As told to BC Pires

My name is Raf­fique Shah and I led a mutiny in Trinidad. I was 24 years young in 1970, brash, dar­ing- and maybe stu­pid! Why else would my col­leagues and I seize con­trol of the peo­ple's army and not liq­ui­date the in­ept ex­cuse for a high com­mand? I'm glad we didn't, though. No blood on our hands.

I come from a work­ing class/peas­ant back­ground. Freeport was a cos­mopoli­tan cra­dle, a re­al­ly mixed pop­u­la­tion, liv­ing most­ly in har­mo­ny. With a back­ground like that, with close friends from every race and re­li­gion, how could I even think race? In our house, we dared not use the A, B, C or F-word. Which is prob­a­bly why I even­tu­al­ly se­cured a PhD in ob­scene lan­guage! Call it con­quer­ing sup­pres­sion of ex­pres­sion.

I have two broth­ers and two sis­ters, all good Mus­lims. In this re­gard, I'm a good-for-noth­ing. I didn't so much fall from be­lief as rise to en­light­en­ment, which came while I was at Sand­hurst and read many works of the great philoso­phers of the Age of En­light­en­ment.

I was in­flu­enced, too, by the gen­er­a­tional up­heaval of the 1960s: the mu­sic, icon­ic free­dom fight­ers. Bertrand Rus­sell and Sartre were alive and kick­ing a**. So I ques­tioned be­lief, but re­mained a Mus­lim. Un­til I re­turned home in 1967 and dis­cov­ered an imam [I knew] was a com­mon crook. I left the mosque and nev­er re­turned to that one or any oth­er.

In 1970, I de­clared be­fore a shocked court mar­tial that I was ag­nos­tic. The pres­i­dent, Col Dan­ju­ma, had to con­sult the judge ad­vo­cate to find out what that meant. I don't wor­ry about hell, rein­car­na­tion and all that crap. In any event, I've been a good soul, so if in­deed there is heav­en and hell, I'm go­ing to heav­en.

I at­tend­ed more pri­ma­ry schools than the law al­lowed, the last be­ing Cara­pichaima EC. At 12, I en­tered what, the fol­low­ing year (1959), would be­come Pres Ch­agua­nas. I shame to ad­mit that [cur­rent Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter] Jack Warn­er at­tend­ed the same col­lege, but he was in the "carat shed" (C form) and I was in Spe­cial.

The Roy­al Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my Sand­hurst was the on­ly ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion I at­tend­ed. There, they taught boys how to kill peo­ple us­ing a range of weapons. Luck­i­ly for Trinidad, I was a paci­fist at heart. I read vo­ra­cious­ly. I've owned a Kin­dle for two years. I read lots of fic­tion for re­lief from the re­al s*** that threat­ens to suf­fo­cate us.

I must have read a few thou­sand books in my life. At any giv­en time, I'm read­ing two books, an epic that puts me in a mel­low mood (right now it's Ken Fol­let's Win­ter of the World, sec­ond of a tril­o­gy), and a fast-paced thriller.

It gives me great sat­is­fac­tion know­ing I played a piv­otal role in 1983 in con­cep­tu­al­is­ing and or­gan­is­ing the first mass marathon. My ini­tia­tive spawned lots of 10Ks, 5Ks, half-marathons, road re­lays, clubs, triathlons, not on­ly in T&T, but up the Caribbean.

Road run­ning gives or­di­nary keep-fit en­thu­si­asts a chance to be in the same event with elite ath­letes. You can't just get on­to a track and line up next to Us­ain Bolt. But you could be in the same half-marathon with Ge­of­frey Mu­tai or Ron­nie Ho­lassie or Tonya Nero (watch that girl, eh, she's our new star).

[Fel­low rebel] Rex Las­salle and I had agreed there would be no blood­shed, once we could avoid it. When the Coast Guard opened fire on our con­voy, we did not re­turn fire. Hun­dreds would have died. As stu­pid as this may sound, we were pre­pared to die for the rev­o­lu­tion, but we could not kill for it.

I ex­pe­ri­enced fear on the morn­ing of the mutiny when, hav­ing made our de­ci­sion and de­ployed our men, Rex and I, ri­fles in hand, set out to ar­rest the com­mand­ing of­fi­cer. I was en­ter­ing un­known and very dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry. But once I fired the first shot and the ac­tion got un­der way, I was nev­er afraid again.

When I re­alised our ac­tion had not suc­ceed­ed, I knew we would pay a heavy price. I was more con­cerned for the men I had led in­to the mutiny. That was why I ac­cept­ed full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their ac­tions, for hav­ing giv­en them or­ders. Be­ing Tri­ni is hav­ing the ca­pac­i­ty to tol­er­ate s***: to laugh, not cry, and to chip or wine in the face of ad­ver­si­ty. T&T is my oys­ter, my world. In spite of all the s*** that hap­pens here.

Read a longer ver­sion of this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com