Book reading of Muhammad Hanif's novel "A case of Exploding Mangoes" was organised by Lahore Film and Literary Club (LFLC) at South Asian Media Centre on Saturday. There is an ancient saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. 'A case of Exploding Mangoes' is the story of one such plane.
Why did a Hercules C130, the world's sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988? Was it because of mechanical failure, human error, the CIA's impatience, a blind woman's curse, generals not happy with their pension plans, the mango season or could it be novel's character Ali Shigri?
The story is about a young Shigri who moves from a mosque hall to his military barracks before ending up in a Mughal dungeon, there are questions that haunt him: What does it mean to betray someone and still love them? How many names does Allah really have? Who killed his father, Colonel Shigri? Who will kill his killers? And where the hell has Obaid disappeared to?
Author Muhammad Hanif said that his work "A Case of Exploding Mangoes" is a pure fiction. Far from coming to a conclusion about the cause of Zia's death, Hanif gleefully thickens the list of conspiracy theories, introducing at least six other possible suspects, including a blind woman under sentence of death, a Marxist-Maoist street cleaner, a snake, a crow, an army of tapeworms and a junior trainee officer in the Pakistani Air Force named Ali Shigri, who is also the novel's main narrator.
While reviewing the book, senior editor Rashid Rehman has said that Zia's fate is one of Pakistan's two great political mysteries, the other being the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Rehman said that "A Case of Exploding Mangoes" is best understood as a satire of militarism, regulation and piety.
He also said that the novel cuts cleverly between Shigri's self-told story of his assassination plans and third-person scenes from the last months of the man he is trying to murder, General Zia. Zia's depiction is one of the book's great achievements. Hanif summons all his satirical disdain for this pious and violent man, whose years of power have left him "fattened, chubby-cheeked and marinating in his own paranoia."
At Morning Prayer one day, Hanif writes, Zia "broke into violent sobs. The other worshipers continued with their prayers; they were used to General Zia crying during his prayers. They were never sure if it was due to the intensity of his devotion, the matters of state that occupied his mind or another tongue-lashing from the first lady."
The jokes start early in "A Case of Exploding Mangoes," and they keep on coming. There are times when the novel feels just a touch too fond of its own one-liners. Satire is, after all, a comic mode that asks to be taken seriously. But there are shocking scenes in Hanif's novel and the shock they deliver is greater because they occur as interludes to the comedy.
One subplot involves Zainab, a blind woman who is to be stoned to death for adultery, even though this alleged offence occurred while she was being gang-raped. Shigri himself is arrested and incarcerated in a torture centre in Lahore Fort. From his cell, he listens to the screams of other prisoners being branded with Philips irons, and communicates through a hole in the wall with a man who has been in solitary confinement for nine years.