Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir

“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, your mother, is like my sister. Remember that! And look at my white hair and white beard! Where will I run?”

Tonga held his hands. “You are like my father, and I am like your son. But I can’t stop it today. Please, close the shops and leave! Please, we don’t have much time.”

The villagers gave up. The shopkeepers pulled their shutters. I ran home. “Mummy, KLF people are outside. They are going to attack a convoy,” I shouted. “Tonga is there, too, but he can’t stop his commander. We have to run.” Everybody panicked. Mother folded the sleeves of her pheran and asked everyone to shut up. She was in schoolteacher mode, and everyone listened to her. She hid the jewelry of her sisters that was kept in our house. Grandfather got a bag of the family’s academic degrees, professional documents, cash, and passbooks. We were ready to leave through the door opening onto the vegetable garden behind the house. Then Mother said, “What about the books?” We looked at one another.

Father had built his library over the years. Each book had his name and a book number on the first page in either his scrawly handwriting or in Mother’s neater letters. I had spent long hours in his library. There were the great Russian writers in thick People’s Publishing House hardbacks that were sold in the mobile bookshops run by the Communist Party of India; there were the American and European novelists in slim paperbacks; there were the great Urdu writers Premchand, Manto, Ghalib, Iqbal, and Faiz. And there were histories, law books, commentaries on religion and politics in South Asia. The most beautiful of my father’s books was The Complete Works of William Shakespeare—a thick edition, leather-bound, with gold-tinted pages. His books were those of a self-taught man, books that had shaped him, helped him build his life; they made him stand out when he talked about worlds and ideas that few men in our world could talk about. Touching their spines, running my fingers along their fonts, feeling the smoothness of their paper, and being mesmerized by their stories made me feel closer to Father and that I shared his connection to a magical world.

But there was nothing to be done; we had to leave the books in the house. We stepped into the backyard. Grandmother kept looking toward the house. “Sahib must be here anytime,” she repeated. The sun was sinking in the sky, and we expected Father to arrive at any moment. “God will keep him safe. There is nothing you can do by staring,” Mother shouted at her, and bolted the locks.

Our neighbors were standing on their lawns with a few bags. Yusuf and his sons, Manzoor, Khalid, and Asif, were there. “Now what are we staring at!” Grandfather roared, and we began walking away. Amin, the chemist, was walking with his family; Abu, the butcher, was there with his wife and sons. A little ahead, I saw Kaisar, the ribald tailor, helping his father to safety. And Gul Khan, the old farmer who gave the call for prayers, was carrying his tiny granddaughter on his shoulders. Soon our walk turned into a run. I hoped that Father would hear about the attack and stay away; I hoped that nobody would be killed in the attack and the soldiers would not set our house on fire. I thought of some of my most beloved things: books, the black-and-white television, the Sony radio, the Polaroid camera.

Our village was emptying fast, almost everyone running toward Numbul, the adjacent village. It lay across some paddy fields and the Lidder, our local stream. The blue-green waters of the Lidder rushing through the fields bubbled over the stones. The wild grass grew by the stream, the willows swayed, and the paddies were ripening. The mountains stood witness. In the open sky, crows and eagles wandered and whirled. Indifferent. They continue with their own seasons.

We were half a kilometer from the Lidder when the first bullet was fired. Yusuf tried running faster, Grandfather stopped, and Gul Khan lay on his stomach in the fields, holding his granddaughter. I had an urge to laugh when I saw that Yusuf was running with his left hand covering his left cheek as if it could stop a bullet. Every few seconds, we heard the crackle of bullets. Kalashnikovs used by the militants sounded different from the machine guns and other rifles used by the soldiers. Yusuf’s son Manzoor tried to tell from the sounds who was shooting. “Now the military is firing back. The militants seem to have stopped firing.” His normally calm father slapped him.

The guns were still booming when we reached Numbul. Every door there was open to us. I do not know whose house we rushed into. We were ushered into a room. People from our village were already there, sitting silently along the wall, with half-empty cups of tea. As my family followed Grandfather into the room, two young men stood up and offered him and Grandmother their places; another took the cushion he was leaning against and placed it against the wall for Grandfather. “This is not a time for formality,” Grandfather protested. Tea followed. Nobody said much. We listened to the faint sound of gunfire.

After a while, Grandfather and a few other men stepped outside. I followed. We stood looking toward our village; all I could see were distant treetops, a few minarets, and the village mountain. Nobody said it, but each of us was searching the horizon for flames and smoke. Gunpowder doesn’t take long to burn a village. But I saw no smoke, only a slowly darkening sky.

