The Far Field

by Madhuri Vijay

  7

  MY TENTH MORNING IN the tiny green room in Kishtwar, and I was awake before dawn. I could see a chunk of sky, feather-gray, like the pigeons that always surged and bubbled before the blackened mosque. I swung my legs out of bed and padded up the corridor toward the hall.

  Abdul Latief and his wife were already awake. They were sitting next to each other in the dark, and they didn’t seem surprised to see me. Abdul Latief nodded, beckoning me in. I went in and sat beside them without speaking. And suddenly it seemed like the most natural thing I had ever done in my life, sitting in comfortable silence with this somber couple in the predawn. When the azan began, it only seemed to reflect and deepen the tranquillity in the room. Abdul Latief rose to his feet, smiled at us, and left the house. I imagined him walking slowly toward the mosque, head bent, obeying the call of that voice.

  His wife went to the bathroom and returned with a small prayer rug, which she unfolded in the middle of the hall. Then she began to pray, hands by her sides, eyes closed, mouth forming silent words. She knelt and pressed her forehead to the rug, then sat up and turned her chin first to one shoulder, then the other. I watched from my corner, oddly stirred by the intimacy of her gestures and unable to suppress a pang of longing for my mother and her idols.

  She stood, folding up the prayer rug. Before I could lose my nerve, I asked her name.

  “Zoya,” she said, after a pause.

  “Zoya,” I repeated. “That is a beautiful name.”

  She smiled. It was not the smile she gave her nephews in Dubai, nor the smile with which she welcomed the people who came to stay, but I held tightly on to it. She went to the kitchen and returned with a thermos of sweet tea and a bowl of dried apricots. She sat beside me, and we ate and drank in silence. I did not want anything to disturb this comfort, but then she cleared her throat and said, in Urdu, “There will be people here today. We have a function.”

  “Oh?” I said, too brightly. “Someone’s birthday?”

  Her chin shot up. “No,” she said, and to my surprise, there was anger in her voice, so flashing and unexpected that I flinched. She fought it back and said, in a dull, indifferent tone, “It is a function, that’s all. You can join us, if you want. Maybe you can talk to the people there, ask them if they know your mother’s friend.”

  I thanked her, but the intimacy that had lingered in the air a moment ago dissolved, as though it had never been. I felt my chest growing tight, and after I helped her clear away the thermos and bowl, I told her I was going for a walk. She nodded curtly but didn’t look at me.

  The marketplace was just coming alive, touts and drivers and early passengers milling around, tea stall owners sitting like rocks in the rivers of steam that rose from their huge metal vats of chai. The motion and energy was grating, so I plunged instead into the network of tiny alleyways and shops, all of which were still shuttered at this hour. Here the light was thin and feeble, smearing the ground, and sleep was thick in the air. It suited my sense of being an outsider, and I walked in the very middle of the road, taking a perverse satisfaction in making my steps as loud as I could—the misfit, the invader, stomping this tiny town to rubble in the early morning.

  I stopped and raised my face to the mountains. They were pink, shadows running like deep cracks down their slopes. I lifted my hand and traced their wavering peaks with a forefinger. Somewhere in those mountains, I sternly reminded myself, was Bashir Ahmed. That was why I had come. To find him. Not to ingratiate myself with a woman who never smiled.

  When I looked down, I saw I was not alone.

  Standing at a Y-shaped intersection, before the rippling red-and-white cross on the shutter of a closed pharmacy, was an Indian soldier. I hadn’t noticed him earlier, but it was clear that he had been standing in the same place for hours. He was tall and lanky, his rifle a thick black line that cut his body in half. His eyes, under his helmet, followed me as I walked.

  As I’ve said, I’d seen plenty of soldiers in Kishtwar, but only ever in groups, huddled shoulder to shoulder, like teenagers. This was the first one I’d seen standing alone. My first instinct was to turn and walk away, but at the same time I was drawn forward by his solitude, which seemed somehow a reflection of my own. I approached slowly, pretending to be absorbed in reading the signs above the closed shutters. Nashrah Fashions. Manzoor Photo Studio. Lal Ji Sweets. A few downy chicken feathers blew across the street.

  Then I heard him call out, in English, unexpectedly, “The shops won’t open for some time.”

  His voice was boyishly high, and once he addressed me, I was able to look directly at him. At first, all I’d noticed was the uniform, the tall black boots, the dappled gray-green camouflage, but now I saw that he was young, not even twenty, with a wispy, carefully maintained mustache on an otherwise hairless face. He shifted from one boot to the other.

  “Thank you,” I called back cautiously. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Six fifteen,” he said. “Which shop are you looking for? I can tell you when it will open.”

  His ears stuck out comically from under his bowl-shaped helmet. Now I was close enough to read the name tag sewn to his shirt: P. L. Stalin. Malayali, I thought, with a jolt of irrational relief. A fellow South Indian in the Himalayas. I felt myself starting to relax. It was also comforting to speak English again, after days of speaking with my hosts in an admixture of Hindi and Urdu, a hybrid language in which our communication was imperfect at best.

  “It’s nothing urgent,” I said.

