by Feroz Rather
‘God be merciful. Someone has cast an evil eye on him, I am sure.’
‘I don’t understand the cause of his affliction.’
‘God’s ways. Ever since he stopped going to his bakery, I crave the saffron flavour of his flatbread, shirmals.’
Nagin’s face softened. She nodded and smiled at Sajeh, her mind filling with the bright rose-coloured hue of her husband’s face as he toiled over the hot ovens. Then, flooded with the memory of his pallor, she said, ‘Even Dr Mushtaq cannot divine the cause of his disease. He says that the fever never killed anyone and Rahman will be all right, but I’m not satisfied. What I want to do though is to go to Mukhdim Sehbun in Srinagar and tie a wish-knot at the shrine. But damn this curfew! I cannot go although it’s only a few miles away. There are so many soldiers on the highway that even a fly would not dare flutter its wings.’
The goat bleated again and struggled to break free of Sajeh’s grip. Sajeh yanked at its ears and twisted the goat around and placed its head between her knees.
‘Shut up or I’ll feed you to dogs,’ she scolded the goat. ‘Can’t you see that two women are talking?’
‘We mustn’t become the cause of her death,’ Nagin said and they laughed. The joke was once that two woman began gossiping. The conversation stretched so long that the calf whose head one of them held between her knees was strangled to death.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Sajeh said ironically. ‘What was I telling you … Yes, the last time I went to Mukhdim Sehbun with Nabir, I saw a seer. What can I say, Nagin, about this man’s piety! He must have been ninety years old, but he had such bright, angelic eyes. All he wore was a tattered pheran. When I came out of the shrine, he spotted me and stopped me on the steps. He told me he knew that I was coming out, and calling me his daughter, put a clod of clay in my hand. He told me to break it and mix with it with food if anything troubled me.’
‘Did it work?’ Nagin asked curiously.
‘Do you remember a few days ago the boys defied curfew and pelted the soldiers on the highway? When the soldiers chased them away, the boys disappeared into the town. The soldiers were furious and they beat up Nabir who had set up his shop in the compound of the mosque, away from the highway. Nabir ran from the soldiers, abandoning his cart and crates of fruit. He came home completely out of breath, with a small wound on his forearm that bled profusely. For a moment, I was so angry that I cursed the boys. These little shits! They become so restless sitting caged inside their houses until they cannot take it anymore and they duck out. I keep Inam locked inside the room.’
‘I am worried about him,’ Nagin said. ‘That day after walking me out of the shop, he left me in the compound of the mosque and told me to head home. I was about to ask him where he wanted to go, but he went away so quickly that I did not get a chance.’
‘I said to him, “Swear on your mother’s head that you won’t go near the highway or touch a stone!” These young boys, they don’t seem to understand that the soldiers don’t care what they are beating or shooting at. Our flesh is just like wood for them ... What was I telling you? Yes, about Nabir. As the evening fell, he wanted to go back and bring his cart home, but I did not allow him to go out. He told me that it would be a major loss for us because he had invested an entire month’s earnings in the cherries and apricots which he had hurriedly stashed inside the belly of the cart. But I was adamant that he stay at home. He went there the next morning and all he found was pieces of wood on the ground – not even a single box of fruit, cherries and apricots; it was all gone. When he returned home, he was so upset that he was ready to pick a fight with me.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I told him not to worry. I told him about the money I had made from selling the milk of this goat,’ she said, moving her knees apart a little and stroking the goat’s head.
‘She is still alive,’ Sajeh said and Nagin laughed. ‘I gave him all the money then. Although he was relieved, I could see a strange terror lurking in his eyes. It remained there all day and all evening. It felt like he had returned from a graveyard full of vicious spirits. He was silent and lost. From time to time, he burst into tears of rage. I thought he would do something dangerous, either bang his head against the kitchen wall or join the band of boys and stone the soldiers. So I put a little bit of the clay in his food. Afterwards, he slept well and was alright.’
At noon, Rahman returned with a wad of cash and a bag of oranges. Together they ate lunch – the beans and rice that she had cooked. Rahman peeled the orange and gave it to her. She took the segments apart, carefully removed the fibres and gave it to him. They ate the orange segment by segment, spitting seeds on to the dasterkhwan. It was sweet, she thought.
