A Million People, Hadley Read online

  “Pesky pakistani pranksters’ pipe bomb panics pickpockets and promiscuous paramedics,” I wrote.

  Yasmin was frowning again. What the fuck, she was thinking. I could tell. The herons flew off in a cloud of feathers.

  “Do all the words have to begin with P?” she asked.

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “How do you know the paramedics were promiscuous?”

  “No, you don’t understand. They could have been Portuguese for all I know.”

  “In Islamabad? Really? How do you know? You haven’t even looked outside the front door.”

  “No, Yasmin. You are not getting it. I just wrote those words off the top of my head to show you how we send stories to the world. I was making it up as I went along.”

  “What happens when I push this button?”

  In one smooth, cursive stretch of her right arm, Yasmin, giving off a subtle scent of jasmine, had leant across me and pushed “TRANSMIT”, sending my brief, colourful tale about the pickpockets and paramedics to every major newspaper and every major TV and radio station, and plenty more not so major, in the world.

  “What the fuck have you done?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Yasmin said. “Is it something egregious?”

  “Egregious? You’ve just got me fired. Egregious?”

  I had to think quickly. I copied the bulletin from the TRANSMIT folder and replaced the words with TESTING TESTING and sent it on its way, to tag on to the first bulletin and at least take the sting out of it. The phone went. I hardly dared pick it up.

  “What the fuck is this about promiscuous paramedics?” It was Fagin. “Have you entirely lost your mind?”

  “I’m so sorry. All my fault. What do we do?”

  “What do we do? Well, unless we can find some fucking promiscuous paramedics quick fast and hope they’ve got a story to tell about being panicked – preferably by some pranksters with fucking pipe bombs up their arses… What do you think?”

  “I’m going to lose my job.”

  “You are a complete cunt.”

  Fagin hung up and both bulletins disappeared from the screen. Seconds later came the ADVISORY TO EDS (Hong Kong was moving admirably fast) blaming the whole thing on a training error. Brilliant – and true, as it happened.

  “I’m going to lose my job,” I told Yasmin.

  “I am still not very well understanding why all but one of the words began with P.”

  “No, please, you must stop talking. I am going to go out on the veranda and have a smoke. I shall decide my next move only when I return.”

  Once out of sight, I took a large swig from my hip flask, lit a cigarette and called Fagin. He would have calmed down by now.

  “Am I going to lose my job?” I asked.

  “Oh, don’t be such a whining Englishman. It’s all forgotten already. Things move on. You know how it works. Panic, then total panic, then everything’s normal and you wonder what the fuss was about.”

  “Thank the lord.”

  “Aye, you can do that.”

  I went back into the office and apologised to Yasmin for my language and filthy temper.

  “It’s just that it’s never happened to me before,” I said.

  “But about the pickpockets…”

  “No, no, Yasmin. Shut it. I want to move on and tell you a bit about the company, if you are interested.”

  “I am exceedingly interested.”

  “Then I shall begin.”

  I told her the company history I could remember (dropping the bit about complicity in the slave trade before the agency changed its name a couple of times), its commitment to speed and accuracy (there were lamp posts in Islamabad that delivered news faster than we did), its impartiality (Rodney once told me to call the Thai army “heroic” to fend off the threat of a defamation suit). I told her about the staff levels across the world and introduced her to the computer system, showing her how to code and slug a story.

  “The slug is what a story is called. We are in Pakistan now, so the first part of the slug will be PAKISTAN, like that.” I wrote PAKISTAN in the slug field. “Then, after the country, you will use a word that roughly equates to the story you are writing, which today, if that had been a bigger story, could be BOMB. So we put them together and you get PAKISTAN-BOMB. Today we knew it was a small bomb, but in many cases you won’t. You will just hear an explosion, so probably PAKISTAN-BLAST is safer, just in case it turns out to be a passing car or a gas canister. Any questions so far?”

