Shame Read Online Free PDF Page A

question
got past my lips; the other half joined the ranks of the area's many
unasked queries, because I felt an extremely painful kick land on
my shins and, without crying out, switched in mid-sentence back
to sporting topics. We also discussed the incipient video boom.
    People entered, excited, circled, laughed. After about forty
minutes my friend said, 'It's O.K. now.' I asked, 'Who was it?' He
    Escapes from the Mother Country ? 21
    gave me the name of the informer who had infiltrated this par-
ticular group. They treated him civilly, without hinting that they
knew why he was there, because otherwise he would vanish,
and the next time they might not know who the informer was.
Later, I met the spy. He was a nice guy, pleasantly spoken, honest-
faced, and no doubt happy that he was hearing nothing worth
reporting. A kind of equilibrium had been achieved. Once again, I
was struck by how many nice guys there were in Pakistan, by the
civility growing in those gardens, perfuming the air.
    Since my last visit to Karachi, my friend the poet had spent
many months in jail, for social reasons. That is to say, he knew
somebody who knew somebody who was the wife of the second
cousin by marriage of the step-uncle of somebody who might or
might not have shared a flat with someone who was running guns
to the guerrillas in Baluchistan. You can get anywhere in Pakistan
if you know people, even into jail. My friend still refuses to talk
about what happened to him during those months; but other
people told me that he was in bad shape for a long time after he
got out. They said he had been hung upside-down by the ankles
and beaten, as if he were a new-born baby whose lungs had to be
coerced into action so that he could squeal. I never asked him if
he screamed, or if there were upside-down mountain peaks visible
through a window.
    Wherever I turn, there is something of which to be ashamed.
But shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and
it becomes part of the furniture. In 'Defence', you can find shame
in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a
wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more. And
everyone is civilized.
    Maybe my friend should be telling this story, or another one,
his own; but he doesn't write poetry any more. So here I am
instead, inventing what never happened to me, and you will note
that my hero has already been ankle-hung, and that his name is
the name of a famous poet; but no quatrains ever issued or will
issue from his pen.
    Outsider! Trespasser! You have no right to this subject! ... I know:
    Shame ? 22
    nobody ever arrested me. Nor are they ever likely to. Poacher!
Pirate! We reject your authority. We know you, with your foreign lan-
guage wrapped around you like a flag: speaking about us in your forked
tongue, what can you tell but lies? I reply with more questions: is his-
tory to be considered the property of the participants solely? In
what courts are such claims staked, what boundary commissions
map out the territories?
    Can only the dead speak?
    I tell myself this will be a novel of leavetaking, my last words
on the East from which, many years ago, I began to come loose. I
do not always believe myself when I say this. It is a part of the
world to which, whether I like it or not, I am still joined, if only
by elastic bands.
    As to Afghanistan: after returning to London, I met a senior
British diplomat at a dinner, a career specialist in 'my' part of the
world. He said it was quite proper, 'post-Afghanistan', for the
West to support the dictatorship of President Zia ul-Haq. I should
not have lost my temper, but I did. It wasn't any use. Then, as we
left the table, his wife, a quiet civil lady who had been making
pacifying noises, said to me, 'Tell me, why don't people in Paki-
stan get rid of Zia in, you know, the usual way?'
    Shame, dear reader, is not the exclusive property of the East.
    The country in this story is not