Outside it became cloudier and she felt languorous because of the warmth induced by the food. She lay down on the mattress that she had abandoned in the morning and he followed her. He was pressed up behind her and the bed warmed up. She slipped off her pheran and he cupped her breast and caressed it. She stroked his forearms and felt him stiffen between her buttocks. She turned towards him and kissed him on his mouth. She asked him to undo the knot of her drawstring and as he did, she pulled her shalwar down. She undid his drawstring and took his penis in her hand.
When they were finished, she slipped into her pheran and went to the kitchen to drink water. As she dipped the glass into the pitcher, she glanced out of the window. It had begun to snow. The gold earring in her left ear had come loose. She gripped the hook and pushed it back into the piercing in her earlobe. She turned, smiling at Rahman lying sated on the mattress. The snowflakes twirling in joy fell on the bare brow of the hill.
The summer deepened and the silence around her deepened. Rahman’s temperature rose higher, burning his body. His condition was worsening day by day. He stopped eating altogether. He had shed weight and seemed to have shrunk further. At night, when she changed his shirt, she could feel his ribs. He had chills and he perspired profusely. In the hours before dawn, his sleep was very disturbed and he mumbled such strange things that, had it not been a question of propriety, Nagin would have grabbed the broom from the kitchen and hit the evil jinn that she suspected had possessed her husband.
At the end of a long day in mid-July, hot and exhausted, she came out of the house and sat on the veranda. She looked westward, beyond the twist in the road, at the soaring roofs of the houses. A strange restlessness overcame her, as though the gloaming contained an invisible demon of weight swelling inside her. It was then that Ali Mohammad began to give the azan. His voice had always been a smooth stream. But of late, as the curfew continued, it had begun to quaver. The soothing, graceful notes were missing and the recital sounded cracked and raspy.
Nagin heard a heavy jeep emerge from the bend in the road and stop at the house and saw the dark figures alighting and advancing towards the courtyard. They walked aggressively and from their arms hung tinkling handcuffs.
She went into the baithak quickly and peeping between the curtains, peered through the glass pane of the window. Although it was darker now, she could not be mistaken that the shadows were of policemen.
An icy fear crawled up her skin. She could feel gooseflesh. She recalled Sajeh saying that Inam had been missing for a day. The boys had rebelled against the curfew again and had burst on to the highway to pelt the soldiers and policemen. Inam had escaped from his room through the rear window and had joined them. Nagin realized then what was going to happen.
She quickly ran into the kitchen, lit the lantern and came back out into the courtyard.
‘If you have to hit someone, hit me,’ Inam shouted, ‘but please don’t do it in front of my parents.’
The policeman thwacked the top of his head. Nabir wept as other policemen clamped the manacles around Inam’s wrists.
‘They are beating, Inam! These animals are beating my son!’ Sajeh shouted to alert the neighbours, hoping that a mob would arrive to overpower the armed forces.
‘Please don’t,’ Nabir begged the
policemen.
Nagin was only a few feet away from them, standing at the entrance door. The policeman quickly encircled Inam and marched him to the jeep.
Nagin ran to Nabir who was slapping his forehead and beating his chest. ‘They are taking him away,’ he wailed.
‘What’s the point of crying?’ Sajeh asked. ‘Do something, Nabir!’
‘What do you want me do?’ Nabir asked.
‘Nothing,’ Sajeh said. ‘Nagin, take him inside. I’ll go to Ali Mohammad and Dr Mushtaq and tell them that they took my son away.’
‘Are they going to beat him up?’ Nabir asked.
‘Shut up,’ Sajeh said. ‘Do me a favour, Nagin, take him into the house and give him a glass of water.’
When Sajeh returned, she said, ‘Dr Mushtaq asked us to wait for a day. He said he would have called a police officer he knows, but the mobile service has been suspended. I’ll go tomorrow and take Dr Mushtaq and Ali Mohammad with me and find this police officer.’ Nabir sighed but did not say anything. Nagin nodded at Sajeh and stood up.
‘You should go,’ Sajeh said. ‘Rahman must be waiting for you.’
Rahman was sitting up against the wall in the baithak. His eyes were scrunched and he was biting his dry burning lips.