  Yasmin was fast asleep. She was snoring evenly and very quietly.

  “Hello? Yasmin?”

  Shafiq made an urgent entrance. “Hadley, I hate to interrupt but it is important. Look in the drive.”

  There were two black four-wheel drives. We had visitors from either the government or the military.

  “He’s here,” Shafiq said.

  “Who’s here?”

  “Makhdoom.”

  “What?”

  Shafiq pointed along the corridor to an office used for visitors. There were five men leaning against the wall, looking at me. I wanted to ask Shafiq what I should do. But there really wasn’t any choice and to ask the question would have been seen as weak. A giant loss of face.

  “What should I do?” I asked. I could see the disappointment on Shafiq’s knitted brow. “How did they get in? I never heard a thing. Gary should be here.”

  “Gary hasn’t come in yet.”

  “Of course he hasn’t. Never mind. I know how to handle this. Please give Yasmin some smelling salts if you have any around.”

  I walked down the corridor, wincing at an abysmal Kenny G tune on the television next door. If you can’t make a sax swing or give it some sex, Kenny, put it back in its case. I nodded my head at the bodyguards and turned into a room where long red velvet curtains let in just a sliver of bright light. With its books, high ceiling fan and heavy, immoveable, hardwood furniture, the room looked just the place for old men in uniform smoking cigars to sign treaties. It was the kind of room that could be recreated in a museum, with waxworks playing the generals and when you touched a button they would lift their arms in a Nazi salute and their eyes would go red.

  Makhdoom had his back to me. He had pulled down Mian Langhari’s autobiography from the bookshelf, leaving a narrow space between Benazir Bhutto’s “Daughter of the East” and cricketer Imran Khan’s own autobiography. Gary was a big cricket fan.

  “Good afternoon, Colonel. What a pleasure to meet you.”

  Makhdoom did not look up from the book. He waited a good five seconds before speaking.

  “Did you know one of Mian Langhari’s greatest pleasures in cricket?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know he enjoyed cricket. He always looked so glum.”

  Makhdoom turned. He didn’t think that line was funny. Before he spoke I noticed two things: he was out of uniform and wearing braces, both on his trousers and on his teeth. I had never seen them before. He was short and solemn with a tiny, but bushy, moustache and greying hair greased straight back. He wore his trousers high around his stomach like a garden gnome, but without the twinkle in its eye. What makes a man in his mid-forties start wearing braces on his teeth?

  “It was beating the English at Lord’s.” The braces made “Lord’s” come out as “Lordth”. “On their own turf. Getting one over on the former colonial masters.”

  “I see.”

  “With their watery grey eyes, dry hair and blotchy, red faces. Soapy, soppy Brits. I can say this to you as an American.”

  Makhdoom was like one of the guys in the bars itching to beat me up.

  “No, I am English,” I said. “I saw Langhari score a double century at Lord’s when I was a kid. But please, don’t let me stop you.”

  “My word. I do apologise.”

  “No offence taken. I know a few soppy Brits myself. Can I get you some tea?”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  I walked behind the desk, brushing the red curtains, and
sat. He knew perfectly well I was a Brit. He knew many things, Marina had said.

  “And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” I asked. “Please take a seat.”

  We looked at one another. He was picking at his teeth with a match. He sat down at the desk.

  “When we have visiting journalists in town, it is our responsibility and duty in the military to meet them, to welcome them and to assure them that they are under our protection. Especially during difficult times such as now.”

  “Difficult times, Colonel?”

  “Come, come now, Mister Arnold. There is political instability in this country. There are those who think the situation is so dire that the army should intervene.”

  “Again.”

  “Again, yes. To protect the fabric of democracy that is so fragile.”

  To protect democracy with a coup. Interesting. “Well, thank you. But surely the future of Pakistan is safe, with the likes of your wife running in the election.”

  “The likes of my wife?”

  “Yes.”

