Authors: AJAY
Ajmer Sharif and Pushkar Lake
After meeting Hafiz Saeed,
Aban returned home. Nausheen answered the door. "Where have you been since noon? I have cooked
keema
and
Kashmiri pulao
for you."
"I have to go to Nemogram in Swat Valley,
Ammi
."
"Why?"
"In search of the truth. I want to know what happened to
Abba.
"
"Don't mention to anyone that you plan to go there."
"Why,
Ammi
?"
"Someone will come to receive you at the airport. You will get the answer."
Aban nodded. Nausheen stared at Aban for a long time, without saying anything. She went to the kitchen and brought back the meal that she had prepared.
"I'm not hungry,
Ammi
."
"If you eat, I'll tell you a story. You know most of them. But there are many things, which I have never told you."
"I was very young when I accepted the
Nikahnama
of your
Abba
. At that time, your
Abba
had just joined Foreman Christian College. He was a very bright student, an extraordinary sports person, an amazing swimmer, extrovert and very talkative. He qualified for the prestigious Pakistan Military Academy Long Course examination and joined military service. The Military Academy Passing out Parade at Kakul, where he was awarded the best commissioned officer, is still alive in my memory. As Second Lieutenant, he was subsequently posted in the Eastern Command during the 1971 War between India and Pakistan. When Pakistan lost the war, the Indian Army captured him and imprisoned him as a POW, prisoner of war. After six months, Pakistan and India signed the Simla Agreement and one of the important clauses of the agreement was to release all the POWs on both sides. In the meantime, the new government of Bangladesh demanded that India extradite two hundred Pakistani army personnel so that they could try them in their military court for war crimes. However, since the Indian government had promised Pakistan that it would pardon all of them, the Indian government refused the request of Bangladesh. Almost everyone returned to Pakistan except a few, including your
Abba
. The reason was that he had earlier fought with someone in the Alipore Central Jail in Kolkata for the rights of the POWs as per the Geneva agreement. Somehow, he landed in a remote area of Bangladesh. The hostile Mukti Bahini kept him hostage for five long years. One day, he managed to escape. He jumped into the Bay of Bengal and dived many metres below, staying underwater for a very long time till the Bangladeshis were convinced that your
Abba
had sunk into the sea or a strong undercurrent had sucked him into his watery grave. So, they did not wait for his body. Your
Abba
was a fighter and after a long ordeal, he came back to Pakistan. He was admitted to Military Hospital at Rawalpindi, and it took him almost two months to recuperate. After he was discharged from the hospital, he contacted me.
But he was a changed man. Your grandfather took him to the Army General and he was properly reinstated in the Pakistani Army with full honours. Though he was conferred Hilal-i-Jur'at for his act of valour, he remained a man unto himself. He stopped sharing his deepest thoughts even with me and though I could sense that he was under immense stress, he would never tell me anything. Days passed, years went by, but your
Abba
remained the same. I tried my best to get him out of his shell, to no avail. I went to every mosque, met
maulvis
and
Qazis
, anyone who could give me a solution, but nothing came out of it.
Even a decade after our marriage, we had no child. Doctors of the Central Military Hospital told us that there was nothing wrong with either of us. Still, I had three unexpected miscarriages.
In the mid '70s, the government of India changed and the new government embarked upon confidence building measures between India and Pakistan in a big way. Getting a visa and traveling to India became easy. One of my friends, who was married in India, and settled in New Delhi, invited me to visit India.
I wanted your
Abba
to accompany me, but he flatly refused. He always said that he would go to
Hindustān
only to watch India split into two, the same way India had divided Pakistan into two in the 1971 War.
I didn't feel comfortable with his extreme views, where hatred breeds hatred. You know it very well, my son.
