Getting to know the General

Spectator, The, Jul 5, 2008 by Schofield, Carey

A CASE OF EXPLODING MANGOES by Mohammed Hanif Cape, £12.99, pp. 297, ISBN 9780224082044 £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655

On 29 May 1989 Brigadier Tariq Mehmood, formerly head of Pakistan's Special Forces, was taking part in a freefall demonstration in Gujranwala. His parachute failed and he crashed to his death in front of a large crowd that included his wife. TM (as he was always known) was the archetypal Special Forces officer, almost recklessly courageous, colourful, bound very closely to his men, whatever their rank.

The tragedy shook the Pakistan army.

This grim event is wantonly exploited by Mohammed Hanif in his comedy, A Case of Exploding Mangoes. The author has clearly had fun walking famous people -- presidents, politicians, operators -- through this re-imagining of events leading to the death of General Zia ulHaq in August 1988. But the jollity turns ugly when the author manhandles the Brigadier. TM's initials mean nothing to western readers and will not boost sales here. Those who did know him will only be angered by the profanation of an honest soldier's name. Hanif tinkers with the date of TM's death -- in order to allow President Zia to witness it -- and pruriently enters into the brigadier's mind in the seconds before his death. Giving him a slightly different name -- mentioned in passing -- does nothing to excuse Hanif 's nastiness.

The abuse of Brigadier TM exemplifies the contempt for Pakistan that permeates Mohammed Hanif's novel; he treats the Americans far more gently than his own countrymen. Hanif is now Head of the BBC's Urdu Section, but in his youth he trained as a pilot. For the Air Force that schooled him he now expresses nothing but scorn.

There are things to admire about this novel, however. The parallels with the present situation -- war in Afghanistan, Americans running all over the place, an army man as President -- are quite fun and the story is compelling and energetic.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes is the tale of Ali Shigri, an Air Force cadet with his own reasons for hating Zia. His account is interwoven with descriptions of events in the President's immediate circle. A bizarre cast of characters including a hash-smoking American officer, an Air Force cadet in silk underwear (Shigri's lover) and a laundryman with a taste for snake venom jostle for the reader's attention. A curse-bearing crow flaps through the novel and may -- or may not -- play a part in the drama. There is genuine comedy, as in the meeting between Zia and Ceausescu and in the appearance of Joanne Herring and her relationship with Zia.

After a while, though, the knowing allusions pall and you begin to groan as you see the story creaking up for another setpiece. The heavy-handed account of a tall young Arab fighter at the American embassy's Fourth of July party culminates with deadening predictability. 'Nice meeting you, OBL. Good work, keep it up' the local CIA chief says, snubbing him as he moves off to talk business with the head of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence).

Throughout the novel the ironies come thick and fast and yet, maddeningly, Hanif fails to reveal much about the Zia years or about Pakistan. There is the occasional telling phrase, as when General Akhtar, head of the ISI, sees Zia as 'fattened, chubby-cheeked and marinating in his own paranoia'. But these insights are few and far between. More often, the period details are distracting. If Ali Shigri, whose interest in alcohol is established early on, had known that Russian soldiers in Afghanistan were spreading boot polish on bread he would have known that they were not eating it, as he tells us, but trying to extract the alcohol from the polish.

There is a novel to be written about Pakistan's military. But this is not it.