I imagined people stopping a local bus in a neighboring village, telling the driver about the attack and turning it back. I imagined Father holding his newspapers and office files, getting off the bus, and staying with an acquaintance. But I could not ignore thoughts of the bus driving toward our village or getting caught in cross fire. I fully understood for the first time that he was making dangerous journeys week after week to see us.

The guns fell silent some time later. We stayed in Numbul that night. The next morning we headed back, anxious and edgy. Our walk home was brisk, punctuated only by short greetings to acquaintances and curious looks at village houses, searching for signs of the last evening’s battle. We came to a sudden stop when we reached our backyard. My grandparents, Mother, my brother, my aunts, and I were transfixed for a moment, staring at our untouched home, as if we had sighted a new moon. I rushed into our courtyard. Father was standing on the veranda. “I heard about it on the way and stayed in Islamabad at Mohammad Amin’s.” He spoke casually.

I shook his hand. “Were you all right?”

Father smiled. “Yes! We were fine.”

Grandfather repeated the details of our flight and our stay at Numbul. I joined in and gave the account of seeing the militants on the road and the conversations villagers had with Tonga. My younger brother couldn’t be silent either. “Daddy, Basharat was crying when we were in Numbul.” Father looked away, pretending not to hear him. “Let’s go inside!” he said.

We went around checking each room facing the road for signs of damage. A few bullets were stuck in the ceiling in Father’s room, and a few more had pierced the walls in the drawing room and the guest room facing the road. Grandfather pulled out the cartridges with pliers. We looked at them for a few moments and then threw them away.

By late afternoon, Father was sitting in his usual corner in our drawing room, a few books and a boiling samovar of tea by his side. My brother and I sat facing him. Every now and then, a friend or a relative would drop by, and tales of the previous night were recounted. In between these tellings, Father would recite a verse or two of Urdu poetry or a passage from Shakespeare and then turn to my brother and me: “Whoever explains this verse will get five rupees.”

4 (#ulink_39cb21de-284f-514c-b8fb-c48c041e424d)Bunkeristan (#ulink_39cb21de-284f-514c-b8fb-c48c041e424d)

Over the next few months, there were various crackdowns in my village and the neighboring villages. More Indian military camps were being set up in Kashmir. Military vehicles, armed soldiers, machine guns poking out of sandbag bunkers were everywhere; death and fear became routine, like going to school or playing cricket and football. At times we forgot about the war around us; at times we could not.

In the summer of 1992, my aunt was pregnant, and Mother constantly worried about a militant attack or a crackdown in our village. “What will we do if something happens?” she often mumbled. One June afternoon, my aunt’s labor pains began. Her husband, Bashir (the uncle with the mysterious English accent), Grandfather, and Mother talked about moving her to the hospital in Anantnag. But there was a general strike, or hartal, that day to protest something—a very frequent occurrence those days. The shops were closed, and there were no vehicles on the roads. Neighborhood boys played cricket with a tennis ball on the road. There was no way to get to the hospital but to persuade one of the two taxi drivers in the village to drive my aunt there. Grandfather found Dilawar Khan, one of the two drivers. Uncle Bashir, Mother, and Grandfather were accompanying my aunt to the hospital. As they began to leave, an acquaintance arrived on his scooter and asked them to wait.

Militants had attacked a military convoy near the hospital in Anantnag, and an intense gun battle was being fought. My aunt was in great pain. Mother tried to calm her. Uncle Bashir walked in and out of the house nervously. Grandfather prayed.

After a while, we could not wait any longer. Mother and Uncle sat with my aunt in the backseat of the taxi. Grandfather sat in the front seat. Dilawar, the tall, bald driver, sat behind the wheel, solemn and purposeful. He revved up the engine and turned to Grandfather. “Masterji, she is my daughter, too. Even if they have brought out tanks, I will get her to the hospital.” The cricket players left their game and stood by the car. Almost everyone in the neighborhood had assembled to see them off. Children tried to get closer to the car windows and see her. Women reached through to pat her head and hold her hand. Men made noises about hurrying up and being brave and patient. The car drove away. Scores of hands rose and a chorus of voices broke into prayer: Miyon Kho-day Thaeyinav Salamat! Miyon Nabi Kariney Raecchih! (May Allah keep you safe! May Muhammad guard you!)

