The Night of Broken Glass

by Feroz Rather

‘Atto Khudayo,’ Ishfaq cried. O God.

  ‘This is the fucking fate of a stone-thrower,’ Inspector Masoodi spit out.

  He grabbed Ishfaq’s shoulder, grinding the tweezers into his flesh while simultaneously yanking the hair on his scalp.

  Kamran sat up looking horrified. He covered his eyes with his palms and began to weep.

  ‘I’ll thrust these tweezers into your mother’s vagina if you ever organize a protest against me or even think of hurling a rock at me.’

  ‘Please let me go … please—,’ Ishfaq cried.

  I went into the house. There was a copper pitcher filled with water in the kitchen sink. I climbed onto the sink and peed into the pitcher.

  Then I went upstairs. Yasmin, Inspector Masoodi’s wife, was in her bedroom. Her baby, very little and very soft, just like a mewling mouse, was in her lap.

  The baby boy gazed around the room in wonderment as his mother suckled him. Yasmin then lay down beside him, comforting him, until they both fell asleep.

  I wedged myself between mother and child and lay by her side, looking at her round breast with its taut, dark nipple. I wanted to suck on it. I put my lips around her nipple but stopped. Although she was still asleep, the child behind me woke up. His father’s son, he could see me. I drew him close and picking him up, took him into the basement. This time, I was not going to preach. This time, I was going to strangle him like his grandfather had strangled me.

  I put my hand around his little neck. My fingers tickled him and he laughed. Good God! Is there any sound more pleasing than the sound of a child’s laughter?

  I took him back upstairs and placed him on the edge of the bed and lay down by Yasmin. I took her breast in my hand and drew her nipple into my mouth. I sucked at it and stole all her milk.

  That night, when Inspector Masoodi returned home, I was burrowed in the mattress, playing with a bug I had caught. The finger that had left me was chasing after the mice. Then I heard the child crying. Inspector Masoodi, drunk and thirsty, shouted at Yasmin to bring him water from the kitchen. ‘Ha, ha!’ I laughed.

  4

  The Souvenir

  M

  y father was my first teacher. Each morning, when I stood with other students in the school ground, my hands tied beneath my heart in prayer, he would stand on the veranda and say, ‘God is the light of the heavens and earth.’

  After school, I walked home, my satchel slung on my back and my hands deep in my pockets. I stopped by the curb, in front of Shah-e-Hamdan’s shrine. The yellow hazard sign, the word ‘DANGER’ inscribed in large, black capital letters beneath the universal emblem of the skull and crossbones on a metal sheet, was nailed to a wooden pole to flag up the existence of potentially dangerous electric cables.

  I looked at the sign and an unnamed fear seized me. The street, cheery with the honking of cars and scooters, suddenly felt desolate and empty. The sky, filled with bright light, grew bleak.

  Day after day, I had passed by this signpost, without raising my head or giving it a second thought. But on that day, I gritted my teeth, gulped down the saliva in my drying mouth, clenched my fists inside my pockets and stared into the eyeless sockets of the grinning skull. When I am dead, I thought, my body will be buried. My skin and flesh will eventually rot away. But how can death be possible when, in this moment, I feel so alive. How can this happen to me when I am standing here on this June afternoon in the city of Srinagar, me with my limbs, feet and head all intact.

  I took a step back and, without completely understanding why, I picked up a jagged rock from the road and heaved it at the sign with all the strength that I could muster.

  I missed the board entirely and the rock soared high and hit a pigeon perched on the crossbar of the pole. The bird crashed down on the curb.

  The city and all its traffic ought to have screeched to a halt as people gathered around the dying pigeon in solemn silence. But no one stopped or even noticed. I was left standing with the skull sign over my head and the dying pigeon near my feet, and this petrified me. It was time for Father to return home along that very street. I dreaded his arrival at the scene. I looked at the pigeon squirming in its death throes, a tiny droplet of shining blood swelling on its neck.

  ‘Look at what you’ve done!’ I could just about see Father shaking me as he glared accusingly at me.

  I heard steps approaching me from behind. I felt a crushing guilt. Without turning around to confirm whether it was him, I ran away.