Nagin, entering the kitchen, quickly stepped over the low partition wall and went to him. She inserted a pillow behind his back. He gave off a strong sickly odour. And though he looked at her, he did not seem to recognize her.
‘I am here, Rahman,’ she said softly and wiped the corners of his lips with the edge of her scarf. ‘You have not eaten anything for the last twenty-four hours.’ She went back to the kitchen and warmed a cup of salt tea and put an old tschevor in it. She also added a pinch of clay that Sajeh had given her and brought it to him on a tray.
After she fed him a few spoonfuls, his eyes opened. But then he closed his mouth. ‘I’m not hungry. I feel drowsy and nauseous,’ he said.
‘You have to tell me what you feel exactly,’ Nagin was surprised to discover anger in her tone.
‘I feel weak in my body and sick in my heart.’
‘You have no disease, do you know that? Dr Mushtaq says you have no disease.’
‘I want to go to my shop.’
‘You’ll go to your shop as soon as the curfew ends.’
‘The police took away Inam. Why did they take him away?’
‘God will protect him,’ she said. ‘Mukhdim Saeb will protect him.’
‘What if they do something to him?’ He forestalled her attempt to interrupt him. ‘What if they beat him to death in prison?’ he asked.
‘Stop saying such ominous things. He’ll return home and you’ll go back to your shop.’
‘I will die of this illness, Nagin. Like these boys who throw stones at the soldiers and get shot, I’ll die this summer.’
‘I beg of you, please don’t say things like this,’ she pleaded.
‘I know him well and I know what kind of boy he is. If they release him, he will join his friends on the streets and stone the soldiers. If he survives this madness, I want him to come and stay with us. I want him to help me burn a load of firewood and prepare a clean and warm tandoor. We’ll knead dough and make shirmals. So many shirmals we will make, Nagin; and we will sprinkle each shirmal with poppy seeds. We’ll make shirmals for all of Pampore—’ He broke off as tears filled his eyes.
‘Go back to sleep now, my dear, and you’ll have this later.’ She put the cup back on the tray.
‘I’m afraid of sleep. Why don’t you lie down with me?’ Rahman asked. ‘When I fall asleep, I feel I’m falling through darkness.’
She nodded, moved the quilt to the side and sat on the mattress close to him.
‘In the middle of the night, my heart suddenly starts thumping,’ he said, putting his head on her lap. ‘If you aren’t in bed by my side, I will die in that moment.’
She hugged him. ‘Why won’t I be there?’
‘I am so afraid of being lonely in the moments before death, Nagin,’ he said.
‘Hush now, don’t say anything,’ she said, and put her hand comfortingly around the nape of his neck. She moved his head back to the pillow and lay down beside him. ‘Put your arm down for me,’ she said.
‘As long as I live, it is your pillow,’ he said and chuckled.
7
The Miscreant
O
n the third day of their captivity, Mohsin found himself sitting beside Tariq, their bare backs against a stone wall. The cell that they were brought into at noon smelt pungently of blood, urine and excrement, its thick stone walls muffling the echoes of wails and shrieks from neighbouring cells. The only exit to the outside world was a heavy door with iron bars on the opposite wall, which led through the dimly lit hallway to the Tunnel.
Mohsin’s left hand was handcuffed to Tariq’s right. The food that followed the beatings and starvation animated them and Tariq burst into tears. Suddenly, struck by a thought, he stopped sobbing and said, ‘Imagine God being subjected to our pain.’
Mohsin rebuked him sharply for even thinking such a terrible thing and warned him that they were no longer on the ledge beneath the bridge to gather rocks from the bed of the stream and discuss strategies to pelt Force 10 as he passed by in his cavalcade of jeeps through the marketplace. They were in a damn prison where they might be beaten to death; Tariq shouldn’t start his philosophy lecture there and talk drivel.
‘You’re a fucking coward,’ Tariq hissed back.
Mohsin yanked the manacle and Tariq yelped and shouted, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Mohsin turned away, his face filled with loathing. He wanted to yank at Tariq’s wrist again and break away from him – his vile, noxious friend.
‘Why, then,’ Mohsin asked in a perplexed tone, ‘did you come out of your house? Was it only to throw stones at the police?’
