I, alone, did not disappear
Junaid Qureshi
I visit her every night in those short dreams of her. Short, because my thought does not let her sleep much. The fatigued wrinkles on her face expose that time has moved on, while her moist eyes reveal that she still is entangled between then and now.
Between hope and despair.
Perhaps she hasn’t been able to reconcile with the passage of years, as she does not know what to mourn. My death or my absence? Should she accept or deny? Wait for her son or cry over his death?
Uncertainty has compelled her to cry, while she keeps waiting.
Indeed, I am one of those thousands of Kashmiris who ‘disappeared’ in thin air.
Twenty-seven years ago, when I was sixteen, I was picked up by the SOG and tortured to such an extent that the angel of death refused to watch the naked dance of horror and decided to free my bruised soul from the shackles of my mutilated body.
One of my closest friends, Suhail ‘disappeared’ three years before I did. A few hours before reaching Athmuqam on the other side of the LoC, our guide slit his throat with his pocketknife. Frostbite had prevented him from moving ahead and his condition had endangered all of us.
He had to ‘disappear’ so that the rest of us could appear at the promised land.
On my return from the other side, Altaf and Majid, also ‘disappeared’. They were buried under the snow due to a heavy avalanche. Two years later, Firdous, another of my friends, also ‘disappeared’ and was abandoned in the thick forests near Sopore. His ideology lost from the religious bullets of a fellow Kashmiri.
All of us ‘disappeared’.
All because of different and questionable reasons.
Every year, we are remembered and the enforced birthday of our enforced disappearance is celebrated collectively by our loved ones.
Last time, on the 30th of August, on International Day of the Disappeared, while they mourned our disappearance, Suhail, Altaf, Majid, Firdous and I gathered as well.
We started thinking about how Kashmir looked like when we left and realized that we were not the only ones who had disappeared.
Everything seemed to have vanished.
Suhail remembered the ‘Roff’ on Eid. He narrated how his aunts, sisters, mother and other women of the neighbourhood used to stand in line and sing traditional songs to welcome Eid. We both recollected that when we were young, we used to hide behind them and mischievously tie their plaits and scarves to each other’s.
The ‘Roff’ had disappeared now. Silence had transformed into the new virtue of religion.
I did not believe Majid, when he told me that Anantnag had disappeared as well. How could a whole city just disappear from the surface of the earth? Majid explained that the city of Anantnag had dissolved and a new city called ‘Islamabad’ had emerged instead. He told us, that Downtown Srinagar had disappeared as well and was now replaced by ‘Shehr-e-Khaas’.
He started remembering his childhood days and was visibly moved. The level of obedience, reverence and respect made us always look out while we used to play in the narrow by-lanes of our neighbourhood, he said. All of us, used to hide ourselves behind our silent lowered gaze when an elder used to walk into the street.
All those virtues of piety and modesty had disappeared now, and the elders had started to avoid today’s youth for fear of their ‘modern’ audaciousness.
Altaf had been listening quietly. He seemed a bit anxious. Majid had reminded him of his childhood. He told us how the incorruptible childhood of small girls and boys used to play together without those cautious and suspicious looks from society. He remembered how he used to walk hand in hand with his best friend and neighbour, Aasima, to school every morning. She used to nag him for his lunch as she always disliked hers and in return she promised to do his homework.
The influx of segregation of even small boys and girls had compelled the innocent innocence of today’s children, to disappear as well.
While their innocence had forcibly disappeared by Fatwas, the lust of society hadn’t. So-called respectable members of the community, including those who had issues such Fatwas, were regularly found taking advantage of these virgin souls.
Altaf talked about some nostalgic stories of his father. He told us how his father watched ‘Guide’ and ‘Devdas’ in Regal, Neelam and Shiraaz. Even after watching movies in cinemas, his father miraculously always remained a man of high morals.
Apparently, since then, the levels of morality had been raised in the name of religion by our so-called benefactor and ‘elder brother’. The Kalashnikov along with moral and diplomatic support dictated that cinemas had to disappear. They would have otherwise corrupted the moral standards of our society to the bone. Ironically, their cinemas did not disappear, while morality seems to be playing hide and seek within the confines of the ‘Fortress of Islam’.
Altaf’s father also used to enjoy excursions to the Dal Lake with his school. He and his classmates used to swim in the lake and drink water from it. Neither the splendour of Dal had remained, nor its purity could be preserved.
