In The Line Of Fire-By Musharraf

[Dark Saint Alaick]

For the first six or eight months of our stay, my brothers and I were enrolled in a Turkish school. The English taught there was rudimentary, but the school helped us to learn very good Turkish, which went a long way in enabling us to become good friends with Turkish boys. Children at that age learn very fast and very well, and our accent and pronunciation became perfect. Soon, we were so fluent that our Turkish friends couldn't tell we were foreigners. Even now, when I speak Turkish in Pakistan, it is very different from that of our interpreters. But we needed English as our medium of instruction. My parents discovered a German woman who had a private school attended by a number of foreign boys and girls. We were admitted to her school and studied there for the rest of our time in Turkey. She was Madame Kudret—Kudret being her Turkish husband's surname. She laid great emphasis on mathematics and geography, and that is why Javed and I became very good in both subjects; we were especially good at making calculations in our heads. Madame Kudret had a unique ability to make us enjoy mathematics, and she taught us easy methods for mental calculations. She honed our skills by making the children compete with one another. My later marks were always the best in mathematics and geography, thanks to Madame Kudret. Even in class ten (the equivalent of tenth grade in the United States), when my grades dropped dramatically for reasons that I shall explain, I earned a perfect score in mathematics. Madame Kudret also taught us world geography; we learned how to draw and read maps and how to identify countries, capitals, oceans, rivers, deserts, and mountains. This knowledge helped me immensely when I joined the Pakistan Army.

Since Madame Kudret's school was coeducational, there were non- Turkish girls there too. All three of us brothers were very shy around girls. They would invite us to their homes and parties, but we would invariably feel very awkward. I think they realized this and found it very amusing: ten-year-old girls are far more mature than ten-year-old boys, and they could run circles around us.
It was in Turkey, too, that I developed my lifelong fondness for sport. I trained in gymnastics and played volleyball, badminton, and football. Badminton is not a Turkish sport, but it was played in our embassy. Turkey is a soccer-crazed nation. Of course we also played marbles, as little boys do the world over, but this made my mother very angry. Ou r hands would be chapped in winter, sometimes to the point of bleeding, making it obvious that I had been playing marbles. I would bandage my hands and hide the marbles from my mother by putting them in socks.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

I was a precocious but naughty little boy, always good at my studies, but not brilliant like Javed. I was not very studious; Javed was. Those who are familiar with Mark Twain's works will understand when I say that I was something of a Tom Sawyer, with the difference that I went to school happily.
The orchard in the Lebanese embassy in front of our house had many fruit trees. I observed the guard there and noticed that he would take a short round of the embassy building in one direction, and then a much longer round coming back. It was on the longer round that I would get into the embassy compound and pluck fruit from the trees.
Since I got involved in boyish games and pranks and often did things that other boys wouldn't or couldn't do, I became very popular in my neighborhood. Sometimes my mother would discover my antics and get very angry. She would even get angry with my friends when they came to collect me. "Go away," she would say, "let him study." This would upset me, but there was little I could do except bide my time and wait for an opportune moment to steal out to play with them.
On e outdoor activity that my mother could not keep me from was accompanying my father on duck shoots. He would go with the embassy staff to a lake called Gol Bashi, which is now in a crowded part of Ankara. I found these shoots most enjoyable and adventurous. The most exciting part was the silent, motionless wait when the ducks would fly in, and it was even more exciting when occasionally I was allowed to shoot. I can never forget my first successful shot, when I got a duck in the water. I must admit that I never succeeded with flying shots.
Like neighborhoods the world over, ours had boys' gangs. We would fight, but the fighting was nothing serious. We threw stones at each other and made shields with which to protect ourselves. Each gang had its own flag. Even at that age I was very good at making strategies and planning tactics to ambush and trap other gangs. We would lure them into an area, ambush them, and run off with their flag to the top of a hill. It was defeat for them and victory for us!

