Читать книгу Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir - Basharat Peer - Страница 10

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.

Around two hours later, the door opened violently. Two soldiers stood there with their guns pointed at me. I stood up. I was stiff, scared, and staring into their faces. But they did not hit me. One of them began questioning me. “What is your name?”

“Basharat, sir!”

“Full name?”

“Basharat Ahmad Peer, sir!”

“Father’s name?”

“Ghulam Ahmad Peer, sir!”

“What does he do?”

“Government officer, sir!” Quickly adding for the effect, hoping it might help, “Kashmir Administrative Services officer, sir!”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “Where in the village do you live?”

“Down the road, sir! Next to the pharmacy.”

I continued looking at him and then briefly at the other soldier. But their stern, impassive faces gave away nothing.

Suddenly: “Which group are you with? KLF or HM?”

“With nobody, sir! I am a student.”

He paused and looked at me. “Everyone says he is a student. “How many of your friends are with them?”

“None of my friends, sir! They are all students.” I took out my student identity card from my shirt pocket and presented it.

He scanned it, turned it around, and returned it. “Where are the weapons?”

“I have no weapons, sir! I am a student.”

“Come on, tell us. You know we have other ways of finding out.”

“I know, sir! But I am only a student!” I pleaded.

“Think harder. I will come back in a few minutes,” said the interrogator, and left.

The other soldier stood there in silence. I tried to persuade him that I was merely a student. “Talk to the officer when he returns,” he said, and maintained his frightening silence. After a while, the interrogator returned and asked the same questions again. I had the same answer: “I am a student.”

“All right,” he said, “I know you are a student.” He seemed to soften a bit. He asked me about a student from my school who was still enrolled but didn’t come to school much. He was Pervez, my best friend from school, bad singer of Bollywood songs, center forward on the football team, and a boy with pink cheeks and a blue tracksuit. I answered quickly and gave Pervez’s father’s name, profession, and the name of their village. I also mentioned that he had relatives in our village. Pervez had been visiting his relatives and had been arrested in the crackdown. They had wanted to cross-check his identity. The interrogator looked at me for a moment and said, “All right! You can leave.”