Back in the News: Musharraf's Arrest & Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes

From Thursday's BBC article, "Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf: Court orders ex-ruler's arrest:"

A court has ordered the arrest of Gen Pervez Musharraf over his attempt when Pakistan's military ruler to impose house arrest on judges in March 2007.

Mr Musharraf was present at the Islamabad High Court when the judges issued the order. He had been seeking to extend bail in the case. Police present made no attempt to arrest him as he left the court.

A statement from his office described the court order as "ill-conceived and unwarranted judicial activism". It said that the order was "seemingly motivated by personal vendettas" since Mr Musharraf's return to Pakistan to participate in general elections in May. An appeal is being made to the Supreme Court, the statement said.

When I posted about Musharraf last month, shortly after his return to Pakistan, I recommended A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif:

Ali Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of the Fury Squadron, is on a mission to avenge his father's suspicious death, which the government calls a suicide. Ali's target is none other than General Zia ul-Haq, dictator of Pakistani. Enlisting a rag-tag group of conspirators...Ali sets his elaborate plan in motion. There's only one problem: the line of would-be Zia assassins is longer than he could have possibly known.

Cricket in Pakistan & Hall's The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

From yesterday’s BBC article, “Salman Butt & Mohammad Asif: Pakistan cricketers lose appeals:”

Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif have lost their appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) to have their bans from cricket overturned.

Ex-Pakistan captain Butt, bowler Asif and team-mate Mohammad Amir were found guilty of "spot-fixing" in 2011. Butt, 28, is said to be "bitterly disappointed" and his legal team plan to continue to fight the ban.

"In the coming days and weeks, we will be exploring every other available avenue," said one of his legal team.

Butt is banned for 10 years by the International Cricket Council (ICC), with five years suspended, while swing bowler Asif is banned for seven years, two of which are suspended.

For novels about cricket, try the following:

• Want cricket-lit set in Pakistan/India? Try The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken by Tarquin Hall:

Vish Puri is as fond of butter chicken as the next Punjabi. So when it’s served at the Delhi Durbar hotel at an India Premier League cricket match dinner, he’s the first to tuck in. Faheem Khan, father of Pakistani star cricketer Kamran Khan, can’t resist either. But the creamy dish proves his undoing. After a few mouthfuls, he collapses on the floor, dead...

• Prefer some cricket action in Afghanistan? You might like The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari:

A harrowing yet tender novel — Bend It Like Beckham in a burka — The Taliban Cricket Club is a moving and unforgettable tale of one woman’s courage and guile in the face of terror and tyranny. Set in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan, this extraordinary new fiction by Timeri N. Murari, acclaimed author of the international bestseller, Taj, is a sweeping story of love, family, resilience, and survival, featuring an unforgettable heroine determined to help her loved ones win their freedom with a bat and a ball.

• Or maybe some cricket in New York? Try Netherland by Joseph O'Neill:

In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans--a banker originally from the Netherlands--finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country.

CIA in Pakistan & Ignatius' Bloodmoney

From yesterday's New York Times editorial "How a Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against the United States:"

...Davis had been navigating dense traffic in Lahore... Groups that had focused most of their energies dreaming up bloody attacks against India were now aligning themselves closer to Al Qaeda and other organizations with a thirst for global jihad. Some of these groups had deep roots in Lahore, which was why Davis and a C.I.A. team set up operations from a safe house in the city.

But now Davis was sitting in a Lahore police station, having shot two young men who approached his car on a black motorcycle, their guns drawn, at an intersection congested with cars, bicycles and rickshaws...

More than two years later, the Raymond Davis episode has been largely forgotten in the United States. It was immediately overshadowed by the dramatic raid months later that killed Osama bin Laden — consigned to a footnote in the doleful narrative of America’s relationship with Pakistan. But dozens of interviews conducted over several months, with government officials and intelligence officers in Pakistan and in the United States, tell a different story: that the real unraveling of the relationship was set off by the flurry of bullets Davis unleashed on the afternoon of Jan. 27, 2011, and exacerbated by a series of misguided decisions in the days and weeks that followed. In Pakistan, it is the Davis affair, more than the Bin Laden raid, that is still discussed in the country’s crowded bazaars and corridors of power.

For a novel about the CIA in Pakistan, try Bloodmoney by David Ignatius:

Someone in Pakistan is killing the members of a new CIA intelligence unit that is trying to buy peace with America's enemies. It falls to Sophie Marx, a young CIA officer with a big chip on her shoulder, to figure out who's doing the killing and why. Her starting point is Alphabet Capital, the London hedge fund that has been providing cover for this secret operation, but the investigation soon widens to include the capitals of the Middle East and the cruel hills of South Waziristan.

