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)