A Case of Exploding Mangoes

The generals who had called Zia a mullah behind his back felt ashamed at having underestimated him: not only was he a mullah, he was a mullah whose understanding of religion didn't go beyond parroting what he had heard from the next mullah. A mullah without a beard, a mullah in a four-star general's uniform, a mullah with the instincts of a corrupt tax inspector.

You want freedom and they give you chicken korma.

basic military rule: you manage your anger by kicking ass, not by rearranging the furniture in your room.

He won’t stop the war until you give him the peace prize.

He is an innocent in the way that lonesome canaries are innocent, flitting from one branch to another, the tender flutter of their wings and a few millilitres of blood keeping them airborne against the gravity of this world that wants to pull everyone down to its rotting surface.

Now we must put our heads together and suck national security.

let’s have a mango party on Pak One. Let’s bring back the good old days.

What’s with books and soldiers? I wonder. The whole bloody army is turning into pansy intellectuals.

The gate, probably built to accommodate an elephant procession, opens slowly and reveals an abandoned city dreamed up by a doomed king.

There are questions about my spiritual health – mildly spiritual; any suicidal thoughts – never; my sexual life – occasional wet dream. Belief in God? I wish they had an option saying ‘I wish’. I tick the square that says ‘firm believer’.

A professional who didn’t miss his target even in his death. If your boss had half your sense of humour, this Pakiland of yours would be a much livelier place.

Uncle Starchy had the slow grace of a lifelong drug addict. He moved with such agility and sense of purpose that I joined in the search without knowing what we were looking for.

Shigri boy lost his marbles in the end but the plane General Zia is about to board has enough VX gas on it to wipe out a village.

Two things that weren’t even on the agenda survived every upheaval that followed. General Akhtar remained a general until the time he died, and all God’s names were slowly deleted from the national memory as if a wind had swept the land and blown them away. Innocuous, intimate names: Persian Khuda which had always been handy for ghazal poets as it rhymed with most of the operative verbs; Rab, which poor people invoked in their hour of distress; Maula, which Sufis shouted in their hashish sessions. Allah had given Himself ninety-nine names. His people had improvised many more. But all these names slowly started to disappear: from official stationery, from Friday sermons, from newspaper editorials, from mothers’ prayers, from greeting cards, from official memos, from the lips of television quiz-show hosts, from children’s storybooks, from lovers’ songs, from court orders, from telephone operators’ greetings, from habeas corpus applications, from inter-school debating competitions, from road inauguration speeches, from memorial services, from cricket players’ curses; even from beggars’ begging pleas. In the name of God, God was exiled from the land and replaced by the one and only Allah who, General Zia convinced himself, spoke only through him. But today, eleven years later, Allah was sending him signs that all pointed to a place so dark, so final, that General Zia wished he could muster up some doubts about the Book. He knew if you didn’t have Jonah’s optimism, the belly of the whale was your final resting place.

there is poetry in committing a crime after you have served your sentence