Shalimar the Clown

by Salman Rushdie

  The bus service to Pachigam started running again five days after these events. When Abdullah Noman arrived at his front door Firdaus could not prevent herself from weeping copiously for joy. Abdullah fell to his knees in the doorway and asked for her forgiveness. “If you can still love me,” he said, “then please help me find the courage to face the coming storm.” She raised him up and kissed him. “You are the only great man I have ever known,” she said, “and I will be proud to stand beside you and beat back death, the devil, the Indian army or whatever other trouble’s on its way.”

  Bombur Yambarzal had done a brave thing once, when he faced down the rabble-rousing iron mullah Maulana Bulbul Fakh at the door of the Shirmal mosque, but now that life was asking difficult questions again in his great old age, his fear for the safety of his beloved wife led him astray. He was no longer the big-bellied vasta waza of yore. The years had withered him, palsied his hands, dotted him with liver spots and put cataracts in his eyes, and he cut a skinny, unimpressive figure as he wondered with some trepidation whether he would live to see the dawn of his eightieth year. This enfeebled Bombur expressed the view that the Lashkar-e-Pak would look more favorably on Shirmal and be less likely to attempt any “funny business” if people responded to the radicals’ poster campaign in a spirit of compromise, not confrontation. “We should agree to at least one thing they propose, Harud,” he said, “or we’ll be the ones who look unreasonable and hard line.”

  Hasina Yambarzal, that powerfully built lady whom age had not weakened in the slightest and who continued to henna her hair in order to justify the rubicund nickname “Harud,” was preparing the television tent for the evening’s viewing. “What do you suggest?” she said in an uncompromising voice. “I told you my views about the burqa and if you try to stop the women coming in here there will be hell to pay.” The waza of Shirmal accepted her argument. “In that case,” he said, “can’t we just just tell our Hindu brothers and sisters that in response to the LeP intervention, and having regard to the gravity of the regional situation, and having weighed the available options, and only for the time being, and in this dangerous climate, and until things blow over, and for their own good as well as ours, and purely as a precautionary measure, and without meaning anything bad by it, and taking everything into consideration, and in spite of our deep reluctance, and with a heavy heart, and while fully appreciating their very understandable feelings of disappointment, and hoping earnestly for better days to come soon, and with the intention of reversing the decision at the earliest feasible opportunity, it might be better for all concerned if.” He stopped talking because he could not say the final words aloud. Hasina Yambarzal nodded judiciously. “There are a few pandit families over in Pachigam who won’t like it, of course,” she said, “but here in Shirmal there’s no need for anyone to get upset.”

  When news reached Pachigam that the television tent was now for viewing by Muslims only, Firdaus could not restrain herself. “That Hasina, excuse me if I mention,” she told Abdullah, “people say she’s a very pragmatical lady but I’d put it another way. In my opinion she’d sleep with the devil if it was in her business interest to do so, and she’s got that dope Bombur so twisted up that he’d think it was his good idea.”

  Two nights later the Yambarzal tent was full of Muslim-only TV watchers enjoying an episode of a fantasy serial in which the legendary prince of Yemen Hatim Tai, during his quest to solve the mysterious riddles posed by the evil Dajjal, found himself in the land of Kopatopa on the occasion of their new year celebrations. The Kopatopan phrase meaning “happy new year”—tingi mingi took took—so delighted the enthralled viewers that most of them leapt to their feet and started bowing to one another and repeating it over and over again: “Tingi mingi took took! Tingi mingi took took!” They were so busy wishing one another a happy Kopatopan new year that they didn’t instantly notice that some person or persons had set fire to the tent.

  It was fortunate indeed that nobody was burned to death in the blaze. After a period of screaming, panic, jostling, terror, trampling, anger, running, bewilderment, crawling, cowardice, tears and heroism, in short all the usual phenomena that may be observed whenever and wherever people find themselves trapped in a burning tent, the congregation of the faithful all escaped, in better or worse condition, suffering from burns or not suffering from them, wheezing and gasping on account of the effects of smoke inhalation, or else by good luck neither gasping nor wheezing, bruised or not bruised, lying around on the ground some distance from the now-incandescent tent, or else (and more usefully) fetching water to ensure that the fire, which had by that time taken hold of the tent too powerfully to be extinguished before it had consumed its prey, at least did not spread to the rest of the village, but burned itself out on the spot.

  As a result everybody missed the scene in which Hatim Tai met the immortal princess Nazarébaddoor whose touch could turn away not only the evil eye but also death itself. At the precise instant when Nazarébaddoor attempted to kiss Prince Hatim—he valiantly refused her advances, reminding her that he loved another “more than his very life”—the television set of the Yambarzal family exploded loudly and died, taking with it a major source of the family’s income, but, as against that, a significant cause of communal discord as well.