  Minutes later, when I reached home, I was breathless and miserable. Mother walked out of the front door. ‘What’s the matter, Tariq?’ she asked.

  ‘Never am I going into the shrine with Father,’ I hollered. ‘Never again!’

  Father went to the shrine every afternoon like clockwork. Bearing a rosary in his right hand, he faced the house-shaped tomb that was covered with a black velvet drape embroidered with the verses of the Qur’an. With an expression of abject subservience on his white-bearded face, he fingered each bead in turn. Ya Shah-e-Hamdan, Ya Shah-e-Hamdan, he intoned, naming the saint. ‘If you chant the saint’s name with a pure heart, he’ll hear you and call your name in response,’ he said.

  His footsteps held a deep, rhythmic silence as he came into the courtyard. His eyes shone with an ethereal light and his lips continued to murmur praises for the saint. He put his hand into his side pocket, withdrew a handful of rice grains and sprinkled them on the plaza. Flocks of pigeons descended from the roof immediately.

  When the war came to Srinagar eighteen years ago, his visits to the shrine were followed by long walks through the city. He picked up the shells of the bullets from where the guns had been fired by the soldiers. He brought these shells home and hid them in a cache.

  I did not know about this. It was only last week, when I turned eighteen, that Mother told me. She also said that she had asked Father what made him do it. ‘I don’t want Tariq to see the bullet shells when he goes out to play,’ he had replied.

  Father had faith. His eyes were frighteningly placid. He was not riddled with doubt like I was. The shape of a rice grain resembled the shape of a bullet, I thought. In Father’s absence, I often pictured the grains of rice turning into bullets, clogging little mouths, choking the pigeons dead.

  I looked for the shells in the morning and found them in a small rexine bag under the staircase in the corridor. I carried the bag to my room on the third storey and unzipped it.

  The shells clattered onto the floor, buzzing and scattering like hornets as the afternoon sun that streamed in through the open window illuminated them. I ran downstairs to the semi-dark corridor and rummaged under the staircase until I found Father’s aluminium toolbox. I raked through the assortment of nuts and bolts, and quickly retrieved a hammer, a string, a couple of sharp nails and an iron brick.

  I ran back upstairs and scooped up the shells. I placed each one on the iron brick and hammered a nail into it until it pierced the metal. I strung them together on the string. Then I hammered two nails at each end of the wooden lintel over the window and hung up the rosary.

  The neighbourhood was poor and grimy. Amidst a cluster of small houses, there was an empty plot of land. One evening, when I was about five, the rebels moved into the house that stood there then. It was a tall, concrete building with strong brick walls and white, glass-paned windows. Of the night that followed, I remembered crouching beneath the staircase with Father’s arm wrapped around my head. In the crossfire, the bullets perforated our roof. The explosions of light and sound during that long fire-fight made the ground shake and rumble. The soldiers fired mortar shells, tearing down the walls of the house. The reek of gunpowder and charred flesh sent me into a paroxysm of coughing.

  I fingered the beads over my window, wondering whether the shells I was touching with my fingertips now were the ones that encased those bullets. I pulled at the ends of the rosary to get a wider view. I looked through it at the entirety of the plot; the spot in the middle where the building once stood was oddly des
olate and blank. The clover growing on the outer fringes of the base had failed to enclose the blackened rocks of the ruin.

  One afternoon, a few weeks later, as I entered the kitchen, Father said, ‘Tariq, you will not step out of the house.’

  ‘Why not, Father?’ I asked.

  ‘Those who don’t believe in Shah-e-Hamdan should not step out of their houses during curfew,’ he said.

  ‘The shrine is just around the corner,’ I argued, ‘and there are no soldiers on our street.’

  I rose on my toes to peer out of the rear window and pointed to a man on the street through the glass pane on top. Father stood up on the floor and craned his neck to look at the man’s head. He shrugged, opening the door of the cabinet reluctantly. He gave me a handful of rice in a polythene bag.

  I grabbed the bag with a grin and hurried out to collect my bicycle from the veranda before he could change his mind.

  ‘Come help me soften the soil,’ Mother beckoned me with a trowel from amidst the hakh plants in the vegetable patch.

  ‘I am off to the shrine,’ I replied.

