Zia ul-Haq and (top) and (below) Mohammed Hanif

Before morning prayers on 15 June 1988, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq’s index finger hesitated on verse 21:87 while reading the Quran, and he spent the rest of his short life dreaming about the innards of a whale. The verse also triggered a security alert that confined General Zia to his official residence, Army House. Two months and two days later, he left Army House for the first time and was killed in an aeroplane. The nation rejoiced and never found that General Zia’s journey towards death had started with the slight confusion he experienced over the translation of a verse on that fateful day.

General Zia had taken to reading the English translation of the Quran before his morning prayers because it helped him prepare for his acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize presentation ceremony. For the first time in the history of the prize, he would insist on a recitation from the Quran before his acceptance speech. The prize hadn’t been announced yet. But he was hopeful and he was looking for a suitable passage to quote…General Zia thought maybe he should deliver his speech in Urdu or polish up his Arabic and surprise his Saudi friends. On his visits to the UN he had met these highly paid women in suits, who translated into all these languages as you spoke. Surely the Swedes could afford them. Then he thought of his good friend Ronald Reagan, fidgeting with his headphones, getting restless, and decided to stick to English. Better to look at another translation, he told himself. He got up from the prayer mat, wrapping his Chinese silk nightgown around the bulge of his belly. ‘The only civilian part of my body and hence out of control,’ he was fond of saying.

Before he moved here, the marble-floored room with mahogany-panelled walls contained books on military history and his predecessors’ portraits. He had all the books and pictures removed to the guest room annexe and changed it into a prayer room. Army House, which now also served as the Chief Martial Law Administrator’s office, was a colonial bungalow, with 14 bedrooms, 18 acres of lawns and a small mosque. It reminded him of old black-and white films, of benevolent rulers who were close to their people. The new President House was ready. He entertained foreign dignitaries and local mullahs there a couple of days a week but was reluctant to move in. He felt lost in President House’s palatial corridors, and had instructed his Chief Staff Officer to tell the First Lady that it was a work in progress…

Walking along the corridor that led to the mosque, he passed his bedroom. He opened the door gently and took a peek. The table lamp was on and his wife was sleeping with her ample back towards him. Every time he saw her like this he remembered what Prince Naif had told him about why Bedouins had such organs. According to the Prince they had evolved in response to the huge derrieres of their women.

His wife stirred in her sleep, the huge mounds that were her buttocks quivered and the General shut the door gently and went to his own room which doubled as his late-night office as well as a walk-in cupboard. He had decided to change before prayers. He didn’t want to keep the ISI chief waiting.

His room was sparsely furnished, a standard wooden army issue double bed, a stack of morning newspapers on one bedside table, on the other a glass of milk covered with an embroidered napkin.

The glass of milk was one of those domestic routines that had changed its meaning during the 34 years of his marriage. As a newly-wed captain his wife put it on his side table as an innocent domestic aphrodisiac. When, as a major, he experimented with whisky to impress his superiors, it became a cure for his hangovers. Through his days as a colonel and brigadier it took care of his ulcers caused by promotion anxiety. Now it was a mere talisman. The First Lady recited some verses, blew on the milk and plonked it on his side table knowing fully well that he wouldn’t drink it. ‘For your long life,’ she would say. ‘To foil the conspiracies of your enemies.’ He hadn’t touched it for years but didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop. Who could argue with women? If three Special Services Group platoons surrounding his residence, a battery of anti-aircraft guns, and six different-coloured phones representing six different hotlines arranged on a table in his bedroom couldn’t save him, how was a glass of milk going to protect him against the conspiracies that the First Lady kept dreaming about? But who could argue with a First Lady who was always complaining of cramped housing and nothing good on national television?

General Zia had married when he was a captain in the armoured division. He was also a virgin. One of his maternal uncles took him into a corner on his wedding night and whispered an old Persian proverb in his ear: ‘Kill the cat on the first day.’ Uncle squeezed his shoulders, laughed a vulgar laugh and pushed him into the room where the future First Lady waited on a bed, a bundle of red silk. Zia didn’t know any Persian and found no cat to kill that night.

‘Would you like to change into something more comfortable,’ General Zia had asked, twirling the embroidered hem of her red silk shirt. ‘This is comfortable enough,’ she had answered, snatching the hem away from his hands. She turned her back to him and went to sleep.

The fumbling failure of that first night, he knew, had resulted in a marriage in which his authority was never fully established. Twenty-three years later, the morning after his midnight coup, he knew the meaning of the proverb. He intended to kill the cat, bury it and hoist his flag over its grave.