  We stood there in silence.

  Then he asked, shyly, “Where are you from?” When I told him, he beamed. “Bangalore!” he exclaimed. “I went there for three months, during my training. It is such a nice city.”

  “And where are you from?” I asked.

  “Me?” He seemed gratified by my interest. “I am from Trivandrum. Have you ever been there? It is also nice,” he said, when I shook my head, “but not like Bangalore. You know, for a while I wanted a posting in Bangalore itself, but then I thought it would be better to come here.”

  “Why?”

  “More money,” he said cheerfully. “And you? Why have you come to Kishtwar?”

  “Oh,” I said vaguely, “a holiday.”

  “A holiday? Here?” I noted the distaste in his voice.

  “Why not? Don’t you like it here?” I asked.

  “The place itself is not so bad, but the people …” He shrugged.

  “Why?” I thought of Zoya and Abdul Latief. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. His voice tumbled over itself in its eagerness. I had the feeling it had been a while since he’d talked to anybody. “They are not friendly, any of them. Actually, the Hindus are okay. It’s mostly the Muslims.” He removed one hand from under the rifle and gestured toward the deserted intersection. “They supported the militants, you know. Ten, fifteen years ago, militants used to ride motorcycles openly in the road and boys would run after them. That doesn’t happen anymore, but the Muslims here still act like nothing has changed. Sometimes I try talking to them, but they always look the other way.” He abruptly leaned in toward me. “You will see,” he breathed in a low, confidential voice, his eyes fixed on my face. “These people, they are not like us.”

  It was the us that did it, the assumption of a shared intimacy, like a curtain pulled around our bodies. It gave me pause, and I wondered suddenly if he were right. Not about the Muslims of Kishtwar, but about the way they saw us. Was that the reason for Zoya’s coldness? Because she thought soldiers like Stalin, named for a revolutionary turned dictator, and I were the same breed of creature, to be held at arm’s length? Was that why she stopped laughing whenever I entered a room? No, it couldn’t be. I had no weapon. He and I were not the same.

  “Perhaps they’re frightened of you,” I said, looking at his gun more pointedly than I’d intended.

  He gave me a look of genuine incomprehension. “Of me? Why should they be frightened of me? What
have I done to them?”

  I said nothing.

  Stalin was now looking around, as if my suggestion had troubled him. Then he said, “Do you know what happened here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well,” he said, “it wasn’t here exactly, but in a village about an hour away.” He pointed toward the same range of mountains I’d been looking at earlier, which had turned now from dawn pink to charcoal gray. “A Hindu village, close to a forest. Five years ago, during the winter, a group of militants came out of the forest with guns early in the morning, and they went into every house in that village. They pulled out all the men from this village and forced them to sit on the ground. Then they shot all of them. Sixteen men.”

  After a moment of silence, I managed to say, “How awful.”

  He nodded sagely, as if I’d screamed. “Yes. And I heard that, on the same day, the Muslims held big parties in Kishtwar. Everybody could hear them.”

  At the word party, I remembered Zoya, her glittering, inexplicable anger. I swiftly crushed the memory and said, “That is a terrible story.”

  “And then the mosque burned down,” Stalin concluded with satisfaction.

  I recalled Abdul Latief’s snort when he told me about the supposed electrical short circuit that had been the cause of the fire. For a few seconds, I felt light-headed.

  “You were here?” I pressed him. “You saw all this yourself?”

  “No,” Stalin said, “I was only posted here this year, but I heard the whole story. You don’t believe me? Ask anybody.”

  I could sense that he was becoming annoyed, so I quickly said, “No, no. I believe you.”

  Stalin nodded, grudgingly placated. As if to add a flourish to the end of his story, he drew a dented box of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. The smoke reached me, blunt and warm and bitter, and I felt the twist of a craving in my stomach. I hesitated, then thought, Why not?

  “May I have one?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “A cigarette.”

  He stared at me. “You want a cigarette?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Please.”

  For a moment, it seemed he might refuse, but then he shook out a limp cigarette from the pack. He handed it to me with his matchbox and waited while I lit it. “Thank you,” I said.

  He was watching me with a new expression. “I don’t know any other ladies who smoke,” he said, sounding suddenly like a child. Then he blurted out, “How long will you be in Kishtwar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He took a deep breath. “Will you meet me again tomorrow?”

  I started. “What?”

  “Not here. There is a place,” he said quickly, “very close to my camp. It is very beautiful, with a waterfall. I am on patrol there tomorrow. Take my number and SMS me, and we can meet there.” He broke off and waited shyly.

  The streets around us were turning brighter now, starting to fill. A Muslim boy on a bicycle, carrying a brown package, trailing the smell of fresh, warm bread. A pair of elderly men in skullcaps, neither of whom so much as looked sideways at us. A car with tinted windows rolled slowly by, and, in the backseat, a woman’s head swiveled, her dark eyes fixed on me. And, as if those eyes were a mirror, I saw myself. Standing on the street at six-thirty in the morning, a cigarette in my hand, talking to a soldier.

  “No,” I said without thinking.

  Stalin frowned. “You don’t want my number?”