  ‘Why today of all days?’ she grumbled as she bludgeoned a hard lump of earth. ‘You’ve always refused to go to the shrine for as long as I can remember.’

  ‘To feed the pigeons,’ I quipped.

  ‘You should make sure to have your ID card with you.’

  I patted my breast pocket that held the card which she had forced me to have laminated. I fastened the rice bag to the handlebars and wheeled the bicycle down the corridor, down the porch steps and out onto the street. I smiled at the passing pedestrians although their furtive glances filled me with trepidation. I surveyed the street as far as my eyes could see. There wasn’t a soldier in sight. I mounted my bicycle and pedalled, keeping to the shade by the line of the shuttered shops on my right.

  As I approached the hazard sign, I espied a flock of grey rock pigeons sunning on the sloping roof of the shrine. I leaned my bicycle against the gate of the shrine and pushed the gate open. A fat, unkempt soldier thundered down to me, his waterproof lumberjack boots with their thick, deep-rutted soles thudding on the tarmac.

  ‘Show me your ID,’ he barked. His eyelids were puffy and a frizzy beard covered his bloated face.

  I quickly extracted it from my pocket.

  ‘Don’t you know that the city is under curfew?’ he snatched the card from my hand.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ I could smell the cheap rum on his foul breath.

  ‘Then why did you venture out of your house?’

  ‘For my father’s sake,’ I replied.

  ‘Your father?’ the soldier repeated.

  ‘He feeds the pigeons at the shrine,’ I said tersely. I couldn’t bring myself to explain to this callous creature that Father hadn’t been eating well because he was worrying about the pigeons. It would only exacerbate the situation.

  The soldier scrutinized my ID, flicking a glance at me to check that the picture was really me. I was fairly sure that he was going to beat me and kick me with those gargantuan shoes. Then I heard wings flapping. Damn the pigeons, I thought. It was because of them that I was now in this pickle.

  The soldier slapped my shoulder. ‘Go feed the pigeons,’ he said. I unhitched the bag from the bicycle’s handlebar and raced down the stone stairs to the bottom of the enclosure. I stood within the square stone plaza streaked white and brown with pigeon droppings. The bronze tip of the spire gleamed above the three-tiers of the green, shingled roof. The pigeons circled the spire in perfectly co-ordinated flight patterns, their wings clapping exultantly against the sky.

  I scattered the grains across the plaza. The pigeons fluttered down to peck at them on the stone. My errand completed, I stepped out of the gate to hurry back home when the soldier called me back.

  ‘Please, sir, may I go now?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘No,’ he tucked my ID into his hip-pocket, ‘you cannot.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Stand over there,’ he pointed to the fence.

  He followed me to the place that he had indicated and thrust his gun into my hands.

  ‘Now turn around and place the gun barrel there,’ he ordered, pointing to a gap in the metal grille.

  I squatted on my haunches and did as I had been told. He placed a heavy hand on my head and grasped a tuft of my hair – like it was grass – using his hold to direct my eyes to the plaza.

  ‘Shoot, motherfucker!’ he shouted, yanking at my hair.

  I closed my eyes in terror as my heart pounded loudly. I was petrified.

  ‘SHOOT, MOTHERFUCKER!’

  I shuddered and opened my eyes. I pressed the trigger. On the plaza, two pigeons dropped dead.

  ‘Good shot,’ he said, his gaze fixed on the square. ‘Now go fetch the hunt.’

  I surreptitiously palmed the bullet shell that had fallen by my foot as I stood up. Slipping it into my trouser pocket, I turned around and returned the soldier’s gun before walking back slowly to the plaza.

  When I looked back, I saw the bearded soldier surrounded by other soldiers who had rushed out upon hearing the gunshot. The barrels of their guns were levelled at me, but the soldier must have assured them that there was nothing to worry about because they slunk back to their patrol stations.

  The pigeons that had flown away had returned to finish their meal, wholly ignoring the two dead birds lying there, belly up, with their stiff pink legs pointing skyward.

  I walked to the centre of the plaza, but the pigeons ignored me as well and did not fly away in fright.