Three hours later, Dilawar pulled up outside our house. “It is a boy!” he shouted.

I shook his hand. “Is my aunt all right?”

“Yes, yes, she is fine. I drove really fast. And at the check posts, I called every soldier ‘Major sahib’ and told them the girl was about to give birth. After all, even they are human beings. We got there on time.” I thanked him, and he smiled. “She is like my own daughter. It is a beautiful boy!” We named the boy Murtaza—the brave one.

One autumn day a few months later, I was with a few friends in the small market near my house. A patrol walked in, and our hands went to our pockets for our identity cards. A soldier stopping near you meant trouble. It meant an identity check, a possible beating, or a visit to the nearest army camp. Or he might simply order you to carry a bag of supplies to his camp. Soldiers forcing civilians to work for them was common.

The soldier who walked toward my friends and me only wanted to purchase batteries for his radio. I directed him to the shop of Bashir Lala, my mother’s second cousin, a good-natured man somewhat famous in the extended family for his cowardice; we often sought a laugh at his expense.

One day Bashir was visiting relatives in Anantnag. The locals mostly referred to Anantnag by its traditional name, Islamabad. The soldiers would beat anyone who used Islamabad, as it was also the name of the Pakistani capital. Bashir had been reminding himself to say Anantnag and not Islamabad if a soldier asked where he was headed. His bus was stopped at a check post outside the town, and a soldier demanded, “Where are you going?”

Bashir forgot his rehearsed answer, “Islamabad.” The soldier’s baton stung his left arm, and Bashir cried out, “Anantnag, sir! Anantnag, not Islamabad.”

It was rumored that Bashir took the next bus home and visited neither Anantnag nor Islamabad for the next few months.

The soldier wanting batteries took the few steps to Bashir’s shop. I saw Bashir rise from his wooden seat and walk to the stairs leading to the shop, sweating and shivering. He addressed the soldier. “Sir! What have I done? Do not believe these idiots, they have no other work but to tease me. I am their father’s age, and still they scare me. I am only a small shopkeeper.” The soldier laughed and asked for batteries. Bashir fumbled through the few wooden shelves of his shop, found nothing, and apologized again. “You should keep batteries here,” the soldier said. Bashir said, “What brand, sir?”

The soldier moved on to another shop. Bashir watched the column of soldiers till they disappeared. Only then did he dare to shout: “You swine! You joke with me! You dogs!” He kept shouting at us. Then he hid his head between his knees, covered it with his hands, and broke down. “Why do you do this to me? I have a heart problem, and these guns terrify me. Yes, I am a coward. I don’t want to die. I have two daughters. I have to marry them off before I die.” He held his round, bald head and cried. “You, too! And you are my sister’s son,” he said, looking directly into my eyes.

I soon understood his fear better. One winter night my younger brother Wajahat and I were watching The Three Musketeers. War or peace, one couldn’t let a chance to watch a movie slip by. Pakistan Television screened clean versions of various Hollywood classics. The reception on our television was bad, so Wajahat and I would spend hours adjusting the antennae. I would carry the antennae attached to a wooden staff from our roof to the lawn, to the cowshed, revolving it slowly. Wajahat would run breathlessly between the drawing room and my position to report the progress. Sometimes the TV would catch the images, but the sound would be muffled with static; sometimes we could get clear sound, and people would appear on the screen as if in a negative. Eventually, we would come upon the right place for the antennae, and the image and sound would synch up.

I lowered the volume to a bare minimum, lit a night lamp, and lowered the curtains to avoid attracting any attention. Outside, the curfewed night lay in silence like a man waiting in ambush. The Three Musketeers fought, frolicked, and entertained us for a while. Then the rumble of military trucks outside blurred the duels. We switched off the TV and peeped through the curtains; the headlights of the trucks lit up the empty road and the surrounding houses. After the convoy had passed, there was silence, and a wistful moon reclined on clouds.

Morning came abruptly, with a loud announcement over the mosque’s public announcement system: “Asalam-u-alikum! This is an urgent announcement. The army has cordoned off the village. Every man and boy must assemble on the hospital lawns by six. It is a crackdown. Every house will be searched. The women can stay at home.” Gul Khan, the farmer who lived in a hut of sun-baked bricks next to the mosque and gave the call for prayer, repeated the announcement several times. Few responded to his early-morning calls for prayer. But announcement of the crackdown gave his voice a new power. Within minutes my family had gathered in the kitchen. After a quick breakfast, Grandfather, Father, my brother, and I stepped outside on the road. Small groups of men and boys from our neighborhood were already standing by the closed storefronts.

