The day that changed everything..

It is five years since that dreadful Eid day when I, along with my one-and-half year old daughter, survived a terrible attack in Srinagar. The distressing memories of that day still linger on.

The 2010 autumn Eid in Kashmir was quite different from any other Eid we have ever celebrated. There were hardly any festivities. People's mood was somber. Socializing was quite modest. For the first time in my living memory, there were no children's toys being sold in the markets. There were no children donning fancy dresses, and going to parks. For the first time ever in our living memory, no celebratory fire crackers were being burst. Indian paramilitary soldiers - armed with AK 47 assault rifles and stone protection gear - dotted almost every nook and corner. Kashmir had been engulfed in profound grief. The soil on the graves of 72 young boys and girls killed by armed forces during peaceful protest demonstrations was still fresh. It was a day when no one was in a mood of making merry.

Kashmir's capital - Srinagar - with its 1.5 million people was akin to a prison that morning. The city's inmates had spent more than a month under curfew. That morning the air smelt of a mood of defiance. Something was on the brink.

Notwithstanding that mood, that Eid was very special to me personally. I had joined my family back after a month-long work assignment in China. It was the first Eid when my baby - Hiba - had just begun calling me 'Baba'. It was her first Eid to hold my hand, and gesture to me to take her out. It was a father's blissful moment.

We left to visit a few relatives. As we drove through Srinagar, the city looked like a powder keg - ready to implode with some long-simmering sentiments. Thousands of people from the countryside had descended on the city - as if to assert their sense of being after weeks of haplessness. Feelings of anger and defiance were palatable. Unmindful of all that, Hiba sat beside me, safely positioned in her car seat, mumbling about the birds, the street dogs and everything she was seeing around.

Old Srinagar looked particularly unsettled. Window panes of most of the houses has been broken by angry paramilitary soldiers during protest demonstrations. Although paramilitary soldiers were still around, they didn't look offensive that day. They were keeping a watch at a distance, expecting no defiance on that day. People's faces were hard to read. They were devoid of smiles.

After a couple of visits-in-a-hurry, we began driving back home. I decided to take the relatively safer Airport Road to home. The road from the Jehangir Crossing towards Hyderpora, nevertheless, looked uneasy. It was littered with stones and brick pieces, most probably thrown by protesters on soldiers. One could spot fewer cars and pedestrians moving. As we reached near the government flats at Aloochi Bagh, the cars moving ahead of us suddenly started to slow down. There was suddenly a scramble for panicky u-turns. Something was going terribly wrong.

As if out of the blue, dozens of paramilitary soldiers, wielding guns and menacing bamboo sticks pounded on the cars on the site. As cars were caught in a gridlock, they began to smash the window panes of every car in front of us. Our car was still at a certain distance but we had no escape. The gridlocked cars had blocked all possibilities of escape. Exiting the cars was more risky. In terrible panic I grabbed Hiba out of the seat belt, wrapped her in both my arms and just gave up to the
inevitable.

Watching the soldiers smashing the cars and then poking their assault rifles and canes into the flesh of the civilian men and women looked menacing. They dragged some men out of the cars and beat them mercilessly. My heart was pounding hard. More than myself I was worried for Hiba. Sensing my panic, she had now started crying. In that mayhem, some cars behind me - trying to turn back - collided with each other. In desperation I tried to maneuver too, but it was all futile.

Within seconds the soldiers reached our car. I ducked, covering Hiba with my body. And there came that terrible sound of our car's wind shield being smashed. They smashed the rear shield too. Some broken glass fell on my back but I didn't look up. I dreaded the sharp tips of the assault rifles being poked into our bodies. Hiba was crying, and was inconsolable. She clung to me in absolute horror.

Luckily, we were not hit, but women’s wailing all around was audible. I raised my head slowly to see what was going around. The soldiers had by then moved to the cars behind us.

And then suddenly in that chaos some cars in front of us, already hit, started to move. Some people were trying to help the injured. Some were leaving their cars and climbing the walls of a Sericulture Department building to run for safety. There was a clear opening for our car to move ahead. Trying to calm down Hiba with my one hand, I used the other one to move ahead, sensing an opportunity to slip out of the place, but I soon realised that moving ahead was a catastrophic mistake. My assumption that once past that group of soldiers, the road ahead to Rambagh might be safe was completely wrong. Much to my horror, I found some hundred-odd angry-looking paramilitary soldiers running towards our car from another direction and signaling me to stop. We were the only two civilians on that road at that moment. I knew if I stopped they will kill me, at least. Their rage was inexpressible.

The soldiers kept on signaling me to stop. But I was so terrified that I did not. They kept raising their sticks in the air to hit us but I kept on evading, driving in an insane rush of desperate ecstasy.

Some soldiers, I know, felt I was defying their orders to stop. And soon I could see some guns being aimed at our car. My sense of judgment had been completely overtaken by fear. Hiba was still in my lap, and I was driving with only one hand. Chills were waving down my spine. Perhaps, they did not open fire after noticing a child with me. From that point up to Rambagh Bridge our car was hit only twice. And miraculously we were not hurt. Hiba was still crying.