Both had disappeared.
Just like the Dal would soon have to embrace its own enforced disappearance.
Firdous revealed how the rest of our culture had disappeared from Kashmir. He said that nowadays, our traditional ‘Pheran’ had been replaced by some Arabic ‘Kaftan’ complimented by a turban instead of our old skull cap. The dupatta had also made way for the ‘Burkha’. Even our mother tongue had disappeared. Other languages like Urdu and English were considered more expressive and appropriate.
Firdous also remembered his neighbour, Ganjoo Sahib in Chota Bazaar, Srinagar. Agony and intrusiveness took command of us while we listened to the murder of Kashmiriyat. Ganjoo Sahib had run to the rooftop of his house and had taken his refuge in the drum used for storing rice, when two men came to liberate Kashmir from ‘Kafirs’. The drum was pumped with numerous bullets until the rice was soaked with his blood. Firdous told us that soon all the Kashmiri Pandits started disappearing and took Kashmir’s Kashmiriyat with them. Nothing of it remained, while most of the remains disappeared somewhere underneath the ashes of Habbakadal.
The reunion with my friends on this day of the disappeared had made me restless. It had also inflamed a strange feeling of guilt and anger within me. Our loved ones were searching for answers, while the disappeared ones like Majid, Altaf, Firdous, Suhail and I were weighed down by an abundance of questions.
Why did we disappear? Who made us disappear? Whom should our loved ones hold responsible?
The SOG who killed me, the guide who slit Suhail’s throat, the Kashmiri who murdered Firdous, or God whose nature buried Majid and Altaf under the snow?
Or are the merchants who sold dreams of deceit the ones who committed the original sin? Where did their promises disappear to? Why didn’t their children disappear? Why didn’t they disappear themselves? Why didn’t their shops and palaces disappear?
Who should provide answers? More importantly, what else had disappeared with us? Who was culpable of the disappearance of all that what makes us Kashmiris? Who is guilty of turning Kashmir, the valley of Saints and Rishis, into the embodiment of sins?
The disappearance of each and everything that my land used to be, had burdened all the businessmen of Kashmir Incorporated with the liability to draw up the balance sheet and tell the actual shareholders of this torn paradise who is to be held responsible for all those ‘disappeared numbers’ on the assets side.
Someone needs to audit whose hands are guilty of turning Kashmir in the red.
Like the other disappeared, I had fallen into my eternal sleep long ago.
Thus, my dreams were not as short as hers. Perhaps that is why, that night she visited me in my dream.
She placed my head in her lap and ran her fingers slowly through my hair, touching each hair separately as if she was counting the moments spent without me.
I looked into her eyes. I did not have the courage to say anything to her. What should I tell a mother who doesn’t know whether her son is dead or alive?
I decided to remain quiet and enjoy the softness of her heavenly lap.
Without uttering a single word, I started consoling her in my thoughts while talking to myself.
“Mouji, you shouldn’t be sad. I am not the only one who has disappeared. Suhail, Majid, Altaf, Firdous and many others have disappeared as well. Today, I came to know that much more has disappeared. Kashmiriyat, our attire, our traditions, our lakes, the forests, our hospitality, the respect, our virtues, our cities, the timidity, our whole culture. Our existence. Everything. Even truth has gone missing. You should be strong, Mouji. If you have to mourn, mourn the disappearance of everything else that has disappeared. I am just one soul. What about Kashmir”?
She kept running her fingers through my hair and tears had filled up her eyes. It had been good of me not to tell her, all that I just told myself silently.
She would have been hurt.
I had the luxury of lamenting the disappearance of the rest of Kashmir as I knew that I was dead.
She was a mother.
A mother living in ambiguity over the faith of her son. Her uncertainty over my death would have prevented her from comprehending the certain death of the rest of Kashmir. She would not have understood.
Suddenly her fingers stopped running through my hair and she closed her eyes.
Tears started rolling down from her cheeks.
She had heard my thoughts.
In a soft, broken voice she whispered, “Damn Kashmir. That died, the day the first child was killed. I just need to know whether my child is dead or alive”.
Apparently, the gun has killed much more than mere bodies.
Junaid Qureshi
Author is the Director of European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) and can be reached at: j.qureshi@efsas.org)