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Being the outdoors type, I suffered torture when I was forced to stay indoors. I had more than my fair share of energy, and it had to be expended somehow. It had to find outlets outside the house; burning it up inside was impossible. Of course, in those days there was no television, which has turned many of today's boys into couch potatoes.
Javed was very fond of books, but I read them only when I had to. We became members of the British Council Library and would take out our weekly quota of two books each. Being a voracious reader, Javed would finish his books in a couple of days and then read my books in the next two—if not sooner! Before the week was up he would want to return to the library and take out four more books. I had perhaps read one, or not even that. So I would insist that we wait until the end of the week, after which I would want to renew one of the books and take out only one new one. This would upset Javed and lead to arguments.
We had a Turkish maid named Fatima whom we respectfully called Hanim, meaning "madame"—thus, Fatima Hanim. Ou r parents made it a point that we show respect to elders regardless of their station in life. We were not allowed to call our domestic staff "servants"—they were employees who earned an honest living and deserved respect.
Fatima Hanim was an old, uneducated woman, quite a simpleton really, but extremely hardworking. We would tell her that the earth is flat and that Pakistan is at its edge and when you look down you can see paradise. Either she really believed us or she went along with our game, because she always insisted that we take her to Pakistan so that she could look down and see paradise.
There were two military attaches at our embassy—colonels Mustafa and Ismail—whose smart ceremonial uniforms attracted me to the army at a very young age. But a man who had a greater impact on me was Hameed, their personal assistant. Hameed was a junior commissioned officer, a very smart and handsome young man from Kashmir. He was very fond of our family and would take me and Javed out on long treks in the hills. There was a zoo very far away, and we would trek up to it and then return on foot. Hameed was very good at games and would coach us. It was he who taught me badminton and volleyball.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Across the road from our embassy was the house of a retired Turkish general who had become a big industrialist. He had a beautiful daughter named Reyan. She could see Hameed sitting in his office from her window. On e day he was called and invited to have tea at their house. Much to Hameed's consternation, the old general offered him his beautiful daughter's hand in marriage. They married, and it caused quite a stir. When Hameed was transferred back to Pakistan, she went along with him. He was so bright that he advanced in rank and retired as a major. He started his own business and did quite well. The last time I met him was when I was a brigade major in Karachi. Sadly, he suffered a heart attack and died suddenly. On one of my foreign trips as president of Pakistan my wife and I met Reyan in London.

My love of dogs began in Turkey. We had a beautiful brown dog named Whiskey. I loved him. He was killed in a road accident but left with me a lifelong love of dogs. I prefer small dogs, though, not the huge ones. This surprises my friends, for they expect a commando to have something like a rottweiler. I think people who keep rottweilers, and similar dogs, have a need to cultivate a macho image.
Ou r seven years in Turkey passed in a flash. We departed with very heavy hearts, saying good-bye to a country that we had come to love, to our relatives, and to our many good friends. We were all crying. Those were among the most enjoyable and formative years of my life. Our journey back was filled with wonder, too, for my father drove his small Austin Mini up to Basra. We drove through Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. We crossed Jordan into Iraq, ending at the port city of Basra. From there our car was put into the hold of a ship and we returned to Karachi by sea, just as we had left it seven years earlier.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

CHAPTER 4

HOME



On October 1956, when I was thirteen years old, we arrived back in Karachi. The sheer hassle of settling down dulled much of the pain of leaving Turkey and our many friends and relatives there. Coming home has its own charm, too, of course, even though our home was very different now. In the seven years that we had been away, Karachi had exploded into a large and vibrant cosmopolitan metropolis. The city was humming with life.
My father reported back to the foreign office, still located in Mohatta Palace. We soon found a house in Nazimabad Block 3, one of many new settlements that had mushroomed after independence to accommodate the millions who had fled India. It was well planned, with wide roads and boulevards. Most of its neighborhoods were middle- class or lower-middle-class. Ours was one of the few families on the street to own a car.
My mother soon found another job. My parents were friendly with a Dutch couple, Mr. and Mrs. Brink. Mr. Brink was the general manager of the Philips factory, located in a new industrial area called SITE, and my mother became his secretary. Her pay was good, and one of the perks of the job was that she got a Philips radio at a discount. She worked there for a long time. "Years later, I stayed for three days with the Brinks in the Netherlands.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

