38. Disrespect and Lies

When I arrived at Hasiki’s house with my notepad the next day, I found him waiting for me. He had clearly given some thought to what he would tell me, because, after a few token pleasantries, he immediately took control of the conversation.

“As a preamble to everything that I am about to tell Tommu – make sure that you record this word for word, it’s very important – I say explicitly that this is a personal point of view and therefore prone to errors. In particular, I rely on Tommu to verify this with the official view of the Gardeners and, knowing that the Gardener’s truth is superior to mine, being closer to Our Granny, to make whatever corrections are necessary.

I have agreed with Tommu that this account will focus not on truth, but on errors, mistakes and misunderstandings. In particular, it will address errors, mistakes and misunderstandings of my own that have been corrected over the years by the gracious attentions of Our Granny’s Gardeners.

I will begin with the immediate aftermath of the Great Fire, which consumed the hangar and killed more than one hundred people on the island. My initial error, I now confess, was to think that this was something that could be contained and addressed by ordinary measures. To this end, I thought that the best approach would have been a normal police investigation, a search for suspects and leads, that would disturb as little as possible the normal life of the island.

I now recognise that this was a fundamentally misguided notion, not in any way proportionate to the Disrespect shown for Our Granny by those who had committed the atrocity. It was, of course, foolishness on my part to allow the thought to cross my mind and I would like to record, with the wisdom of hindsight, my gratitude to Gardener Minister Lomu for pointing this out to me at the time.

The punishment of Disrespect, as Lomu said, should never be diluted by purely political and pragmatic considerations. Following instruction by Minister Lomu, I understand that it is a primary duty and has to be undertaken whatever the cost. My attempts to reduce the social impact of the investigation are, therefore, to be deplored although I have to confess that this is exactly what I did.

Indeed, I went so far as to use what authority I had to attempt to gain the early release of numerous detainees who had been picked up for questioning before my arrival from the plantations. This too was a grave error of judgement, as Lomu was later able to demonstrate, since many of these people, including those with no prior known history of Disrespect or reason for suspicion against them, were later found among the followers of Hama Batu.”
“That seems strange.” I interrupted, “Are you saying that their behaviour changed after they were arrested?”

“Sadly, it would appear so.” Hasiki replied gravely. “As you know, the period before the Great Fire had been very quiet with almost no security incidents. At the time, my view – misguided, of course – was that rising levels of prosperity, fuelled by new, sustainable energy sources had begun to demonstrate the advantages of modernising our society.

Looking back, one now has to admit that this was, as Lomu said, an illusion. A deep plot lurked beneath the apparently calm surface, with hundreds of participants. The Fire was the signal that it should go into execution.”
“Surely, though, a plot like that would have been impossible to keep secret. If that many people knew about it, something would have leaked out!”

“Careful, Tommu,” Hasiki smiled. “You must respect Our Granny’s view in this instance. At the time, I also advanced that argument but Our Granny’s representative was able to clarify that I was wrong; that their change in behaviour had nothing to do with the fact that they had been arrested and brought in for questioning.”
“Ah, yes, I see what you mean, sir. So the correct course of action was to come down hard on the offenders.”

“Indeed. Fortunately my misguided views had very little impact. Before I had arrived back from the plantations to take charge of the battle against the Evil Shadows, a more active campaign of action to round up suspect persons had already been begun by Captain-Major Paitor, acting on the orders of the Wise Gardener Lomu, Our Granny’s Minister for the War on Terror. Clearly, my own attempts to mitigate this effort were misguided and based on ignorance of the desired outcome.

In any case, I was, fortunately, prevented from pursuing my naïve and ill-advised plan by an occurrence that I, myself, had instigated, namely the identification by you, Tommu, of an informant who was irrevocably to alter the pattern of events.

This informant named many, many accomplices and supporters of the Evil Shadows, far more than I thought plausible or possible and, with this list in hand, a much more widespread program of arrest and interrogation was wisely instigated by Minister Lomu.

As I have already said, I had thought that support for the Shadows was quite limited in the period leading up to the fire. This program of mass arrest and interrogation proved me wrong. By the end of their detention questioning almost all the people on the list were shown to have strong sympathies for the Shadows even though, when arrested, they had denied any sympathy for them.