I went to Delhi, from where my friend took me to the Dargāh Sharāf in Ajmer to offer my prayers to the Sufi saint Khwāja Mu'ānuddān Chishtā. I prayed for a child. In the afternoon, she took me to a nearby place called Pushkar, where the holy lakes of the Hindus stand. My friend told me that it was the only place, where Brahma is worshipped and so quite unique for the Hindu religion. While I was walking around the lake, I felt as if someone was calling me from behind. When I turned, I found no one. I was tired and so sat on a bench and didn't know when I fell asleep. In my dream, I saw a Hindu God, who told me that I would be blessed with a son within a year. This child would not only make me proud, but also the whole human race.
When I woke up, I heard the evening '
arti',
being performed in the nearby temple. I went out of curiosity and saw a four-faced Hindu deity, sitting in a crossed leg position in the aspect of creating the universe. To my utter surprise, he was the same God, who had come to me in my dream. This was Brahma, who as per Hindu belief, is the Creator-God. I bought one of his photos and have always kept it close to me.
You were born in the same year and I named you Aban, which means water. The reason is the water of the Pushkar Lake."
Aban quietly went near his mother and rested his head on her lap. Nausheen stroked his hair lovingly.
"My son, the four symbols, held by Brahma, in his four arms tell us about time, the causal waters from which the universe has emerged, knowledge and the sacrifices to be adopted for sustenance of various life-forms in the universe. It's not very different from what our Islamic scriptures tell us."
Bugging
Somashekhar Rao continued
with the simulation, explaining the particle-particle collision technique, the waveform equations, a little bit of hydrological engineering and finally a real-life modelling of a dam crumbling because of hammering by successive giant waves, falling one on top of the other.
Saeed al Masri had a question, "Is the reservoir capacity sufficient?"
"At FRL, Full Reservoir Level, it's several billion cubic meters. The bulletin of the Central Water Power Commission of India says that the expected reservoir level would be eighty-five percent. As per my calculations, this is precisely what I need; neither too big nor too small, but just enough to bring a cataclysm, beyond what anyone can imagine."
"Extrapolate your simulation and show us the result."
"For safety reasons, this simulation is in my laptop. I'll not run it on the computer of this yacht,"Somashekhar said and fed some data into his program.
The simulation began.
A dam crumbled and a giant wave, five hundred metres high leaped in the downstream, gaining more and more height while passing through the narrow path of the canyon. Moving at a tremendous speed, it engulfed town after town, village after village
The simulation ended after showing the aftermath of the megaflood -- an unimaginable devastation affecting thousands of square miles of luxuriant land.
While Somashekhar Reddy smiled with satisfaction at his achievement, Sundaram Iyer smacked his dry lips. al Masri felt a compelling need to drink a glass of water and Shalim Amār heaved a sigh of relief. The stark details of destruction shown in the simulation seemed to explode to life and become a living reality for all the viewers. It chilled them to think that the calm sea was potentially a gargantuan monster, ready to devour tiny morsels like boats, buildings, trees and men across which the giant would spread out its arms.
Shalim Amār broke the silence, "Upload the files to our remote server."
al Masri croaked, cutting in, "No. This file will not be uploaded anywhere. Let it remain in the laptop."Pausing a little, he said, "I think we should confirm the date of deliverance."
"The date will be the death anniversary of the philosopher-saint Ramana Maharishi. I have a special reason for the choice."Shalim Amār responded. "Coincidentally, the place, which will initiate the destruction, bears testimony to another interesting historical fact. Another great saint took
samadhi
at the same place and attained ultimate Nirvana. Both time and place are in perfect synchronicity with each other."He smiled. "Cannot be mere coincidence!"
In another room, the young woman listened intently to everything being said. She recorded the conversation and had taken care to copy through a Wi-Fi connection to the computer. A blue ray disk roasted the grand show of the Megaflood through a parallel HDMI connection to a Blue Ray Disk recorder.
She contacted the attaché office of the FBI in Abu Dhabi and briefed a Special Agent about everything.
The Special Agent asked, "Could you get a photograph or a videotape of any of these men?"
"No sir. After they arrived by different boats, they met in the small cabin, where we didn't expect them to assemble. So, we hadn't bugged the place."
"Why didn't you take their photograph, when they were moving from their speedboat to the yacht?"
"The Chief Steward wouldn't allow any of us to come to the deck. He confined us in a suite on the opposite side of the docking station."