  I wasn’t going to curl up and die in front of this prick. The colonel rose from his chair, walked over to the bookshelf and returned Mian Langhari’s bodice-ripping best-seller to its place. He paced slowly up and down on the autumn-red Afghan carpet, his eyes lowered, his hands behind his back, one gripping the other by the wrist. He looked like a small invigilator.

  “Do you like my wife?” he asked, without looking up.

  My testicles rose a fraction and looked around for a place to hide. Here we go.

  “I had the pleasure of accompanying her on a campaign stop. I find her very sincere and full of concern for the people,” I said. “I am sure she is a valuable asset to Pakistan.”

  “Thank you, Mister Arnold. I take that as a compliment and a mark of respect for my country. Tell me.”

  “I must also add that your wife was kind enough to take me to a lovely restaurant.” He knew all this, of course. Every word. “She filled me in on the Pakistan situation. It was most rewarding. Sorry, I interrupted.”

  “Well you have in turn part answered what I was going to ask. We also like to ensure that visiting journalists know something about our country. We do not appreciate prejudice, that sort of thing. Misconceptions.”

  I wondered if he was aware of my misconceptions about the pickpockets and paramedics. “I understand, Colonel.”

  “It’s just that I have had experience of the Western media. Generally speaking, they know nothing about life and death, about suffering, as many suffer in this country.”

  “Shrubs is lucky to have excellent Pakistani staff who correct the errors of our ways should we make mistakes. We try to see the big picture. The wood for the trees.”

  “The wood for the trees. I see.” He sat down and crossed his legs. “I have to admit, Mister Arnold, there are many things about the West that confuse me.”

  “There are many things that confuse me too. All I really want to write about is tea.”

  “Tea?”

  “Eventually, yes. I would like to write about all the different varieties. But right now all that interests me is the Pakistan election. It’s quite fascinating. Perhaps you are going to become a first man.”

  Makhdoom looked at me as though I had said perhaps he was going to become a right dickhead. A cruel and short right charley. His right hand was above his head and he was rubbing his forefinger and thumb together.

  “You’ve come to the wrong country to write about tea, my friend,” he said.

  “Ah, but I haven’t come here to write about tea. I’ve come here to write about the election.”

  The colonel was staring. “I was asking my wife just the other day, for example. About the West, I mean. Why is it the Westerners put their parents in prison rather than care for them in old age?”

  “Prison?”

  “I was wondering why they put their parents in prison and love dogs more than their children. Why is that? Is that a Christian practice?”

  “What did your wife say?”

  “I’m sorry?

  “You said you asked your wife, who is a Christian and has some experience of the West. I wondered what she said.”

  “She is equally mystified, I believe. Tell me, I am married to a beautiful woman, don’t you think?”

  “She is very beautiful, yes. And very intelligent.”

  “Yes. Exactly. I believe half the world probably dreams of my wife.” Makhdoom was now examining a nail on his right hand. He was silent. Then he slapped his knees. “I have to leave now, I am afraid.” An aide at the door clapped his heels and left the room. The colonel and I rose.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you some tea?”

  “No thank you, Mister Arnold. Let me just say that the foreign press have a window of opportunity to be fair gentlemen in this country.”

  “I understand.”

  “Please ensure you seize that window. If anyone were to move away from the window, we security services of Pakistan cannot guarantee your safety. If you seize the window, and we can see you through the window, you shall be safe.”

  He was over-egging the window motif. “You are coming through loud and clear, Colonel,” I said. “As clear as a window, in fact.”

  “Indeed,” Makhdoom said without a flicker of a smile. He looked ready to spit in my face.

  He strode down the corridor to the front door which the receptionist was holding open. A sprinkler was making a toof-toof-toof noise on the lawn, with the low sun making a rainbow in the spray. He stopped and drew closer.

  “Between you and me, Mister Arnold,” he whispered. “I have let her little peccadilloes go. But you are English. You are beyond the pale.”

