The Upstairs Wife by Rafia Zakaria

Author:Rafia Zakaria [Zakaria, Rafia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0337-4
Publisher: Random House Publisher Services
Published: 2015-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

AUGUST 14–17, 1988

We always woke early on Independence Day to the sound of the flag flapping proudly against the post we had attached to the upstairs balcony a solid month before the day itself. At seven o’clock sharp the sound of a twenty-one-gun salute could be heard booming from the grounds of the Mehran naval base, which stood not far from our house. We then watched the parade, telecast live from Islamabad every Independence Day morning. On our screens appeared the thousands of khaki-clad soldiers, undulating seas of brown, marching and murmuring in formation, and entrancing us with their portrait of orderliness and manly acquiescence.

The military world was a vision of Pakistani perfection that existed side by side and inexplicably against the tumult of the world inhabited by the rest of us. Sometimes, its very existence seemed like a rebuke to the disorderliness surrounding the compound. We got a glimpse of it only every now and then—on a school field trip to an air force base on Defense Day, at a birthday party of a family friend who lived inside the cantonment villas reserved for senior military officers. Military bases were magical places where children, even girls, could ride their bikes to the cantonment store alone. Little reminders of its specialness were everywhere: on the tree trunks outfitted in painted uniforms of green and white stripes and in every bush and flower standing at attention. There, you would never be confronted by boil-covered beggars pressing their palms into your face or glimpse Afghan refugee children picking through the trash heaps.

In fact, no trash heaps at all were to be found inside the military bases, the rubbish having been carted away magically to some faraway place, where neither smell nor offensive sight could assault the senses of Pakistan’s warriors. On a school field trip to the air force base, terse-faced soldiers presented each sweaty and cowed child with an ice cold soda, for which we parted with not a single paisa. Dazzled and sated we all gulped obediently, without spilling a drop on the glimmering green lawn, where the grass was exactly an inch tall. The military in our minds would always be associated with perfection and free soft drinks.

In school our adoration of the military was cultivated. We learned the names of the army heroes who had been awarded the Nishan-e-Haider, the highest medal of bravery, all of the honorees having sacrificed their lives for their homeland. They were heroes from the wars of 1948, 1965, and 1971, all fought against India, its menacing presence next door underscored by the stories of the soldiers. Our teachers quizzed us on the circumstances of the death of Captain Sarwar Shaheed, who had outflanked the Indian troops in Kashmir, or that of the boyish Rashid Minhas Shaheed, who had prevented a traitorous pilot from hijacking their plane to India in 1971. They prodded us to see if we had memorized with adequate zeal the details of dogfights with fighter planes and understood the

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