"What happened next?"
"All of them moved to the conference room, where somebody switched off all the lights. I ran the camcorder, but the film is all grainy."
Before sunrise, three speedboats docked once again with the yacht and the two men vanished into the darkness as quietly as they had come. While one speedboat returned to Marina, the other sailed northwest to Abu Dhabi.
One boat was still docked at the yacht. In two suites, five big-sized suitcases, full of high denomination US dollars, still lying in a corner, were to be picked up and deposited in Dubai. They kept lying there while Somashekhar Reddy and Sundaram Iyer enjoyed the company of the gorgeous girls. The young woman disembarked from the Yacht when it docked and headed straightway to the secret location in Abu Dhabi.
When one of the boats neared Abu Dhabi, Shalim Amār Khan made a call, "Our worst fears seem to be looming large. Al-Masri wants more explosives now along with two submarines and two divers."
"Understood. If al Qaeda has decided upon a plan, no one can stop them."
Shalim Amār Khan spoke in his leonine voice, "I can."
"You cannot, brother."
"I will. No questions."
Stranger
There was no
direct flight from Lahore to the Swat valley. Aban's travel agent Himalayan Odyssey booked a connecting flight of PIA from Islamabad to Saidu Sharif, the capital city of Swat District.
A person with a placard was waiting for Aban. The first thing he did was to ask Aban to switch off his cell phone.
Aban tried to recognize the person, who looked somewhat familiar. He was the same person, who had visited the High Commission of Pakistan in India to identify Aban.
Aban tried hard to obtain a clue about the identity of the man, but failed. The man with a long white beard wore dark sunglasses that hid almost half his face. The man showed Aban a letter written by Nausheen, mentioning Aban's visit. Aban recognized his mother's handwriting, read it and gave the letter back to the stranger.
In an unchaperoned land, under the shelter of a man, who looked kindhearted, Aban felt uncomfortable with a stranger. Aban opened the door of the Hummer while the stranger took control of the steering wheel.
The Hummer rode over the rugged mountain, crossed many rivers and runnels and reached the Buddhist Monastery after a two-hour drive. Aban's escort asked him to get down, as the vehicle could not cross the Swat River since the bridge over it was too narrow and there was no further road beyond the torrent of runnels gushing to meet Swat.
He took Aban to the same spot where Imran Shah Malik was shot. Aban asked, "How do you know he was killed here?"
"He spent the night with me."
"Wasn't he kidnapped in Peshawar?"
"No. He came here from Peshawar. He had once promised to come to Nemogram."
"Tell me all that happened?"
"At the crack of dawn, just after he took his bath and was changing his clothes, they came and took him."
"Who?"
"Men of al Qaeda."
"Was
Abba
associated with them?"
"Absolutely not. But he had good connections with the moderate faction of the Taliban."
"Why did they kill him?"
"They had an argument."
"Over what?"
"Your
Abba
was perhaps not willing to accept what they proposed."
"And what did they propose?"
"I don't know. They asked me to wait outside when the deal was being struck. But I could clearly make out that they were arguing. When I came in, I saw two al Qaeda men pointing their guns at him. They then took him away."
"Didn't you follow them?"
"No one dare to follow the al Qaeda. But I did."
"What happened?"
"There were four of them. They refused to listen to what Imran said. They tied up Imran's hands, covered his face and stood in a straight line like a firing squad facing your
Abba
. I killed all of them. Unfortunately, a stray bullet hit your
Abba
and he fell down into the river. The current was fast and Imran was swept into a gorge. I jumped into the river to save him, but could not as the current threw me out onto the other side. My head hit a rock and I was unconscious for many hours. When I woke up, I returned to the place and buried the four assailants. Then I contacted Hafiz Saeed and told him everything."
"Didn't Hafiz Saeed know about al Qaeda's plan?"
"I don't know. But he sounded surprised."
Aban was flabbergasted. "If you killed the al Qaeda men, how did the video recording of my father's killing reach different news agencies and TV stations?"