And now I will tell you of what absolutely proved Our Granny’s Minister to be correct. Even those few who were subsequently released because no evidence could be adduced to demonstrate their loyalty to Hama Batu tended to be implicated in later plots and terror activities.

There is, I suppose, no more to be said. One can only wonder what would have happened had they not been arrested and speculate as to the grave risks to the Village my own proposals would have resulted in.”
“My Goodness, Captain!” I exclaimed. “You are admitting to a great many mistakes. It might appear that were in complete opposition to Our Granny. Are you sure that I should record this?”

“Yes, Tommu, go ahead.” Hasiki answered. “It is better to record these errors, no matter how painful it is for me. Someone might learn from them. After all, it was all a long time ago. As you can see, my retirement is quite comfortable. I have a fine garden that produces more vegetables than my family and I can eat and all this is possible precisely because I recognise my previous errors and have reconciled myself to Our Granny’s Gardeners and everything that they say.

As I say, by the time I tried to stop the campaign of mass arrests, it was already too late. The interrogations had brought hundreds into custody and there was no safe way to release them. It forced people to choose sides and from then on my approach of conciliation and accommodation was, in any case, out of date and impracticable.”
“But that means that the Gardeners’ own tactics were creating support for their enemies? Couldn’t they see that?”

“Careful, Tommu.” Hasiki cautioned. “Don’t put words into my mouth. Remember that we have the authority of the Gardeners for the view that these people were already supporters of Hama Batu and the Evil Shadows. All that the arrests did, therefore, was to bring them into the open where they could be dealt with.
Hama Batu is the King of Lies. He and his people might appear to be ordinary villagers but they are not. Before the Fire, their lies were concealed. They pretended to be loyal workers and to support Our Granny. In fact, the supported Granny Frum, the false Granny of Hama Batu. Placing them in custody and questioning them forcefully merely revealed their true nature.

Knowing their true nature was essential if they were to be punished. Remember, as Minister Lomu also pointed out, that Lies about Our Granny and Her way, are even more dangerous than Disrespect. Disrespect is a personal crime, a crime of thought. Lies are a social activity. By telling Lies to others, they are corrupted. Lies must be stamped out because, like fire, they spread and grow.

Minister Lomu has told us many times that the War on Terror is a war about Truth. The aims of the war are to identify the liars who bear false witness, counter to Our Granny’s Truth. It is a difficult war because, by definition, a liar will invariably tell you that they are not one. It requires exceptional measures to scrape off the facade of falsehood to reveal the truth underneath.

Minister Lomu has laid out many times what is necessary. We need, he has made clear, to listen to these people when they think they are safe, to hear the truth of what they think when their guard is down. That is why it has been necessary for him to recruit so many observers: listeners who can report back to him what people say privately. That is the justification for ‘forceful questioning’ in which the veneer of respectability can be peeled back to reveal the truth, sometimes truth that the suspect himself is unaware of.

A war about Truth is fundamentally different from any other type. When you and I were together in the plantations, Tommu, we thought that there was a fairly clear boundary to be defended.

I’m not saying that we thought there were no members of the Shadows living amongst us but, by and large, they were not very active so we tended to ignore them. We thought that our problems related to incursions from outside. Small groups of jungle dwellers who would come in and try to destroy a stand of young trees or whatever.

Once the extent to which people were hiding their dissent became clear after the Fire, there was no telling who was involved. I remember the case of one particularly dangerous man who caused us problems for nearly three years. We traced dozens of cases of arson to him, not to mention robbery and even murder. When we captured him, there was no apparent connection with the rest of the Shadows but eventually it emerged that his brother had died in custody. There was a family link after all.
When we could no longer think of it as a war between the Village and outsiders and had to see it as a war within the Village, things became much more difficult. Without a fixed boundary, it was not only common to be paranoid but it was also common sense.”

“Captain,” I said, “I think I need to think all of this through. The way in which the war has been carried forward is very logical, as you have explained it. Clearly a campaign to punish disrespect and lies is both necessary and difficult but I find my mind confused by everything we have discussed this morning.”
“Yes, Tommu,” Hasiki answered, “I think that none of us find these issues easy. Perhaps we should break off now and continue tomorrow to allow ourselves to digest what we have said.”