  The next morning the three Gegroo brothers, Aurangzeb, Alauddin and Abulkalam, rode back into Shirmal on small mountain ponies, bristling with guns and festooned in cartridge belts. It was a beautiful spring day. Early moisture glistened on the corrugated metal roofs of the little wooden houses and flowers sprouted by every doorstep. The loveliness of the day only served to heighten the ugliness of the black circle of charred grass and earth that marked the spot where the fire had consumed the Yambarzals’ place and means of entertainment, and the Gegroos halted by the still-smoking spot and fired pistols into the air. Such villagers as were able to do so came out of their homes and saw three phantoms from their past, older, but still giggling and unshaven. Their old home was still standing, locked up and empty like a ghost house, but the brothers didn’t appear to care. They had just stopped by to say hello on behalf of their present employers, the LeP. “Did you do this to us?” Hasina Yambarzal demanded. They giggled at that. “If the LeP had laid the fire,” screamed Aurangzeb Gegroo at the top of his thin voice, “then every soul in that tent would have met his or her maker by now.” This was either true or not true. It was getting to be a characteristic of the times that people never knew who had hit them or why.

  Alauddin Gegroo rode right up to Hasina Yambarzal, dismounted and shrieked into her face. “Don’t you know, you stupid disobedient woman flaunting before me the shamelessness of your uncovered features, that it’s only on account of us that the Lashkar hasn’t punished you people yet? Don’t you know that we’ve been protecting our own home village from the Lashkar’s holy wrath? Why don’t you wretched ignorant people understand who your real friends are?” But an alternative explanation was that it was only on account of the Gegroo brothers’ desire for vengeance that the LeP had taken the risk of sending a team as far afield as Shirmal. However, this was plainly not the time for a debate.

  Abulkalam Gegroo completed his brother’s harangue at some length, baring a set of decayed teeth in an exaggerated snarl that marked him out as the very worst kind of weak man, the type who might very well kill you to prove his strength. “You are the same damn-fool villagers who sent away the great Maulana Bulbul Fakh. The same damn-fool villagers that won’t observe the simplest Islamic decencies as politely requested and who nevertheless expect to be protected from the consequences of your refusal. The same damn-fool villagers who thought we were dust, us, the worthless Gegroo brothers whom you were ready to starve to death in a mosque, whose lives weren’t worth two paisas to you, the pathetic Gegroos who couldn’t count on their own people to save them from the murderous Hindus—the same people who are only alive today because those same Gegroo brothers keep interceding for them. Arré, how stupid can even stu
pid people be? Because even these useless dead Gegroos whom you were prepared to throw away like the corpses of dead dogs can work out that the people who burned your tent must be the same people you threw out of it, your Hindu brothers and sisters, whom you love so much you feel bad about what you did to them even though you didn’t give a damn about what you thought you did to us, and you still don’t get it, you don’t see that the Hindus who set the fire, your pandit pals, would have been happy to see the whole lot of you laid out in the street here, burned to a crisp like so many overcooked sikh kababs.”

  “He’s right,” said Hashim Karim suddenly, taking his mother by surprise.

  “He probably is correct,” his brother Hatim agreed. “That Big Man Misri loved watching TV, and he was always a big man for revenge.”

  A carpenter could always find work in Kashmir in the spring, when wooden houses and fences all over the valley needed attention, so Big Man Misri was one of the few citizens of Pachigam to be immune from the general economic depression. He traveled the country roads on a little motor scooter with his sack of tools on his back and often, when he passed a secluded little grove of trees that stood just out of sight of his home village around a bend in the Muskadoon, he parked the scooter, concealed himself in the trees, set down his tool sack and danced.

  Big Man had always been of the view that his terpsichorean skills had been too harshly judged by the Pachigam bhands, and that he could leap as high and twirl as effectively as the next man. Abdullah Noman had told him kindly but firmly that the world was not yet ready for a jumping giant, and so Big Man Misri was obliged to practice his art in secret, without hope of an audience, for love alone, and often with his eyes closed, so that he could imagine the rapt faces of the audience he would never be allowed to have. On the last day of his life he was leaping and pirouetting in his army surplus boots when he heard the sound of insincere applause. Opening his eyes, he saw that he was surrounded by the three heavily armed Gegroo brothers on their mountain ponies, and understood that his time had come. There was a knife tucked into each of his boots and so he went down on one knee and begged to be spared in the most pitiful and cowardly voice he could produce, which amused the brothers mightily, as he knew it would. I could have been an actor as well as a dancer, he mused fleetingly, and in the same instant, when the Gegroos were shaking with laughter instead of concentrating on their victim, he reached for both his knives and threw them. Abulkalam Gegroo was hit in the throat and Alauddin Gegroo in the left eye and they fell from their mounts without making any further contribution to events. Aurangzeb Gegroo, distracted by the calamity that had befallen his brothers, delayed his reaction almost long enough to allow the charging carpenter to seize him. Big Man Misri the private dancer made the biggest leap of his life, his hands outstretched toward Aurangzeb Gegroo, but the eldest and only surviving sibling came to his senses just in time and fired both his AK-47s into the soaring Big Man at point-blank range. Big Man Misri was already dead by the time his body hit Aurangzeb, knocking him backward off his pony and breaking his puny neck.