I stopped near the Barzulla flyover, where a group of civilians had gathered. I was in a state of shock. Trying to console Hiba, I burst into tears. Her eyes were horror-stricken. The civilians there rushed towards us to check if we were safe. They took us out of the car, and gave us water. Some boys raised slogans of freedom and ‘revenge’. Hiba was still hugging me tight. Someone took us to a nearby house to take rest. Hiba was offered chocolates and biscuits. After about half an hour, I drove towards home. It was another three kilometres, but the road ahead was safe.

We reached home. Our family was devastated. For many nights I couldn't sleep. The horror we had gone through kept flashing back to my mind. My thoughts were with the parents of those 72 boys and girls who were killed by Indian paramilitary soldiers since June 11 that year in Kashmir. I was trying to imagine myself in their shoes. How terrible it is for a parent to lose a child like that?

Hiba was too young then to be told what all had happened. She was too young, perhaps, to even remember those moments. But I can't say if the images of that horror will ever completely fade from her memory. Like millions of other unfortunate Kashmiri children, she has been born in a darkness of violence and pain with still no end in sight. Her Baba still has flashbacks of that dreadful day - the day when our lives were changed for good.

Hiba is older today, and is still young to be told what all happened that day. But one day she will know that story. The agonising memory of that autumn day will not fade away!

Arjimand Hussain Talib
31st October 2015

The Anchar Citadel

By: Arjimand Hussain Talib

To Hamza, Anchar was a mystique. He particularly didn’t like the idea of calling it as a “lake”. To him it was a Vast Expanse, shrouded by trees (especially willows), floating gardens, weeds, algae, lush green grass and some water too - often covered with green weeds, making it appear like a fantastic grassland¬.

At the shore there was a small boat waiting for them. Its wood had largely decayed. Fish-smelling green and black algae had grown on its under-water wooden bottom. It was almost a tree. A horizontal, cruising but almost-dead tree. Water seeped inside through its decayed floor and sides, making it a potentially risky rider. A pile of weeds, freshly extracted from the lake, lay in the middle of the boat. The weeds absorbed the seeped water inside its green and dark world. As if it was thirsty. Shaheen was little skeptical about using the boat, but he had no choice.

Shaheen and Hamza sat on one of the wooden seats of the boat, facing each other. One of the boys who brought them there walked past them, trampled the weeds with his Chinese-made blue Warrior shoes, and squeezed water out of them. His walk jostled the boat as if it would capsize, right at the shore. But nothing like that happened actually. He grabbed the paddle and sat on the tip of the boat on the other end, positioned dangerously. Shaheen dreaded to himself about his fall into the lake. He knew both he and Hamza could not swim. He had an instant flashback of his school report card, which, every six months, over and over again, carried the headmaster’s message in the ‘swimming’ row: STILL A NON-SWIMMER.

The wooden paddle was heart-shaped, signifying the legacy of Kashmir’s dream-selling shikara wallas (boatmen). Its handle was poked deep inside the heart shape of the paddle. The other boy, who went by the name Taha, set free the boat’s moor, and pushed it towards the water with one of his legs. The other leg being in the boat.

Ever since his childhood Hamza would fear the horrifying possibility of a person never being able to make his legs meet in such a situation. Taha hurried to step back his leg into the boat as it moved, and sat quietly on that very end of the boat, with his one hand still inside his bloated Pheran. Secretly holding his Kalashnikov rifle, and making Hamza and Shaheen feel ‘they were safe and guarded.’

Slowly, the boat cruised through the lake’s silent waterways. It dissected the green weeds and algae like a ship would do with ice and snow on an Antarctica mission. Falling dry leaves from willows quietly swam on the waters. They looked like tiny boats – resembling the one they were riding. Leaves that had made it to the bottom of waterways had turned deep brown and black. The boat was soon out of the shore’s sight.

The lake was as mysterious as Hamza had thought. Its waterways were narrow, lined by willows and weeping willows. Most of the lake was actually land, growing vegetables – just like Hamza had always imagined. Occasionally, they would see people working on their floating vegetable gardens there, and fishing. They looked like people from another planet and just ignored the boat as it passed by. Their floating, and often, moving gardens, were quasi boats themselves.

Hamza and Shaheen were soon in a place which looked like a real lake. A small island too was now in sight. After half-an-hour of the boat ride, they, finally, touched the island. Craning his neck around, Hamza could spot men carrying Kalashnikov rifles, hiding themselves behind trees, and standing at guard. It was a citadel of a guerrilla group, which Taha would call a ‘hideout’, hidden deep inside that fishermen’s and vegetable growers’ ghetto.

Just as they disembarked, some of the armed men came to greet them – “As salam-o-alaikum!” Hamza and Shaheen both replied with – Walaikum Salam!