Sophie thinks she has the backing of her hard-nosed boss, Jeffrey Gertz, and his genial mentor at headquarters, Cyril Hoffman. In addition, she gets help from the well-mannered lieutenant general heading Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. But the closer Sophie gets to her quarry, the more she realizes that nothing in this gallery of mirrors is quite what it seems. This is a theater of violence and retribution, in which the last act is one that Sophie could not have imagined.

Honor Killings & Shafak's Honor

From yesterday's BBC article "Kashmir couple arrested over gruesome 'honour killing:'"

Police in Pakistan-administered Kashmir say they have arrested a couple on charges of murdering their own daughter in the name of honour. The couple admitted to killing the unmarried 18-year-old when they found out she was pregnant, police said. Villagers found the girl's chopped-up body parts in a river, and were able to identify her by the disembodied head. 

Such killings were once rare in Kashmir, but police say they are now happening much more frequently. This is the third reported "honour killing" in the region in five months. 

In October last year in the same Kotli district, police arrested a mother and father on suspicion of murdering their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid in the name of "honour". The couple later told the BBC, while in police custody, that they had killed their daughter for looking at a boy...  

Honour killings are also on the rise across Pakistan, says the country's Human Rights Commission. In 2011 - the last year for which statistics are available - 943 women were killed, an increase of more than 100 on 2010.

For a novel on honor killings, try Elif Shafak's Honor. Here's the review from the Independent:

The first chapter of this novel begins with a daughter in mourning, and develops into an intricate story of an honour killing. We follow three generations of Turkish-Kurds as Shafak weaves her narrative twists, and combines times, places and linguistic inflections with extraordinary dexterity, from 1950s working-class Istanbul to 1970s Hackney and then Shrewsbury prison, 20 years later. This is a powerful tale of cross-cultural lives, motherhood, male violence and cycles of rage and revenge.

Musharraf's Return & Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes

From today's BBC story "Musharraf returns to Pakistan despite threats:"

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has arrived back in Pakistan, ending four years of self-imposed exile and defying death threats. A protection detail of heavily armed commandos met him after his plane from Dubai touched down in Karachi airport. A mass rally in the city was cancelled. General Musharraf plans to lead his party in the May general election...  He faces a string of charges including conspiracy to murder, but on Friday the Pakistani authorities granted him protective bail in several outstanding cases, freeing him from immediate arrest once he sets foot in Pakistan. One of the charges is that he failed to provide adequate security for opposition leader Benazir Bhutto after she returned from exile in 2007. Two deadly explosions, in which nearly 140 people died, greeted her arrival in Karachi on 19 October. She was killed that December at a rally in Rawalpindi.

For a satirical novel about Pakistaini politics (and assassinations), try A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif:

Ali Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of the Fury Squadron, is on a mission to avenge his father's suspicious death, which the government calls a suicide. Ali's target is none other than General Zia ul-Haq, dictator of Pakistani. Enlisting a rag-tag group of conspirators...Ali sets his elaborate plan in motion. There's only one problem: the line of would-be Zia assassins is longer than he could have possibly known.

If satire isn't really your thing, of if you'd prefer a book more focused on Pakistani society than Pakistani politics, you might like In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin:

Daniyal Mueenuddin's collection of linked stories illuminates a place and a people through an examination of the entwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in the countryside outside of Lahore, Pakistan. An aging feudal landlord's household staff, the villagers who depend on his favor, and a network of relations near and far who have sought their fortune in the cities confront the advantages and constraints of station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Mueenuddin bares - at times humorously, at times tragically - the complexities of Pakistani class and culture and presents a vivid picture of a time and a place, of the old powers and the new, as the Pakistani feudal order is undermined and transformed.

Refugee Camps & Osborne's Refuge

 From yesterday's BBC article "Prince Charles 'heartbroken' by plight of Syrian refugees:"

The Prince of Wales says the plight of Syrian refugees is "heartbreaking", while on a tour of a camp in Jordan... More than a million Syrians have now been registered by the UN as refugees in countries including Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt... The King Abdullah camp, near Jordan's northern border with Syria, is one of the smaller camps in the country. It is run by the UN, Unicef and Save the Children. The BBC's Wyre Davis, who is at the camp, said thousands of people were crossing the border into Jordan every night and half of them were thought to be children... The royal couple's visit comes as Save the Children warns that some two million children are in need of help in Syria. Their report says increasing numbers are being recruited as guards, informers, fighters and, in some cases, human shields, for both sides involved in the conflict... The conflict has left more than 70,000 people dead and two million internally displaced, of a pre-conflict population of 20.7 million.

For a novel set in a refugee camp, try Refuge by N.G. Osborne:

On a dusty, sweltering night, Noor Khan, a beautiful, headstrong Afghan refugee, comes face-to-face with Charlie Matthews, a brash, young American aid worker. To Noor's fury, Charlie breaks every cultural norm and pursues her. She wants nothing to do with him: her sole aim in life is to earn an overseas scholarship so she can escape the miseries of the refugee camps.