Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir. Basharat Peer
A chorus of greetings followed. “How are you?” “How are things in the city?” “Hope the journey was fine. The highway has become very dangerous.” Father seemed tired but calm.
At home, we took our usual places, and another round of tea followed. Father sorted the books and picked up a commentary on the Quran in English. “You must read it. You will understand religion and improve your English. You must also read the Bible, which is very good for your language skills.” Father went around in circles, talking about the story of Ishmael and Isaac. “You need the permission of your parents even if you want to be a KLF commander,” he said in a half-serious voice. He made it easy somehow.
“I know,” I replied.
“Especially if you are fourteen.” He smiled. “That is four years short of the voting age.” I said nothing.
He looked directly at me and said, “I won’t stop you.” I couldn’t hide my astonishment.
“I won’t stop you,” he repeated. “But maybe you should read and think about it for a few years and then decide for yourself. At that point I will not say that you should or should not join any group.”
I found myself nodding in agreement. “From what I have read, I can tell you that any movement that seeks a separate country takes a very long time. It took India many decades to get freedom from the British. The Tibetans have been asking for independence from China for over thirty years. Czechoslovakia won its freedom from dictatorship; even that took a long time.”
Father continued to argue that rebellions were long affairs led by educated men. “Nehru and Gandhi studied law in England and were both very good writers. You have seen their books in our library. Václav Havel is a very big writer. The Dalai Lama has read a lot and can teach people many things. None of them used guns but they changed history. If you want to do something for Kashmir, I would say you should read.”
I stayed in the classroom. But the conflict had intensified. Fear and chaos ruled Kashmir. Almost every person knew someone who had joined the militants or was arrested, tortured, or beaten by the troops. Fathers wished they had daughters instead of sons. Sons were killed every day. Mothers prayed for the safety of their daughters. People dreaded knocks on their doors at night. Men and women who left home for the day’s work were not sure they would return; thousands did not. Graveyards began to spring up everywhere, and marketplaces were scarred with charred buildings. People seemed to always be talking about the border and crossing the border; it had become an obsession, an invisible presence.
School was quiet, mundane. Breakfast. Classes. Lunch. Classes. Football. Cricket. Homework. The guerrillas occasionally took shelter in my dorm and occasionally joined us for a game of football. Familiarity had shorn off their glamour somewhat.
Shabnam, my cousin, was one of the finest volleyball players on the school team. I began taking volleyball lessons from him and spent more time on the field trying to perfect a serve and a smash. Shabnam had learned his cricket and volleyball from his older brother, Tariq, who had recently finished college. Every time I visited them and my uncle Rahman, I would see Tariq playing cricket on the enormous field near their house, with Shabnam hanging out on the sidelines.
My father was very attached to Uncle Rahman, his oldest cousin, who had raised him after his parents died. Uncle Rahman was a police officer, a tall, dark man with big black eyes who often talked about his long stint as a bodyguard of Sheikh Abdullah. He ironed his uniform immaculately and polished his brown police boots till they shone. He had recently retired and, in his civilian days, donned the seventies double-breasted suits and fezzes that Sheikh Abdullah wore. “You should be an all-rounder. Be the best in the classroom, and be the best on the playground,” he would tell me.
He would walk to the field occasionally to see Tariq play. “Tariq would look good as a police officer,” he often said. Tariq had graduated in mathematics and chemistry, but he was more of a sportsman. He saw me as a bookworm and entertained himself by asking me random questions: How many astronauts were onboard Apollo 13? What is an F-16? What is the symbol for sulfuric acid? I knew all the answers. Shabnam didn’t care much about such things, but he would try to teach me a few things about cricket and volleyball.
With Shabnam’s help, I was swaggering a bit on the school volleyball field. One late autumn day just before a game, I saw Shabnam walking out of the dorm with his bags. He was quiet, and there was a darkness in his eyes. “What is wrong?” I asked.
He dropped his bag on the lawn; his face was pale. “Tariq has gone across the border!”
I knew that crossing the border to be a guerrilla meant being killed. Shabnam went home. A few days later I visited my aunt and uncle. Tariq had left suddenly without telling anyone; Uncle Rahman was chain-smoking his hookah. He seemed to have aged in a few days. My aunt was in shock and trying to deal with it by busying herself with unnecessary chores such as arranging and rearranging the plates and bowls on the kitchen shelves, flitting out to fix the clothes drying on the line in the courtyard, and then disappearing again to buy sugar when there was already sugar in the house. Uncle Rahman watched her in silence and then laughed a little laugh that seemed to scream all his love and all his pain. I fought my tears; he puffed on his hookah again. “When I was in the police, nobody in my jurisdiction dared disobey me. My son has crossed the border without even telling me.” A rivulet of tears escaped his eye and rolled down his rough, wrinkled face. I had never seen him cry.
Soon somebody connected to the group that Tariq had joined sent a message to the family that he had crossed the border and was in Muzaffarabad, the Pakistan-controlled capital of Kashmir, where most arms-training camps for Kashmiris were run. But one could not be sure, and there was no way to confirm that Tariq had indeed safely crossed the border.
Back at school, Shabnam hoped that Tariq was safe and eagerly awaited his return. In his hostel room, Shabnam listened to the Muzaffarabad-based Sada-e-Hurriyat (Voice of Freedom) radio. Every evening the separatist radio station ran a popular show of songs interspersed with propaganda and messages from listeners. When a militant in training wanted to let his family know how he was, he requested a song, and a message was played along with it. The messages said things like: “Tahir Mir from Soura, Srinagar, likes the program and requests this song be played.” His family and relatives heard the message and knew he was safe.
Shabnam and I were sitting on a bench outside our dorm. He had brought out his black Phillips radio, and we listened to the songs and messages. The show’s hosts were notorious for over-the-top rhetoric and propaganda. One of the hosts, who called himself Malik, would prophesize about Kashmir getting independence in a week and how he would travel across the border from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to the Indian-ruled Kashmir and drink kahwa at the Jehangir Hotel, a prominent hotel in Srinagar, the next Friday.
But Shabnam and I were tense when we listened to the program. We heard the messages and waited for familiar names. For months there was no message from Tariq. Every day Shabnam listened for a message from his older brother; every day he hoped for news and fended off rumors: “Tariq was arrested on the border.” “Someone said he was killed on his way back.” “A boy from Pulwama who returned met him in a training camp.” Every time someone from a neighboring village returned after completing his training, Shabnam or one of my other cousins visited his family seeking news of Tariq. Word of mouth was the only source of news.
One day after dinner, Shabnam was lying on his bed, holding the radio like a pillow, and listening to the show. I was talking to his roommate. The usual songs played: “The Daughters of Srinagar! The Brave Daughters of Srinagar!” A few minutes of messages and another song: “Wake up! The morning is here! Martyrs’ blood has bloomed! The flags of victory are flying! Wake up! The morning is here!” The hosts’ voices droned a litany of names and addresses; I continued talking. And then a sudden loud thump startled Shabnam’s roommate and me; Shabnam had jumped off the bed and stood a few feet away, holding the radio in his left hand. “It is Tariq! It is Tariq! Basharat, he really is alive! It said, ‘Tariq Peer from Salia, Islamabad, likes the show and requests this song.’”
Around a year after he had crossed the border, Tariq returned home. Friends, relatives, and neighbors had