That fall, Javed and I took the entrance examination for classes nine and eight, respectively, at St. Patrick's, the old and highly regarded Catholic missionary school for boys that we had attended earlier. Both of us did very badly in Urdu, not having studied that language in Turkey. Javed got in anyway, because of his excellent showing in every other subject. I didn't, and was temporarily admitted to a school called Mary Colaco. My parents immediately worked to bring our Urd u up to scratch. We picked it up quickly, it was, after all, their tongue. They both taught it to us, and they also hired a tutor. I became good enough to get into St. Patrick's after three or four months, though I suspect that my swift admission may also have had something to do with Javed's high score on the first quarterly examination he took. They must have thought that the brother of such a bright boy couldn't be a completely hopeless case.
My younger brother, Naved, joined St. Patrick's School later, in class six, in 1957. He was a steady boy who earned average grades.
In Ankara we had walked to school through beautiful fields. In Karachi our school was too far for walking, and the route wasn't pretty either. Sometimes my father dropped us off in his car; usually we went by bus. Th e bus was always brimming with people, with hardly ever any vacant seats. To return home, Javed and I walked from school to the Regal Cinema nearby, where the bus had to slow down at a turning. There, we would both jum p onto the moving bus, thanks to our gymnastics—a dangerous practice, but boys at that age normally throw caution to the wind. It would take us half an hour to get home, dead beat from the heat and the humidity.

Our neighborhood, Nazimabad, was a tough place to live, and it has become tougher since. I would not call it the Harlem of Karachi, but perhaps it was the South Bronx. A boy had to be street-smart to survive. There were the inevitable street gangs, and needless to say, I joined one. Needless to say, too, I was one of the tough boys.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Flying kites is a favorite sport in Pakistan, but it is done with a difference. Here, as in Afghanistan, people dip the string in glue filled with crushed glass. There are kite fights, with one flier trying to cut the string of the other to make him lose his kite. The flyers' fingers always get cut, and bleed. The cuts are very painful, much worse than paper cuts. The severed kite floats slowly to the ground and, in an unspoken tradition, the boy who catches it gets to keep it.
A recent popular American novel set in Afghanistan, The Kite Runner, brings this tradition to life, and my own experience included a variation of a key moment in that story. There was a bully in our area who would walk up to the boy who had caught a kite and demand that he hand it over, or else. Most boys would oblige. On e day my older brother got hold of some string from a cut kite. The bully, accompanied by two other boys, rudely asked him to hand it over. I held my brother's hand and said, "Why should we give you the string?" Then, without thinking, I punched the bully hard. A fight ensued, and I really thrashed him. After that people recognized me as a sort of boxer, and I became known as a dada geer—an untranslatable term that means, roughly, a tough guy whom you don't mess with. The lesson I learned was that if you call a bully's bluff, he crumbles. The secret is to stand your ground for a few seconds, and your initial fright vanishes. This lesson later stood me in good stead as a commando.


I remember St. Patrick's with great affection. I learned a lot there, and not only from books. Of course I couldn't help being naughty, and I would get punished, especially by one teacher, Mr. De Lima. I think that at the back of their minds, my teachers compared me unfavourably with my brother, who continued to get superb grades. Sometimes I was made to kneel in a corner; sometimes I had to stand outside the classroom. Once when I was standing outside, I saw my father coming to meet with the principal. I sneaked behind the building so that he wouldn't see that I was being punished.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