  That same night, after the dead body of Big Man Misri was discovered lying on top of Aurangzeb Gegroo as if they were lovers who had made a death pact, with the other two dead Gegroos by their side, Zoon Misri climbed up the hill to the edge of the Khelmarg meadow and hanged herself from a majestic spreading chinar, the only tree of its kind to have taken root and survived at this height, among the evergreens. She was discovered by Boonyi Noman, who understood at once the meaning of this eloquent, final message from her beloved friend. The horror was upon them now and would not be denied.

  General Hammirdev Suryavans Kachhwaha realized, as he thought about his approaching fifty-ninth birthday, that the reason he had never married was that for almost thirty years Kashmir had been his wife. For more than half his life he had been wedded to this ungrateful, shrewish mountain state where disloyalty was a badge of honor and insubordination a way of life. It had been a cold marriage. Now things were coming to a head. He wanted to be done with her once and for all. He wanted to tame the shrew. Then he wanted a divorce.

  The coming battle against the insurgency, reflected General Hammirdev Suryavans Kachhwaha, would be a conflict that lacked all nobility. The true soldier wanted a noble war, sought out such nobility as might be available. This struggle was a dirty bare-knuckle fight against dirty gutter rats and there was nothing in it to exalt the martial soul. It was not General Kachhwaha’s way to fight dirty but when one faced terrorists any attempt to stay clean was doomed to ignoble defeat. It was not his way to take off his gloves but there was a time and a place for gloves and Kashmir was not a boxing ring and the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules did not apply. This was what he had been saying to the political echelon. He had informed the political echelon that if he were allowed to take his gloves off, if his boys were allowed to stop pussyfooting and namby-pambying and mollycoddling and pitter-pattering around, if they were allowed to crack down on the miscreants by whatever means necessary, then he could clean up this mess, no problem, he could crush the insurgency’s testicles in his fist until it wept blood through the corners of its eyes.

  For many years the political echelon had been reluctant. For too long it had said yes and no at the same time. But now at last there was movement. The character of the political echelon had changed. Its new belief system was supported by prominent members of the intellectual tier and the economic stratum and held that the introduction of Islam in the classical period had been uniformly deleterious, a cultural calamity, and that centuries-overdue corrections needed to be made. Heavyweight figures in the intellectual tier spoke of a new awakening of the suppressed cultural energy of the Hindu masses. Prominent inhabitants of the economic stratum invested massively in this glistening new zero-tolerance world. The political echelon responded positively to such encouragement. The introduction of President’s Rule provided security personnel with unrestricted powers. The amended code of criminal procedure immunized all public servants, soldiers included, against prosecution for deeds performed in the line of duty. The definition of such deeds was broad and included destruction of private property, torture, rape and murder.

  The political echelon’s decision to declare Kashmir a “disturbed area” was also greatly appreciated. In a disturbed area, search warrants were not required, arrest warrants ditto, and shoot-to-kill treatment of suspects was acceptable. Suspects who remained alive could be arrested and detained for two years, during which period it would not be necessary to charge them or to set a date for their trial. For more dangerous suspects the political echelon permitted more severe responses. Persons who committed the ultimate crime of challenging the territorial integrity of India or in the opinion of the armed forces attempted to disrupt same could be jailed for five years. Interrogation of such suspects would take place behind closed doors and confessions extracted by force during these secret interrogations would be admissible as evidence provided the interrogating officer had reason to believe the statement was being made voluntarily. Confessions made after the suspect was beaten or hung by the feet, or after he had experienced electricity or the crushing of his hands or feet, would be considered as being voluntary. The burden of proof would be shifted and it would be for these persons to prove the falsehood of the automatic presumption of guilt. If they failed so to do the death penalty could be applied.

  In the dark General Kachhwaha experienced a smooth, ovoid feeling of satisfaction, even vindication. His own old theory, which proposed the essentially sneaky and subversive nature of the Kashmiri Muslim population in toto, and which in bygone times he had reluctantly set aside, was one whose time had come. The political echelon had sent word. Every Muslim in Kashmir should be considered a militant. The bullet was the only solution. Until the militants were wiped out normality could not return to the valley. General Kachhwaha smiled. Those were instructions he could follow.

  He had moved on from Elasticnagar to Army Corps Headquarters at Badami Bagh, Srinagar. In
spite of its name this was no fragrant almond garden but a center of naked power. General Kachhwaha on his arrival at the giant base had immediately given orders for the replication of his old suite of rooms in Elasticnagar and soon sat once more in darkness, at the center of the web. There was nothing he needed to witness in person anymore. He knew everything and forgot nothing. He went nowhere and was everywhere. He sat in darkness and saw the valley, every cranny of it, bathed in garish light. He felt the bloat of memory expanding his body, he was all swollen up, stuffed full of the babel of the unforgotten, and the confusion of his senses grew ever more extreme. The idea of violence had a velvet softness now. One took off one’s gloves and smelled the sweet fragrance of necessity. Bullets entered flesh like music, the pounding of clubs was the rhythm of life, and then there was the sexual dimension to consider, the demoralization of the population through the violation of its women. In that dimension every color was bright and tasted good. He closed his eyes and averted his head. What must be, must be.