  “No, that’s not—” My skin itched to be away from him. I longed for the safety of my green room. “I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I let the burning cigarette fall from my fingers and began to walk away as fast as I could.

  “Wait!” I heard Stalin call from behind me, but I walked even faster, not turning my head, waiting for the pounding of boots behind me on the pavement. It didn’t come.

  Just before I turned the corner, however, I couldn’t help glancing back. Stalin was standing in the same spot, arms cradling his rifle. His eyes were shaded, made invisible by the rim of his helmet, but I knew that he was watching me.

  I turned the corner and broke into a jog, not stopping until I’d climbed the green stairs and let myself in. I tiptoed past the kitchen, where Zoya was cooking something. Then with relief I locked myself into my room.

  Hours later, a burst of loud voices just outside my door startled me awake. I had fallen asleep at some point, and now I sat up in bed, heart hammering. The voices passed into the hall and dropped to a murmur. What was going on? Then I remembered: the function.

  I went across the room and put my ear to the door. Abdul Latief’s voice came to me, muffled, followed by the laughter of multiple people. I returned to my bed and sat there for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. I was still smarting from my last interaction with Zoya, and I did not want to face her, but I dreaded what she would think of me otherwise. I imagined one of their guests glancing toward my door, mouthing: Where is she? And Zoya: Who knows? I invited her, but she’s obviously too good for us. Besides, I desperately needed to use the bathroom.

  Before I could reconsider, I stood up, crossed the green room, wrenched the door open, and stepped out into the corridor. At the same moment, the curtain separating the hall from the rest of the house was flung aside, and two little boys, perhaps six years old, burst into the corridor, evidently in the midst of some game, both dressed in shiny black kurtas over jeans. They stopped short when they saw me, mouths open.

  “I was just—the bathroom—” I muttered like an idiot.

  “It is behind you, aunty,” the bolder one said politely, while the other stared at his feet.

  “Yes, I know,” I cried, my voice far too loud and hearty for the narrow space, and the boys prudently backed away through the curtain.

  In the bathroom, water had spread all over the floor, and there was the smell of unfamiliar urine. A long brown hair, neither mine nor Zoya’s, lay draped over the rim of the sink, and I stared balefully at it as I washed my hands. Then I took a deep breath, unlocked the door, passed quickly up the corridor, and pushed aside the curtain.

  The hall was full of strangers, but the first one to see me was a balding man standing by the door. His remaining hair, which circled his large head like a corona, was hennaed bright orange; in one arm, he held a baby, smooth and pale as a large piece of soap, and in the other, a sheet of paper. The people in the room were angled toward him, sitting cross-legged, or leaning back on their elbows, and he was reading to them. When I entered, he made the briefest of pauses, then smoothly went on, but it was enough to make everyone turn and stare. I stood there, helplessly self-conscious, until Abdul Latief, who had been sitting on a stool in the back, slid off and carried it over to me, smiling. As I perched awkwardly on it, I felt myself sized up by a dozen pairs of eyes.

  The balding man was still reading. His cadences were slow and musical, and even the baby in his arms seemed mesmerized. He read in Urdu, but a formal, elevated Urdu I had no hope of understanding. After a minute, I let my gaze wander around the room. I could not see Zoya anywhere, but Abdul Latief was now sitting next to a short, almond-eyed man, whose kurta was unbuttoned to reveal a shock of dark chest hair. Their shoulders touched in an easy, unconscious, way, and then I noticed that everybody in the room shared that same sense of ease, which could not be anything but the long association of blood. This, then, must be their family. I stared around, slightly taken aback by the depth and bitterness of my own resentment. I thought of how I’d sat with Zoya and Abdul Latief in this same room only hours earlier, the stupid joy that I’d felt at imagining us a kind of family, but which, I saw now, was only a pale shadow of what existed here, amongst these people, the ones to whom Abdul Latief and Zoya rightfully belonged.

  The man with the orange hair finished reading, and applause broke up the concentrated air of the room. He handed the baby to a young, fair-skinned woman in a frilly hijab. People stood, stretched, and began to talk. I glanced around for Abdul Latief, but, to my alarm,
he was gone.

  Before I could move, two women approached me, one of them the baby’s mother. She stayed slightly behind an older woman with a powdered, jowly face, whose maroon hijab was tucked behind her white, incongruously delicate ears. The older woman addressed me first, in brisk, slightly officious Urdu. “We thought you wouldn’t come out at all,” she said. She had large, yellow teeth and smelled strongly of floral perfume. “We thought you might be sick.”

  “I didn’t realize it had already started,” I lied weakly.

  “It started an hour ago. Didn’t Zoya tell you?”

  “She did, but—” Both women were watching me closely. “She said it might start late.”

  To my relief, they seemed to accept this. The older woman nodded grimly. “It almost did. Nothing was ready, as usual. Good thing we came early. We almost didn’t come at all, you know. My grandson was sick, and we were taking care of him all morning.”

  I made a sympathetic noise, and we all looked for a moment at the soap-like baby, who gurgled, not looking the least bit sick.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Musa,” answered the pale young mother, smiling at me.