the way she pronounced “government” “gow-ment”. It was a simple flaw, a reminder that she was human and talking to me. “Perhaps you could tell me your plans,” I said. “If you get elected, I mean.”

  I pulled out my recorder, switched it on and turned my notebook to a new page. At the top I wrote Marina’s name, with a big tick next to it signifying very little at this stage. I usually reserved ticks for usable quotes.

  “Can you be a bit more specific?” she asked.

  “What would be your top priority?”

  “Definitely easing the predicament and struggle of the rural poor.”

  “Ah,” I said. I managed to stop myself saying “nice one”.

  “I think there would be no exaggeration in my speech if I said the poor in Pakistan, in the towns and the villages, have been oppressed for far too long. It is time that the shackles of feudalism and servitude are severed at last.”

  “How would you go about that?”

  “That’s a good and important question. I think it all comes down to education and a will on the part of the government to change perceptions.”

  “Right. Let me throw your question to me back at you: can you be more specific?”

  Marina smiled. “I see you believe in a tough line of questioning. I like that.”

  “Thanks.” Why was I thanking her? I was asking ball-achingly stupid, pathetic questions and she was talking total bollocks. Palakorn was taking pictures in a blur of clicks every time she turned her head.

  “It’s a matter of seizing the moment, of grasping the nettle and saying ‘I am not letting go until the pain is gone’,” she said. “After addressing poverty and enslavement, I would turn my attention to health care and the economy.”

  “Right.”

  “But not necessarily in that order.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I don’t want you pinning me down on my policy platform before I have even been elected.”

  Ha ha. I stopped pretending to take notes. I looked her in her sparkling eye as some poor sod got his head stowed in against the driver’s door and sank to the ground. Was she being serious? Did she think anyone with half a mind would buy this stuff?

  There was an explosion over the trees, but not big enough to distract the crowd for long. Bombs in Peshawar were not rare. Without saying a word, Palakorn jumped out of the car and headed in the direction of the blast. The two aides got out too, leaving me, Marina and the driver.

  “I think we should leave,” she said. “Will your handsome friend be all right?”

  “I ought to go with him.”

  “But this is nothing. A small scare. And I am a good source, am I not? My driver does not speak any English. At some point in the interview, would you like to talk about other things?”

  “Other things?”

  She was coming on to me. And Palakorn was out there. And I was in here. And…

  “Do you have enough information for your story?” she asked.

  “Not really, but that isn’t important.” My heart was beating fast. She smiled and turned to face the crowd in front. She pointed ahead and she and the driver exchanged a few words, presumably deciding our escape route.

  “You know where we are, of course?” she said, turning back to me. “You know how dangerous it is for you here? Even more for you than me.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We are going to head back to Islamabad, is that okay?”

  “Yes. Can I ask another question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why is there so much violence in Pakistan? Why are there so many assassinations and bombs?”

  “I assume you are talking about political violence, not the insurgency.”

  “Yes, the politics.”

  “Because this is Pakistan,” she said, turning to the driver and giving further instructions in Urdu. She turned back. Her eyes were the kind that a fully veiled woman, showing nothing but her eyes, could be killed for. “We have our ways of doing things. It is so easy, so felicitous, for many people in the West to say ‘oh, Pakistani politics is so corrupt and violent’, as if there wasn’t one well-intentioned, good fellow among us. But you are mistaken. You think my father is not a good man? You think I am a wicked woman? One person cannot change a country’s political history. You have to work with it, realise its strengths and its weaknesses, its good intentions and wicked ways. It means we must all sometimes resort to wicked ways. Or we would all be killed.”

  “Have you been wicked?” I asked. “I mean, have you ever ordered someone to be killed, for instance?” I said, making clear that I didn’t expect a serious answer. She didn’t answer. “Has anyone tried to kill you?”

  “There are rumours of plots all the time,” she said. “There are rumours that my dear husband wants to kill me. By the way, this is all between us.”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t even know why I am telling you, but I feel I can trust you after what happened in Hong Kong.”

  “Yes, you can trust me. I won’t breathe a word.” I was a fatuous prick.

  “We all have our sources of information,” she said. “The conjuring trick is to act on that which is credible, on the legitimate concerns, and not to be gullible. It is something of which we are all aware. Would you like to go to a bar with me?”

  “So sorry, didn’t quite catch the last bit?”

  “Would you like to go to a bar? I am going to take you to a bar. Would that be agreeable to you?”

  “I’d have to think that one over.”

  “Ah, you are being ironic. Is that right?”

  “I am being sarcastic. I would love to go to a bar with you.”

  “That is first class.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ISLAMABAD WAS DESIGNED by Greek architects in the 1950s and built at the foot of the majestic Margalla Hills. It is a green city built on a grid system with glorious, leafy, half-tended streets of large houses with large gardens with big expanses of lawn, each with one or two guards whose main job was to open and close heavy metal gates behind coming and going four-wheel drives. Inside the houses, many, as I said, ugly from the outside, the rooms have high ceilings, unwieldy furniture and electrical fittings that look like they were made in the 1930s. Now, in the late spring, the evenings were cool and there was an autumn-like mist as crows cawed from high, white-painted brick walls between the gardens before flying into the tall trees, or to the edges of construction skips full of fetid waste.

  Marina’s car turned into one of these wooded streets, a cul de sac, and at the end turned into a drive, the gate opening automatically. The car doors were opened from the outside and the door to the bar opened at the same time. We were swept in by silent men in dark suits looking over our heads towards the road. I followed Marina down a spiral
, metal staircase into what looked like an Italian restaurant in Bloomsbury, a small room with red velvet walls and small round tables, a bar along one wall where a white barman, dressed in white, was waiting and smiling. There were no other guests. Marina said a few words and the security men and aides left us.

  “Please wait one moment,” she told me. “Order yourself a drink.”

  “Can I get you something?”

  “He knows.”

  She left through a door next to the bar. I nodded to the barman and studied the pictures along the wall next to the drinks, pictures of army generals, smiling politicians, and one of Marina with her father greeting some Westerner I didn’t recognise. I ordered a Pakistan-made Sparkhayes beer. A big silent screen was showing cricket on the wall opposite the bar.

  “Monsieur?” the barman said. “You are sure that you would like to experiment with the local beer?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, sir. It is a fine beer. But be – how do you say in English – abstemious. Not too much.”

  “Don’t worry, I can hold my drink.”

  “That is not my deepest fear, monsieur.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Please, I apologise if I am teaching a grandmother how to fuck eggs. But does it not appear a little strange to you that a country that disallows alcohol in public makes its own beer and spirits?”

  “Suck eggs.”

  “Monsieur?”

  “The expression. Teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Not fuck eggs.”

  “But I was having a little joke,” he said. “I was having a jape with the English language. It was obviously not very successful.”

  He wore a white jacket, white tie and white waistcoat over tight white flannels. “It’s not very successful,” I said, “because no one in their right mind would teach their grandmother to fuck anything, let alone half a dozen freshly laid eggs.” I didn’t want to be too hard on him. “Are you French?”

  “Monsieur is very perceptive, I believe. Please partake of my word – do not drink too much of the beer.”

  “Why not?”