On the island there was an old and abandoned house, separated by a marshy waterway and accessible by an overpass made of three hugged wooden logs. The windows of the house were broken. Doors smashed. Wooden logs, unpainted and half burnt, hung dangerously from the first floor.

There were more armed men there. More than Hamza and Shaheen had initially spotted. Brandishing various kinds of guns. Russian-made Kalashnikov rifles. Chinese made pistols. Light machine guns (of unknown make), with drum magazines full of bullets.

A group of gunmen, standing around a bonfire, was warming its hands. As if they were presenting their hands before the school teacher for a blow of punishment. But inverted. And relaxed. The terror of the school days having gone with the Winds of Death.

Some of the armed guys looked quite young. Some were bearded. And stern looking. Nursing a fire in their eyes. That is what the bruised beneaths of their eyes reflected. Some of them were clean shaved. Innocent, yet intense. Like hawks with humane hearts.

Taha next took them for an introduction with the commander, whom they called General Babar. He was a 50-plus man wearing a camouflage jacket and sitting on a chair, with one of its legs impaired. He struggled to balance himself. There was probably no way to get a proper chair for him in that logistically difficult place, so the impaired chair, Shaheen thought to himself. Everything in that island looked make-shift. The commander was reading an Urdu newspaper when we approached him. He was somewhere on its inner pages. The front and the last pages faced us. The front lead, often written by poorly-paid Urdu calligraphers, was quite legible and read: Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries to meet in Islamabad. He closed the newspaper and shook hands with Hamza and Shaheen warmly. His hand was quite firm, as if made of wood. After sharing brief pleasantries, he asked Taha to take them to the house.

Taha followed the orders. We had to cross the wooden logs to get to the house. “Be careful”, Taha cautioned us, as the logs were wet and slippery.

We entered into a room in the ground floor itself, which was dusty, and with hardly any windows. Someone had put up a photo exhibition there. They called it an “Exhibition of Valour.” The “exhibition” had war pictures there; irrespective of the causes those wars were fought for. It was a display to make the trusted visitors fathom “The Message.” A place to roil the new recruits.

Hamza, an iconoclast to the heart, looked at the pictures with disinterest. A characteristic of a Lunatic Fringe, Shaheen thought to himself. There was a glossy picture of a mushroom cloud – a nuclear explosion – rising to the skies. A picture of a painting – showing children crying in a corner in dark shade. Their faces were unrecognizable. Painted intentionally in dark colors. To inspire awe and terror.

“This is going to happen if India and Pakistan were to use nuclear bombs in a future war”, Taha began his lessons. He next guided them to a picture of girls (who probably were naked), who, he said, were fleeing the napalm-bombed and Agent Orange-sprayed villages of My Lai during the Vietnam War. Someone had tried to cover the bodies of the girls with a blue ball pen. Taha said it was an ‘elder’, who had said they were not supposed to display such pictures.

“See this is what the Americans did to the Vietnamese”, he pointed at that picture, “but the Vietnamese still snatched victory.”

There were many other pictures, depicting devastated villages and brutalised women and girls. The typical East Asian trim eyes and soft and long hair of the women indicated it was the Vietnam War.

Taha next showed them some pictures of Tamil Tigers (neatly cut from Frontline news magazine). There were many images of young sleeper-clad Tamil boys and girls in combat postures. Their bodies covered with bushes to make them look like trees. They wore uniforms camouflaging tigers, green grass and greenish brown trunks of coconut trees. Their heavy guns hanging over their seemingly-weak and narrow shoulders and bullets criss-crossing their chests like a two-track railway junction.

Shaheen pointed to Hamza to look towards the feet of the Tigers in one picture. The fighters did not put on any shoes. Some of the fighters were clad in nylon slippers. Their feet were in sharp contrast to the sophisticated weapons they had or the uniforms they wore.

“These things don’t matter. If you have the will, you can fight anyway”, Taha responded to Shaheen’s point regarding the slippers. Shaheen sought to clarify, “No, I didn’t mean that. I just noticed. That is it.”

Taha also narrated to Hamza and Shaheen “how bravely the Tamil Tigers had stormed a big army base in Killinochi in northern Sri Lanka.” He was keen to bring home the same message to them: “Persistence, will and dedication were the keys to success.”

Hamza next spotted some other pictures from Kashmir itself - showing some slain guerillas in some Kashmir villages. Both he and Shaheen looked at the pictures keenly. Bodies were kept on slanted beds covered with sheets of clean white cloth. Soldiers and officers posed for pictures as the ‘Proud Killers.’ Captured guns, ammunition, clothes, pouches, were all neatly organized. Making them like eye-catching objects, as if to promote their sale in an exhibition.

“Now bullets are the ink of this place”, Hamza suddenly burst out, pointing to

KILLED BY 100 RR
200 BN

Words that were created from the seized bullets. Finely written. Not by any ilk of ink or paint of this universe. By bullets. Smooth, shining and fine pointed bullets.

(First written in 2001 and published for the first time)