  As I knelt to cup each flaccid belly in my palms, I looked into the dark interior of the shrine. I longed to rest my eyes on something that would give me assurance. But there was no such thing hovering inside. All I could discern faintly in the dark were the gilded letters of the Qur’an on the drape hanging from a wall.

  The soldier babbled merrily as he looked at the little corpses. He extracted a coiled metal wire and a dagger from his hip-pocket.

  ‘Hold this end,’ he ordered and cut a section of the wire. He tied the bodies together by making a knot around their legs. He slung the bodies over his shoulder, holding on to the other end of the wire. ‘I’ll skin them and roast them,’ he said smiling.

  ‘May I go now?’ I snapped and without waiting for his reply, I spun around and marched off towards my bicycle.

  ‘Take this,’ he said. I straddled the bike and wheeled it around with a foot on the pedal, snatching my ID from his hand as I rode away.

  At home, I saw Father and Mother sitting worriedly beside each other in the corridor. ‘You came back,’ Mother said tearfully.

  ‘Why are you sitting here and not in the kitchen?’ I asked as she gathered me in a tight embrace.

  ‘We heard a gunshot and thought—’ Father couldn’t complete his sentence.

  ‘I heard it, too,’ I said, unable to meet his anxious gaze and looking at Mother instead.

  ‘We were worried,’ she said.

  ‘A million thanks to Shah-e-Hamdan,’ Father raised prayerful palms heavenward, ‘that you are safe.’

  ‘I’m fine, Father,’ I said and clasped his hands. I handed him the glass of water that Mother fetched from the kitchen.

  As he calmed down, Mother asked: ‘You must be hungry?’

  ‘You start ladling rice,’ I said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ I ran upstairs and quickly went to the window. I took out the bullet shell from my pocket and held it up between my forefinger and thumb. Then I dropped it on the floor.

  I returned after my meal and retrieved the piece of metal. I drilled it and added it to the rosary.

  5

  Rosy

  T

  hat autumn morning in Rasool Mir College in Anantnag, four thousand hands released two thousand pigeons, and four thousand grey wings rose towards the tall, bright-blue sky clattering in applause. Gold-coloured dust was roused by the feet, stamping and dancing. My heart rose as well in the storm of rapture, whirling like a dervish, although I
stood rooted to the spot at the edge of the lawns as I had listened to your astonishing address. Nuzhat, rapt and attentive, had also watched you throughout one long, arduous hour. As your speech ended and your admirers dispersed, although she felt hot and thirsty, she refused to leave without me. However, I somehow persuaded her to. The moment she left, Nadim appeared with a note in his hand, a note written in your handwriting.

  As he handed it to me, I caught the sight of the last line: One day I’ll take my Rosy across the river Jhelum to my home, in the middle of an endless pasture. I was about to unfold the note and read the whole thing when Nadim fell to his knees and began to weep bitterly. Up until then, I had thought of him as a brawny lad and a bonafide bully. I always thought that bullies were conscious of their choice and role, and couldn’t be broken easily or trusted beyond a point. However, seeing Nadim sobbing and pleading like this made me adjust my compass. I pretended to be clueless and asked him what the matter was.

  He began his sorry tale, ruefully and hesitantly. A few months ago, on a hot summer day, he had got into a bus in Bijbyor after working from morning till noon at my father’s shoe shop. He was on his way here when, in Khanbal, a pretty girl got on the crowded bus. She stood in the aisle near Nadim, smiling at him. She was in a black silk abaya, covered from neck to toe, but her headscarf kept slipping from her head onto her shoulders.

  As they reached Dak Bungalow, the conductor, precariously hanging from the door, called to the driver to stop. The driver slammed the brakes and Nadim edged closer to the girl. As more passengers pressed their way in, Nadim pressed against her. She threw him an annoyed glance. This aroused him, her anger. The bus went on over the bumpy road, and Nadim pressed his shoulder against hers. He touched her waist and back with his fingertips and nudged her breast with his elbow. She was sweating, uncomfortable and furious. She wanted to turn around and slap him so hard that all his teeth would come loose. But he was not the only one cramming her and holding her arms from swinging. There were other men: an old, pot-bellied man, a coat-wearing clerk with thin-rimmed glasses and a sheepish smile, and a long-bearded man with a fierce face.