  “I’m sorry, Colonel?”

  “You are an immoral arse. If I ever even suspect another liaison between you and my wife, one of you will be dead by election day.”

  “What are you saying? You can’t say that.”

  “Enjoy your stay in Pakistan, Mister Arnold.”

  He marched off to his car. I rushed to my desk and, for the record, wrote down in my notebook what the small bastard had just said. He had threatened me. It was a matter of security and Shrubs took such matters very seriously. If I told Shrubs what he had said, I would have to explain what had prompted him to say it. That’s okay. I had done nothing wrong. But if I told Shrubs, I would have to join tele-conferences with all the big bosses and talk bollocks and hear other people talk bollocks. And the end result, not that I had much experience of this sort of thing, would likely be being pulled out of Pakistan for my safety. Byebye, Marina, who seemed to be madly in love with someone old enough to be my dad. Shrubs wouldn’t run a story about the death threats anyway. It was my word against the colonel’s and he was a fucking evil powerful bastard. What was the easiest course of action that wouldn’t get me into trouble and that would leave me alone in Islamabad, near Marina, who was crazy about a man who under all the Egyptian scents smelt of urine? Easy. No emails. No tele-conferences. Shut the fuck up.

  YOU DON’T HAVE TO TRAVEL far out of Islamabad to find the real Pakistan – dirt poor, feudal, heartless and deteriorating. Life for women, in a country where sexual abuse is euphemistically and hopelessly called Eve-teasing, is particularly brutal. Shrubs had stopped doing stories about honour killings, in which, for example, a teenage girl is stoned to death by her family for smiling at a boy, for looking dreamily out of a window or for singing a few bars of a pop song. The girl has brought dishonour on the family and must be killed. The stories came around too often, each more grisly than the one before it. Being stoned to death for having had sex with someone you love is obscene. Being stoned to death for a wistful smile is just barmy. The sentences are handed down by smug village elders who wallow in corruption, complacency and an evilly skewed interpretation of Islam. Police do nothing to stop them and are all fat fuckers.

  That is the backdrop to Marina’s visit to her village in the lush farmland of Punjab where she was campaigning, traile
d by the foreign press. There was no need to campaign there, because it was safe Pakistan Popular Party territory, but in a country awash with guns where political, sectarian and insurgent violence was rife, it made sense. Any prominent Shi’ite or other minority Muslim was a target in Sunni-majority Pakistan. A prominent Christian was the bull’s-eye.

  Palakorn, Sultan and I followed her bus on the four-hour drive south, the first stop the burial ground of her forebears. We sat in the back as Sultan shouted stories at us into his rear-view mirror, most involving Western women with large breasts. I was reading the Dawn newspaper website on my phone, a story about a bomb blast at a Protestant church in Peshawar a week earlier that had killed four people. Forensic investigators had found enough bits of the bomb to say that it had been full of ball-bearings and half-inch nails which had been encased in the shell of the motor of a 1945 stand-up Hoover. Bizarre.

  Marina sat in the shade of a huge, ancient banyan tree at the burial ground, village supplicants crowding in an arc in front of her. One by one they would approach and bow and scrape and hand over a piece of paper asking for mercy of some sort – help in paying a bill, help to get a son into a good school, to have a word with the village elders to reverse their verdict of death by family on a fourteen-year-old girl who had played hopscotch with a boy. Marina was answering each slowly and compassionately, the older supplicants gripping her hands, effusive in their gratitude, tears in their eyes.

  I saw all this but did not understand until Marina told us in a tent where the press were given tea and cakes.

  “I help my people whenever I can because they are my people,” she said, a cup and saucer in her left hand. “To you Westerners, that may seem backward and patronising, but it is a practice that has gone on for centuries in my country.”

  “Isn’t that the practice of feudalism?” the woman from AFP asked, reasonably enough.

  “In the West, you have the luxury of being able to choose from labels,” she said. “My people do not have such luxury.”