Soon Mother and my aunts would be opening the doors of every room and cupboard for the soldiers looking for militants, guns, or ammunition. Kashmir was rife with stories of soldiers misbehaving with women during crackdowns. But there was nothing we could do.

A small crowd of freshly washed faces began a reluctant journey through the empty market toward the hospital compound. The light mustard sun, half hidden behind the mountains, touched the tin roofs of the houses. We walked in the misty light between rows of soldiers in greenish metal helmets cradling assault rifles and machine guns, past the forlorn shops. I reluctantly followed my father. Soldiers barked at us to walk faster. We obeyed. Another group asked us to pull out our identity cards and raise our hands. Within seconds, a long queue formed at the hospital gate. Two parallel lines of raised hands, the right hand holding firm to the identity card a few inches higher than the empty left hand. There was no distinction between the farmhand and the judge, just one man behind the other.

I entered the hospital compound, where several hundred men were sitting on the cold, bare hospital ground. Father, Grandfather, my brother, and I sat with a group of our neighbors. A military officer ordered visiting relatives and guests to stand in a group away from the residents of the village. They were ordered to walk in a queue past an armored car. Each man was asked to stop near the window and show his face to the masked mukhbir, a Kashmiri man who had become a collaborator and identified militants and their supporters.

Some mukhbirs were suspected militants who had been beaten into submission. Some were volunteers who worked for money. Some had joined the troops to seek revenge on militants for the killing of a family member. Some time ago, militants had taken an alleged mukhbir to the canal running along the mountain towering over our village and shot him. They had thrown the injured man into the canal and left him to die. Fortunately, the injured man, who turned out to be an unemployed former student of my grandfather from a neighboring village, survived. Two bullets had hit him near his neck, but the canal’s cold water coagulated his blood and saved him.

Over the next few hours we were told to form queues and walk past the mukhbir. If the informer raised his hand, the soldiers pounced upon the suspect and took him away for interrogation. My turn came. My heart galloped, but I tried not to look nervous. The mukhbir waited for a moment and asked me to move on. But Manzoor, my neighbor’s sixteen-year-old son, was taken away for interrogation. His father used to run a hotel at a nearby tourist resort. After the fighting began and the tourists stopped coming to Kashmir, they locked up the hotel. His father opened a grocery shop after modifying a room on the ground floor of their house. Manzoor went to school, but on the frequent days of hartals against an arrest, arson, or custodial killing by the soldiers, he manned the shop when the schools remained closed. He was a gregarious and talkative teenager. Occasionally, the militants passing by would stop to buy something or simply sit and talk. Manzoor loved the attention and being able to talk to many commanders. The army seemed to have heard that the militants stopped by his shop.

I returned to my place on the lawns and sat near Father and Grandfather, who were consoling Manzoor’s distraught father. Then two soldiers came toward us. “Is someone called Basharat Peer here? He is a ninth-class student.” They had the name of my school. I stood up. “Come with us,” one said. “But … I am a student,” I tried protesting. “We know. We just need you to identify somebody,” the soldier said curtly. They walked toward the doctor’s-residence-turned-interrogation center. I followed them, not turning back to see how my father or grandfather were reacting. We entered the three-room building. I had been there many times to see the doctor, who was a family friend. I was told to sit in the storeroom, and the soldiers slammed the door behind me.

The room was empty and had a single window facing the village mountain. I stood near the window and stared at the door. It was a plain wooden door, painted in the regulation bluish-green of hospital buildings. I stared at the door and looked at my watch. I turned to the window and looked at the mountain, at the pine trees standing in bright morning light, at the rough track skirting up the slope to the canal, and at the lone old hut in the clearing beside the canal. I looked at my watch again and turned toward the door. It stood still, wooden. I sat down on the floor and stared at the door. I was somewhat numb. The anticipation of interrogation is worse than the interrogation.

Loud cries and shrieks from the rooms next door startled me. Over and over I heard the words: Khodayo Bachaav (Save me, God!) and Nahin Pata, sir! (I don’t know, sir!). They were torturing the men and the boys who had been taken away after the mukhbir had pointed them out. I thought of Manzoor. How would his reedy body endure anything? I thought of the boy from my school whom they wanted me to identify. I muttered all the prayers I had ever known. The door stood still. I stared at the dusty bare floor and waited. The shrieks continued, with brief intervals of silence.