Amna moved to London from Islamabad ten years ago to be a political analyst and international civil servant.

She is working on a novel set in Pakistan and short stories set in London. The short story below is a by-product of her novel in progress.

She is currently reading George Saunders, Alice Monroe, Sharon Olds, Lydia Davis and Raymond Carver.

Ajato001@gold.ac.uk

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The General

It is some time after 8pm every evening when the General’s aide de camp leaves his study with the day’s files tucked under one arm. That is when his orderly Tony initiates the routine.  The first step is Tony entering the room with a little golden tray in his hands. On it is a heavy glass with whisky and fresh ice. The General will watch Tony approach across the deep blue carpet on which even the thickest soled shoes will inevitably sink a little. The miracle liquid in this soldier’s trusty grip will move only slightly as he walks. On less good days the General is tempted to reach out and grab the glass, his tonic. But there are two considerations here. The first is that in so doing he will hit his knee quite hard into the ornate wood coffee table that Sheena has picked for this room, which in his view is the size of a bathtub. The second is that he is commander in chief of a country. So, he waits, holding his breath until he can hold his most favourite thing in this life. And Tony knows, so he moves quickly.

When the glass, filled up to exactly the right place, is in his commander’s hands, Tony moves to step two, which is about silencing voices. He takes away the General’s two mobile phones, puts the television on mute, and puts the remote control out of sight. He removes any newspapers and article clippings from the room and surveys it to see if any files flung around during the day might still be somewhere on the floor, behind the golden curtains or under small side tables dotted around the room, displaying brass horses or framed photos of the General smiling proudly.

It is when Tony is clearing up that the air in the room starts to shift for the General. It is when he finally feels a safety that the day is never able to yield. He has his constant companion cooling his hands, Tony shielding him from whatever is happening in the outside world, and the lingering smell of Sheena’s talcum powder from when she came to his study for their afternoon tea.

The final step is that Tony comes round to the back of the sofa and waits. He is normally quickly obliged. The General moves his once muscular back forward, and Tony quickly rearranges the square velvet cushions forming a wall behind him. They too, are new, part of Sheena’s attempt to brighten things up for him. If the General had the strength, he would say the cushions are too soft, that they make him ache, but on this night maybe, he is hungry for the pain.

Tony then walks back to the double doors that he stands, for the rest of night, on the other side of. He always says ‘Sir’ and bows his head ever so slightly before he goes. Not that the General would mind if he didn’t, but Tony is that sort of young man. Every time the door clicks shut after Tony has completed this sanity-saving routine, the General vows that Tony will be the one to serve him on his death bed.

And then the silence and his whisky. The General hangs his face over his glass to think. He lets the smell, like the leather on his favourite flying jacket, fill his nostrils. It feels good to not have to act like a strong man after a certain time in the night. It is really quite tiring. If someone had told him, in those early days after he took over on a wave of support, that he would be facing all these problems just seven and a half years into his presidency, he wouldn’t have believed them. He would have laughed in their face. And what really was at the heart of his problems? He knew it was that no one had taken the time to understand him, his true nature and intentions.  His mother used to tell him when he was little that at the very essence of him is a doer and a helper. Yes! He is a servant, just like Tony, no different. But the bastards, they don’t want to understand. No matter what he tries to do, like save the economy or rid the east of insurgents, it isn’t good enough. He isn’t good enough. What dothey want? They want to talk about the constitution! A thing, someone who wasn’t a doer wrote forty years ago. Could he dare ask them, these intellectuals of society, if the constitution should not be a living and breathing thing, adapting itself to the times? Because the times had changed, and he was doing things for his country that they couldn’t dream of doing, with all their theories of law and democracy. Hadn’t they seen all the new roads he had built, the new telecommunication companies that were setting up, and the new universities in the north?

No, no no, he knows what all this talk of constitution really is: a ruse, to get rid of him. It’s what the Lady wants, and they had all got behind her, for God knows what reason. She must, must have western dollars in her pocket. How else could they have the balls? She was on the TV non-stop these days. He wondered what all she said in those meeting rooms in foreign capitals. Probably a bit about her time at university first, chit chat about her love for democracy starting at Yale. Then something, he was sure, about her father, how the military had finished him off. Her father had to feature; he was her claim to fame after all. He imagined her eyes narrowing, her nasal voice getting thinner, her elegant hands waving about as she spoke of injustices. Then what? Probably hand them her bogus dossier about everything bad he has allegedly done in the last seven and a half years. He has seen it, someone from her inner circle passed it on. It was full of lies. Fake news.

