Mohammed Hanif’s book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes is causing a stir in London. Here, blackly humorous, he writes of how he stumbled on books in a Pakistan military academy during General Zia’s regime. And escaped. [Excerpt in Tehelka]
Once upon a time, when I was 18, I found myself locked up in Pakistan’s military academy’s cell along with my friend and partner-in-crime Khalid. We had thought we were doing charity work but the Academy officers obviously didn’t share our ideals. We had been caught trying to help out another classmate pass his chemistry exam, something he had failed to do twice already and this was his last chance to save himself from being expelled. The logistics of our rescue effort involved a wireless set improvised in the Sunday Hobbies Club, a microphone concealed in a crepe bandage around the left elbow of our academically challenged friend, and a Sanyo FM radio receiver. We were running our operation from the rooftop of a building next to the examination hall. We were caught red-handed, whispering a reversible chemical equation into the transistor.
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