Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir. Basharat Peer
their rifles. They performed military stunts and sang battle songs to a clapping audience. A militant leader raised the Pakistani flag after the songs. His men fired into the air. Then someone said that an army patrol was approaching the village, and the gathering vaporized.
A year after I saw Tariq in the parade, soldiers stopped knocking on his parents’ door. They had killed him in a raid on his hideout.
The fighting had changed the meaning of distance. I came home almost every weekend from school. The black sliver of the road made its way through an expanse of rice and mustard fields, willow groves, grand Iranian maple or chinar trees alongside a flamboyant stream, and the huddled houses of a few small villages. But the six-mile ride on a local bus was dangerous. Military and paramilitary trucks drove on the same road, carrying supplies between various camps or going on raids in the villages. Guerrillas hiding in the fields by the road would often fire at the military convoys or detonate mines planted in the road. Soldiers would retaliate after such attacks, firing in all directions and beating anyone they could lay their hands on.
One weekend on my way home, I was standing in the bus aisle near the driver. Kashmiri buses are like noisy cafés; almost everyone knows everyone else, and voices of varying pitches fill the vehicle. The driver played a Bollywood song, its melancholy lyrics floating over the din. A mile into the journey, a paramilitary convoy overtook our bus and hovered just ahead of us. The voices in the bus lowered, and the driver turned off the music. Soldiers had realized that driving close to a civilian bus would keep guerrillas from attacking them. Anxiety filled the bus. Our driver began praying feverishly: “God, I have three small children, please don’t make them orphans today. Please get us safely to our homes today.” We drove in silence, waiting. The minutes passed, and the paramilitary convoy gathered speed. Our driver slowed, and the distance between us grew. We were in a village called Siligam, midway between my school and my house, when I heard a loud explosion. The driver slammed on the brakes, and in the distance, we saw a paramilitary truck skid off the road and land in the fields. I heard a barrage of bullets—the lighter sounds Kalashnikovs; the heavier, retaliatory bursts, light machine guns. The driver swung the bus around and sped back as fast as he could. Everyone crouched under the seats.
I sat on the floor, gripping a seat. The roar of the engine rose above the sound of bullets being fired. I was thinking where a bullet might hit me; I desperately hoped it would not be my face, my head, or my right hand. I became intensely aware of my body. I felt the tension in my spinal cord, the nakedness of my neck, the stiffening of my legs. Where would a bullet hurt the most? I buried my head in my knees and closed my eyes.
We were driving away from the battle. I began listing the guns that could still hit us. We seemed out of the killing range of an AK-47 and a carbine submachine gun, but a self-loading rifle, a light or heavy machine gun, and a 51 mm mortar gun could easily hit us. A little while later, the driver stopped the bus. I stood up in a quick, involuntary motion. Two men hugged the driver. “You saved our life,” another man said, and shook his hand. An old man began to cry. A woman patted his back and consoled him. I smiled at everyone. We got off the bus and drank from a roadside stream. The driver and a few other men smoked cigarettes.
We had just gotten back on and begun to drive back to the bus yard in the village of Aishmuqam, near my school, when a convoy of paramilitary trucks hurtled toward us. The convoy stopped, and so did we. Armed soldiers circled the bus, and an angry paramilitary officer ordered us out. We stood in a queue on the road. I was close to the door and the first one to get down. I was in my school uniform and carried a school bag. The officer raised his gun like a baton. I waited to be hit by the weapon. I could not remove my eyes from his. He lowered the gun and pushed me with his other hand. I knew he was going to shoot me. But then he grabbed my arm and shouted, “You are from the school near our camp. I see you pass by every day. Now get out of here.” He let the bus and everyone on it go. As we arrived at the bus yard, a crowd gathered.
Two hours later, another bus arrived, and its driver told me, “You are lucky that no soldier was killed by the land mine. The road is open now, but they have begun a crackdown in the surrounding villages.” Fifteen minutes later, we passed the spot where the mine had gone off. I saw no soldiers, no military trucks. There were only the willow trees lining the road, the paddy fields, the tin roofs of a village beyond the fields, and a large crater on the right corner of the road, carved out by the explosion. We drove past a few villages where the shops had been closed and the streets were empty except for patrolling paramilitary soldiers. Fortunately, they let our bus pass.
A few weeks later, I was home again. That weekend we expected Father to visit from his office in Srinagar, which was wracked with violence. Each day on BBC World Service, we heard reports of scores of deaths there. The solemn voice of Yusuf Jameel, the BBC’s Srinagar correspondent, rang through our radios each evening: “I am hearing the sound of gunfire.” The fatal sound of bullets would play on the radio for a few seconds, and Jameel’s stoic voice would follow: “Yet another unidentified body has been found in the river Jhelum in Srinagar.”
Late in the afternoon Mother sent me to buy lamb chops for the dinner she was making for Father. I stepped out of the house and saw Mother’s grand-uncle, the white-haired Saifuddin, sitting by his grocery counter and scanning the market. He didn’t do much business but knew everything that happened in the neighborhood, as he spent most of his time watching who went where, and asking relentless questions. He waved at me and asked, “Today is a Saturday! Is Peer Sahib coming home?”
“Yes, he should be here soon,” I replied.
“I only asked because I haven’t seen Masterji [my grandfather] at the butcher’s shop yet. He usually buys meat by this time on a Saturday. I was wondering if everything is fine. God knows this is a dangerous time.”
I assured him that Grandfather was busy with some chore, and I was buying the meat. I walked toward the butcher, and the few neighborhood men hanging about the pharmacy and the tailor’s shop called out, “How was the interview?”
“Oh! The usual. He hadn’t seen Grandfather buying meat yet,” I said.
Everybody laughed. Abu, the butcher, was looking our way, smiling. “This neighborhood won’t be the same without Saifuddin. At least he asks about everyone.” He began cutting lamb chops for me, instructing me along the way about the parts Grandfather would ask for. And then: “Masterji must have gone to check the apple orchard. Or the fields.”
“No, he is home, fixing some electrical stuff.”
Then I noticed a group of young men with guns standing near the bus stop. Tonga, the tall JKLF man from our village, was with them. Some village boys had begun calling him Rambo, but the elders still called him Tonga. A small crowd of villagers had gathered around Tonga and were arguing about something. Abu and I looked at each other. “God knows what Tonga is up to,” he said, sighing. I rushed to find out. Tonga and his cohorts were planning to attack a convoy of Indian troops supposed to pass by our village. The villagers were trying to persuade them against it. They were addressing Tonga by his real name. “Mohiuddin Sahib, you are our son, you are from our own village. You have to stop this attack.” “Mohiuddin Sahib, you know what the soldiers do after an attack. Do you want your own village burned?” “Have you forgotten we have young daughters? Do you want soldiers to barge into our homes? Have the fear of God, this is your own village!”
Tonga moved away from his sullen comrades to explain himself to the villagers. “I know! I know! I swear by my mother, I can’t do anything. Every time my commanders plan an action here, I fight with them. Don’t I know? My old mother lives here; my three daughters live here.”
Hasan the baker held Tonga’s hands. “Please! Do something.”
Abu joined in. “Mohiuddin dear, please. You can save the village. Please.”
Even the old Saifuddin left his perch and came up to him. “Mohiuddin Sahib, you are my son. Rahet,