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Reinventing political moments

He heads the BBC’s Urdu services in London. Yet it is as an English writer that the world is more conversant with Mohammed Hanif. Across the almost 300-page A Case of Exploding Mangoes — brought out by Random House R 12; he comes as a man who knows more than a thing or two about politics. And not much less about defence. In conversation, he is lively, straight forward, and polite to a fault. A man who writes with authority on Pakistan affairs in newspapers across the world, Hanif graduated from Pakistan Air Force Academy as a pilot officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. He takes time out to answer some questions about the book:

A strand of delightful irreverence runs across your book. How difficult was it to reinvent those political moments without getting too grim?

I was only trying out a voice and it turned out to be a bit brash and cynical. I don’t think you set out to be irreverent; you are just trying to tell a story that’s in your head. But now that you have brought it up I think what might have happened is that, during the Zia years, everyone was irreverent towards him. You never saw it on television or in newspapers. But there were jokes, limericks, random one-liners ... And this was before e-mail and text messages. So I think there already was a tradition, which might have inspired me.

Changing track: Mohammed Hanif’s moved from the military to journalism to writing novels.

Like many sub continental writers, you have made few concessions to the West. Is the lack of explanation for the socio-political culture of Pakistan deliberate?

I am a journalist and, in my day job, all I do is provide context, explanations, sourced material…. If I wanted to write about socio political culture of Pakistan, I should have probably done more journalism. But I just wanted to tell a story that happens to be set in Pakistan. If someone wants to read about the history and culture of Pakistan, they are better off heading towards the current affairs section of a bookshop. I was trying to write a novel and not a rough guide to Pakistan. Obviously there might be nuances, jokes which Pakistani readers will get and others wouldn’t but you can’t start worrying about these things when you are within a story.

The Zia regime with its cover of anonymity means the world lost out on a generation of creative beings. Isn’t your book a little window to the world that could be?

I am not sure if the world lost out much. I think the world got what it had bargained for. If the world supports a dictator, it has to live with the consequences. Our generation did lose out a lot though. But people didn’t stop being creative because a regime didn’t want them to. In fact you could argue that a certain kind of creativity flourishes under suppression. I have cartoonist friends who were lost for years after Zia’s death because they had lost their main subject.

There are little asides about the society that still talks in hushed whispers about non-conformists. How different was it during Zia’s regime with its persuasive Islam?

I don’t think anyone found Zia’s Islam persuasive except the Americans who used it as a policy instrument against the Soviets. As for non-conformists, during his time anyone who didn’t agree with him ended up a non-conformist. So a lot of singers, comedians and painters found themselves out of work. Some journalists were flogged in public. I don’t think they were particularly non-conformist, they just could not figure out what they were supposed to conform to.

There is a criticism that you have not focused well enough on the women’s movement during the regime. Was it deliberate? Or an inevitable outcome of a society that did not give much space to women?

Women’s movement? How is a narrator who is in a military institution supposed to talk about women’s movement when he never gets to see a woman during the entire novel? General Zia does come across some women and is quite baffled when he is challenged by them. I don’t think you could write a gender-balanced novel. But it was even more restricting for me because most of the novel takes place in military institutions, dungeons etc. Maybe it’s a reflection of the time and place. I was in the military for a while and, trust me, you never saw a woman for months. That’s not to say that women’s movement didn’t exist. They were actually the first ones to challenge Zia. There is an iconic picture of Asma Jahangir from the early 1980s where she is being beaten up by the police while a crowd of young women clash with the police. But my novel doesn’t claim to be a historical record of everything that happened during Zia years.

You have talked of multiple potential political assassins of the General. It has been two decades since Zia died but military dictatorship is still a reality in Pakistan. How, if ever, can it be changed?

I wish I knew. But it seems our current dictatorship is coming to an end despite Musharraf and his close friend Bush’s best efforts. I am hoping this will not lead us towards the beginning of a brand new dictatorship because of that very old fashioned method when people come out on the streets and tell the dictator to buzz off. I think if people become a bit more patient with politicians and very impatient with dictators, we might discourage such tendencies.

Why has posterity still not been able to see Zia in the right light?

I think posterity is quite clear on Zia. In Pakistan no one is ready to defend him. We have had a military regime for nine years and I don’t remember Musharraf having mentioned Zia’s name even once. His grave is in the middle of Islamabad, but nobody commemorates his anniversary or anything. I am almost certain that his son, who has been a minister in the Pakistan government quite a few times, has hardly ever mentioned his father’s name in public rallies. But the scary thing is that the show Zia put together is still on the road. It’s just that nobody gives him the credit for it.

Finally, does the genre of political thrillers lend itself to a wider readership base as opposed to simply political sagas?

I hope it does.

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