‘I am troubled by my memory, Mohsin,’ said Tariq in a quiet voice. ‘I ran into a soldier six years ago, during the summer that I turned eighteen. On returning home after my fateful encounter with him, I joined Father and Mother for lunch, and put the memory of the two pigeons that he had made me kill out of my mind. Later that day, I retired to my bedroom on the third floor – ours is an ancient house, you know. Every time I went inside, no matter how much I used the broom and rag, the grime on the wooden floor and the withering wooden walls would return. Over a period of time, I grew used to it: the sandy, brown stuff smelling of mould and lassitude.
‘The sun was above the Wall in the west and when I went into my bedroom after lunch, I began to feel drowsy. I shut the windows, drew the curtains and lay on my bed which was right up against the window. I put a pillow under my head and picked up the remote control from the windowsill and switched on the TV. It was time for Upheavals, a documentary series on the History Channel about Latin America that I followed religiously.
‘I was deep in a scorching, brown desert on the border between Mexico and Texas when an unexpected gust of wind pushed the window open, the shutter knocked against my arm, and I dropped the remote control. The string that held the curtain snapped and like an unfurling flag, the curtain flew across the room. Through the window I watched as the sudden storm raged across Srinagar and shook the Wall. The stream that passed by it had finally lost its stagnant stupor and was swelling, swirling and flowing. And then the two pigeons entered. I quickly pushed the window shut; I wanted to capture them. But the pigeons had turned into stupendous metallic creatures. Their eyes were red, their beaks sharp, and their wings gleaming. If they bite me, I’ll bleed to death, I thought. They circled overhead, their wings like little swords; they tore against the sheets of still air inside, causing the eternal grime from the floor to rise. They flew in tangents, grazing and bruising the walls, until they landed on top of the TV. The pigeons pecked frenziedly on the screen behind which a mutiny was going on. They, the pigeons, terrified the gun-toting gringos on horseback and the Mexican rebels cheered. The spect
acle continued until the horses whinnied, their hoofs trampled and a slaughter began. In their mad fury the pair of pigeons attacked the screen with their beaks, their hoary feathers swirling and floating before me. My head clanged inside and I felt giddy, as if the pigeons were circling not in my bedroom but inside my head. I watched this drama as though in a bizarre dream with breathless astonishment until the birds escaped through the window that the violent wind had banged open again.
‘As soon as they left, the rebels fell and mingled with the dust on the ground and the storm abated. I lit a cigarette and stood by the window. The Wall was erect and the waters in the stream were still and as muddy as ever. As the sun sank behind it, the sky turned a dull purple hue and copper clouds moved into the middle over the Wall. My room was deserted and the pigeons were gone as though they had never existed, as though beyond the Wall that blocked my vision of Srinagar and the last glimpses of that day’s sun, they were dead – eternally dead. Although I was sad, I didn’t feel wracked with guilt. I never was guilt-ridden. What was there to be guilty about as long as one lived and longed?
‘I remember on that day I had walked out of my house for the shrine where you and Father go to pray these days – where both of you fool yourselves that the dead saint is alive and that you are earthly vassals of some divine god. Ha, ha! What dogmatic fools you are, to be sure! Faith, my friend, is the consolation of the weak and foolish. It’s only good for those who can afford it, whose quest for life and curiosity to contemplate reality it can douse with the promise of a halo of light. But not for those whose feet are planted firmly on the ground, not for those who are not blind to the veins cut open by time, and not for those who are tuned to the History Channel and watch and reflect on the human waste and the scale of human cruelty. Imagine the mounds of dead bodies in the sand. Imagine the mosaics of blood on the wall. Inhale the stink of your shame, Mohsin.
‘I am older than you, by five years. I left home early and made solitary excursions beyond the Himalayas into the world. I was ambitious. I wanted to commit to memory all of Will Durant’s thick tomes by the time I turned twenty-five. I wanted to understand the history of human beings – that is essentially the history of human cruelty. I wanted to know what drove the king of Akkad, Sargon the Great, to Assyria, I wanted to know what brought the Indian soldiers from the Gangetic plain to the city of Srinagar during the notorious October in 1947.