Why, could someone remind him, had he ever agreed to exile for her? You can’t shut the mouths of people like that. Those who speak good English, they need to practice it all the time, if they don’t, their jaws hurt. Though, in her press conferences later she doesn’t speak in English. No, she uses the vernacular then, to say it’s time to give crumbling walls a final push. His silly Sheena asks if this is code for him, if he is the crumbling wall, tired and inept. It’s just pressure tactics, he shoots back, and Sheena nods her head in a circular way in response, not entirely believing him.

The General shifts on the sofa now, which is an even darker shade of royal blue than the carpet. He feels a sweat coming on and so opens the top button of his shirt. He presses minus twice on the remote control for the air conditioner, the only thing Tony has left for him to manipulate. Too many bloody cushions, he thinks. He reaches an arm behind him, pulls one out, and throws it across the room. It hits a lampshade on its way to the floor, so Tony pops his large, square head inside the room for a quick survey. Minutes later he is back with another glass of whisky on another golden tray. When Tony stands over him, he asks in a quiet voice, ‘Sir, should I press your legs, Sir?’

Strictly speaking, this isn’t part of Tony’s job description. The General isn’t an old woman taking an afternoon siesta because her body hurts from hours of crouching down in front of her cows. He is a former elite commando and his derrière sits on a ridiculously expensive sofa in one of the biggest buildings at the top of a triple laned, tree-lined avenue called Parliament Way, in the capital city’s VVIP zone. Still, he is desperate to have his legs pressed. And so he grunts a yes. Tony sits down at his feet, on the floor, between the sofa and the coffee table. He presses his thumbs and forefingers gently into the General’s lumpy calves at first, but quickly applies more pressure. Tony has good fingers for this, flat surfaced and thick. The General’s eyes sting with pain and relief, maybe even tears. He takes his first drink down in one go. Tony pauses his pressing to remove this glass and place the second between his hands.

‘Sir?’

‘Huh,’ the General says, irritated that Tony feels he has something more to say than he already has.

‘Sir, maybe if you make a decision tonight, you might feel better.’

Like what? What was there left to decide?

But Tony’s eyes were shining now as they tried to meet his.

‘Sir, the drivers were saying that that lady, the most corrupt one, is bothering you, telling lies about you.’

The General straightens his back a little.

‘Wipe the bitch out, Sir.’

The General looks down at Tony. He wonders how much Tony had studied before he joined the army. He wonders where in the country Tony was from, urban or rural, north or south. He wonders how many colonels and brigadiers he had served before he came to the Presidency. This fundamentally good but stupid boy, who knew nothing about either a real battlefield or government. He shakes his leg out. ‘Go now.’

‘Sir.’

But the night wears on, and Tony comes again, with a third glass and then a fourth. It is 2 a.m., maybe, when the word decision comes floating back to the forefront of his mind. Tony knew nothing, but maybe he knows about this. Strongmen make decisions and in another few hours he would need to be one again, to sit in meetings and pretend he cared, to face cameras and look defiant. Decision. Decisions. Yes, let’s make some. He pivots, put his legs up on the sofa and an arm behind his head.

The next day he cancels two major foreign aid projects, has two senior judges arrested, and invites the cricket team to a grand gala dinner to give out cash prizes. He feels better, stronger after this. For days the press buzzes about him, not her. Tony has a spring in his step, he beams when he comes into the room with little towels for him after meals, and at night, whiskies on golden trays. And Sheena, she asks him less questions and looks at him with a bit more respect in her eyes. Or is it fear?

Anyway, there is one more decision the General made that night. A personal one. He wouldn’t tell anyone about it. It would be his secret project for late at night, when only the pliable Tony was around to witness. It was this: he would, sitting on his Sheena’s choice of sofa, in his wood panelled study, tucked away in the west wing of a white marble building in the quietest part of the city, read the constitution. Truth be told, for the longest time he had wanted to know what it said.