A Case of Exploding Mangoes
by Mohammed Hanif
Buy on AmazonAli Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of Fury Squadron, is determined to understand what or who pushed his father to commit suicide--and to avenge his death. His father, one of Zia ul-Haq's colonels, may or may not have been involved in the conspiracies and coincidences leading to the mysterious 1988 plane crash that killed Pakistan's dictator General Zia ul-Haq. His search immerses him in a snarl of events: Americans in Pakistan, Soviets in Afghanistan, dollars in every hand.
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"No. This is a book about the assassination of General Zia. Nobody really knows who killed him, but the suggestion is that a case of mangoes was loaded on to his airplane and inside the case of mangoes was nerve gas which knocked out the pilot and caused the plane to crash. In a way it’s a comic book because it pokes fun at the General. I think it’s a useful book because of that. People like General Zia shouldn’t be taken seriously. They are comical figures who converted the country into some sort of banana republic. And poking fun at them is a good way of deflating them. Another part of the book is the role the Americans were playing in Pakistan. In the Afghan war the Americans were talking up people like General Zia and giving them anything they wanted in return for their connivance in helping with the war in Afghanistan. The Americans certainly weren’t complaining about the General’s undemocratic ways because they needed people like him."
Pakistan · fivebooks.com