"They had placed the video camera on an automatic MT tripod. I took out the cassette and threw the camera and tripod into the river. When I contacted Hafiz Saeed, he asked me to send the cassette to him."
"So it was Hafiz Saeed who released the footage."
"Maybe."
After thinking for a long time, Aban asked, "Why did
Abba
stay with you?"
"He was on some mission. He was here to bring truce between the tribal leaders and the military."
"Did the Taliban oppose that?"
"They didn't. It must have been something else. Yes, al Qaeda opposed the alliance."
Aban tried to get a larger picture, "Anything extraordinary that happened that day?"
"Yes. Before bedtime, he contacted Hafiz Saeed. I don't know the context of the discussion, but your father said that one day al Qaeda will finish Pakistan too."
"What did Hafiz Saeed say?"
"I don't know. But Imran said that he would never allow anyone to raise their eyes on Pakistan; be it al Qaeda or
Hindustān
."
"India?"
"Yes. He said that there was not much of a difference between al Qaeda and the
Hindustāni
military."
"Is there anything else that I should know?"
"Come with me."The man took Aban to a secluded place. He stopped at a point and removed twigs and leaves from underneath his feet. A wooden hatchback was exposed. He opened it. A rope was tied to one end of the trapdoor while the other end dangled freely, dropping down to an underground facility."
Aban was surprised. "What place is this?"
"This was my radio signal station."
"Radio signal station? But our government had banned all private radio transmission many years back."
"I used the 138.225 MHz frequency."
"Isn't it the disaster relief operations channel used by the Emergency Management Agency?"
"Yes. That's why I used it. Unless some disaster takes place, no one in Pakistan tunes into this frequency."
"Does the al Qaeda use the same frequency?"
"They used to, but not now. Barring some communication via emails, they have stopped all forms of electronic and radio communication. They only trust the ancient postal system."
"But where is the tower of your radio station?"
The man pointed to a mountain.
The man held the rope tightly and descended into the hole. He resurfaced after a while and handed over a briefcase and a watch to Aban. "Your father stayed with me. During the night, he told me something interesting about this watch. He said that this watch would one day become famous. When I asked him how, he said that the watch had codes, which could move mountains, make waves in lakes and change the course of rivers. Of course, I didn't believe him. But I know your
Abba
never says anything in jest. It seems he hid the watch deliberately before the al Qaeda men started to argue with him. Perhaps, he didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. I found the watch under the mattress and never opened his briefcase. You know what happened after that."
"Why did you hide them here?"
"I knew that the al Qaeda would come back."
"Did they?"
"Yes."
"How come they did not find you?"
"From that day on, I became a wanderer. I went to carry out relief work for earthquake victims in Quetta. There were more than a hundred thousand homeless and the local government were handicapped because of limited resources."After a pause, the escort said, "I forgot to tell you something; your father said that the watch is unique and if someone tries to open it forcibly, the contents inside will be destroyed."
"How?"
The man laughed, "You are as inquisitive as I was. I asked Imran the same thing. He said that a miniature acid vial is placed inside the watch in such a way that if someone tries to open it without inserting the proper nib in the crown, the acid will spread over the tiny circuit board and dissolve everything."
"Where is the nib?"
"I don't know, but your
Abba
had a beautiful Mont Blanc pen."
"I know about the pen. It was a gift from
Ammi
."
"Oh!"
"But what is the tiny circuit board supposed to do?"
"It can transmit satellite signals."
"Why didn't you give that watch to Hafiz Saeed?"
"I never mentioned the watch and briefcase to him."
"Why?"
"I was waiting for you."
"Why?"
"I could trust only you."
Aban held his breath.
As soon as the stranger removed his shades, a childhood memory came flooding back to Aban. Aban understood why this man had visited the High Commission of Pakistan in India to identify him. Why he had taken so much pain to explain everything that happened to Aban's father?
Aban continued to look at the man.
"It has been long years since I visited you, played with you and held you close. I've missed you as though my soul had parted from me."
Aban waited.
"Aban, I'm your
Chacha Jaan
."