Forget it, let’s eat a mango — review on novel ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’
Pakistan is a country with rich colonial history of culturalism, despite which it remains well beyond the limelight. Rather than acquiring attention for its diverse literary expertise, it is noticed for various unfortunate events ranging from hindrance of women rights and economic recession to political assassinations. One such act is wholly captured in Mohammed Hanif’s fiction novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, 2008. Belonging to an army background, Hanif explores the many apparent perks and faults of a soldierly life through the eyes of Ali Shigri who struggles under a dictatorship that transformed the social nature of Pakistan, that of Zia-ul-Haq’s, during the 1980s. Interestingly, Shigri’s unique lifestyle under macho mustached generals and never-ending drills reflect the subdued uneasiness ordinary citizens experienced at the time.
Zia’s character is portrayed as a “paranoid fool” who perceives a perpetual threat from anyone and everyone around him. Being a constant annoyance to his security men who are forced to implement a red alert at all times, he thinks of nothing but those determined to kill him. To overcome this fear, he uses the Quran as an almost daily horoscope — “…he closed his eyes, opened the book at random and moved his finger on the pages in front of him with his eyes shut. He wished himself and his country a safe day…” His personal spiritual paranoia translated into serious policy-making for the country.
Was Quranic fatalism really the best way to run Pakistan? Unfortunately, both in the novel and reality it seems as frantic religiosity was indeed the best way according to Zia. By letting his own “mullah-like” radical beliefs on lifestyle dictate people’s thoughts and actions, he laid the foundation for any Pakistani to blame a misfortune on Allah. A man dies in an ambulance stuck in traffic on Lahore’s Mall Road, it must be Allah’s will. A household is robbed in an eerie neighborhood of Karachi, it must be Allah’s will. A child drowned in the Ravi River, it must be Allah’s will. The national elections were rigged, it must be Allah’s will. Such an attitude has almost become a natural reflex to any mishap that Shigri finds taking place in the lives of estranged characters around him, similar to what I have found around myself in the past twenty-five years.
To solve a sense of ambiguity through supernatural opinion does everything but solve it. It rather fails to escape that very uncertainty. This contradictory opinion is strangely yet cleverly visualized by Hanif in the form of a black crow at the very finale of the story. The crow is flying about when Zia is quite anxious about his own protection. Seeing the crow as a bad omen, he fails to find a way to escape its presence until his own end — shred to pieces in a devastating plane crash, the culprit of which turns out to be Shigri and his best friend — maybe secret lover? — Baby O, who no longer want their country to be ruled by an irrational “goon”. The scene takes place in an ironic setting when the entire country is stepping into spring, when all parents are seen eagerly taking off their children’s shirts so they don’t get dirty while chaotically tearing apart very chewable juicy mangoes.
The social climate nowadays reminds me greatly of the Pakistan painted by Hanif’s novel. It’s still politically messianic, pseudo-religious, overwhelmed by contradictory opinions. A legacy of supernatural ambiguity left by Zia has achieved nothing but conditioning the population into believing their lives are dictated by fate. Loyalty to this belief system is almost impenetrable because it sets into the minds of people a docile comfort, one which questioned, seems to have no actionable alternative. Whether such a passive people will be introduced to an alternative via the systemic scrutiny of the Sharif Kingdom is of relevance to Shigri and Baby O’s attempts to bring forth a ‘Naya (New) Pakistan’. Nevertheless, we can always indulge our children and their children into intense preparation for the yearly devouring of mangoes.
Adapted from original publication in The Bell.
