A Case of Exploding Mangoes

by Mohammed Hanif

This is a book about the assassination of General Zia. Nobody really knows who killed him, but the suggestion is that a case of mangoes was loaded on to his airplane and inside the case of mangoes was nerve gas which knocked out the pilot and caused the plane to crash. In a way it’s a comic book because it pokes fun at the General. People like General Zia shouldn’t be taken seriously. They are comical figures who converted Pakistan into some sort of banana republic. And poking fun at them is a good way of deflating them.