The punishment I remember best happened when Father Todd caught me throwing chalk at another boy in class and gave me six of the choicest blows on my posterior with a sturdy cane. It stung like hell. When, as president of Pakistan, I returned to St. Patrick's for a reunion, I reminded Father Todd of the caning. "I felt like sitting on ice, Father," I told him during my speech. An old classmate of mine came to the microphone and said, "Father, did you know at that time that you were caning the presidential seat?" Everyone laughed. Father Todd is a good soul and I have great regard for him, as I do for all my teachers.
On e teacher was Mr. Mendis. He was very good and worked on building our character. I can never forget how he would try to inculcate in us the attributes that make a gentleman. He himself personified the qualities of a gentleman.
Of course my pranks weren't limited to school. My romantic uncle Ghazi Ghulam Haider, the one who married the half-Turkish woman, was great at mixing with youngsters and would take the lead in many practical jokes. He would pile eight or ten of us boys into his car—a German Opel Rekord—and go looking for mischief.
One day, he took us to Frere Gardens, where people go to relax in the evenings. He spotted a man who was as bald as a golfball, sitting on a bench. For some reason, the man had oiled his bald pate, making matters worse, for it was shining like a mirror and inviting trouble. "I'll give five rupees to the boy who slaps that man on the head," announced Uncle Haider. We all shrank back, asking him how we could do such a thing and get away with it. "Watch me," said my redoubtable uncle. He walked right up behind the man and gave him a tight smack right in the middle of his shiny head, saying, "Bashir, there you are. I've been searching for you." It must have stung like hell. The baldy spun around in shock, but before he could say anything my uncle apologized profusely. "I am so extremely sorry, my brother. You are a carbon copy of a good friend of mine and I mistook you for him. He was supposed to be here." The poor man, still in shock, shifted to another bench some distance away, looking sheepishly this way and that. We were aghast but also relieved: that was the end of that, we hoped, and Uncle Haider would think up something less dangerous and embarrassing next. Lo and behold, he raised the stakes. "No w I will give ten rupees," our disbelieving ears heard him saying, "to the boy who smacks his bald head again." We were appalled. To get away with it once was a miracle. To get away with it twice was asking for very serious trouble. Whe n we demurred, Uncle Haider said, "Watch me." He stole up behind the man again and smacked him even harder on the head, saying, "O Bashir, there you are. I jus t saw a man who looks exactly like you and smacked him on the head." The poor man spun around again in utter consternation, his eyes wild with disbelief His mouth gaped like a goldfish. Before he could get a word out, Uncle Haider started acting contrite. He apologized even more profusely, asking in mock dismay, "Ho w was I to know that you had shifted seats?" Without giving the stunned man a chance to say anything, he walked away. We all rolled on the grass with laughter.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Don't get Uncle Haider wrong, though. He was in the air force and had won the sword in the Indian Air Force before Partition.

Before I reached class ten, at the age of fifteen, I had been an above- average student, usually among the first four in my class. That year, however, my grades dropped dramatically. The cause: my first romance. A first crush is a distraction that all young people must suffer sooner or later, but different people handle it differently. The later a man gets it, the more of an ass he makes of himself I let it become the focus of my life, not least because it came out of the blue. Truth to tell, she made the first move. I was still too shy to initiate a romance, let alone woo a girl.

She was a neighbor, about my age, perhaps a year older. I found it far more convenient to be wooed than to have to court a girl myself Anyway, I could think of nothing else except her. She didn't know English, and I wasn't brilliant in Urdu . A friend would read her letters to me in Urdu, and I would dictate my reply to him in Urdu. The person who would deliver the letters was my younger brother's friend. He was slightly built and could squeeze in and out of most places. He would deliver my letters and pick up hers, by quietly sneaking into her house.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

I went so far as to get my Nani Amma, my maternal grandmother, into the act without her realizing it. She was a lovely woman who used to wear a burka, as conservative Muslim women do. I would tell Nani Amma that she must visit the neighbors, and then direct her to the girl's house. Before she went, I would hide a letter in a pocket of her burka and pass a message to the girl explaining where to find it. Poor Nani Amma would go to the girl's house as an unwitting courier with a romantic letter in her pocket. Had she known, she would have been quite upset, to put it mildly. Certainly my mother would have come to know of it.

This girl was very beautiful. It was puppy love, really, just an infatuation, and it lasted only until my parents moved to another house, far away on Garden Road, near the Karachi Zoo with its beautiful gardens.

On Garden Road, I fell straight into my next romance. She was a beautiful Bengali girl from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). This crush was somewhat less frivolous than my first. She is happily married now, and lives in Bangladesh. I think my mother suspected all along, because I suddenly slipped in my studies. She wasn't sure, but she became very annoyed with me for my poor results. I did well enough on my finals for class ten, ranking in the second division and missing the first by just four points. I earned the first prize in mathematics.
At that point, my mother decided that Javed would go into the civil service of Pakistan (CSP), the most prestigious branch of our bureaucracy. Her youngest son, Naved, she decreed, would become a medical doctor. With my excess energy and mischievousness, I would go into the army. And so it came to pass.