The village of Pachigam still exists on the official maps of Kashmir, due south of Srinagar and west of Shirmal near the Anantnag road. In such public records as are still available for inspection its population is given as three hundred and fifty, and in a few guides for the benefit of visitors there are passing references to the bhand pather, a dying folk art, and to the dwindling number of dedicated troupes that seek to preserve it. This official existence, this paper self is its only memorial, for where Pachigam once stood by the blithe Muskadoon, where its little street ran along from the pandit’s house to the sarpanch’s, where Abdullah roared and Boonyi danced and Shivshankar sang and Shalimar the clown walked the tightrope as if treading upon air, nothing resembling a human habitation remains. What happened that day in Pachigam need not be set down here in full detail, because brutality is brutality and excess is excess and that’s all there is to it. There are things that must be looked at indirectly because they would blind you if you looked them in the face, like the fire of the sun. So, to repeat: there was no Pachigam anymore. Pachigam was destroyed. Imagine it for yourself.
Second attempt: The village of Pachigam still existed on maps of Kashmir, but that day it ceased to exist anywhere else, except in memory.
Third and final attempt: The beautiful village of Pachigam still exists.
The increased use of fidayeen, suicide bombers, by the group led by Maulana Bulbul Fakh and also by other insurgents, Hizb-ul-this, Lashkar-e-the-other, Jaish-e-whatever-you-want, was a new annoyance, thought General Hammirdev Kachhwaha hunkered down in the dark, but it was also an indication that purely military activities, even of the so-called iron commando, had been judged to lack sufficient teeth, and that a second, decisive phase had begun. The milquetoasts of secular nationalism had had their day, and as the months passed looked more and more like sidelined irrelevances. “Kashmir for the Kashmiris” was no longer an option. Only the big boys were left standing, and so it was to be Kashmir for the Indians or Kashmir for the Pakistanis whose proxies the terror organizations were. Things had clarified and the creation of clarity was after all the universal goal of military activity. General Kachhwaha liked this simpler, clearer world. Now, he told himself, it’s either us or them, and we are the stronger, and will inevitably prevail.
He had to concede that the suicide missions had had
successes. Here they all were in his memory. July 13 last year, attack on Border Security Force camp at Bandipora, deputy inspector general and four personnel killed. August 6, one major and two junior commissioned officers slain at Natnoos army camp. August 7, colonel and three personnel done to death at Trehgam army camp. September 3, in a daring raid on the perimeter area of Army Corps HQ Badami Bagh itself, ten personnel murdered including a public relations officer (no loss, in General Kachhwaha’s unexpressed private view). And so it went on, pinprick after pinprick. December 2, Army HQ, Baramulla, one JCO lost. December 13, Civil Lines, Srinagar, five personnel. December 15, army camp, Rafiabad, many injuries, no fatalities. January 7, meteorological center, Srinagar, attacked. Four personnel lost. January 10, car bomb in Srinagar. February 14, unmanned pony used to carry an IED (improvised explosive device) into security force camp at Lapri, district Udhampur. General Kachhwaha could admire initiative when he saw it. However, the enemy’s losses during these encounters were also heavy. They had been hit hard. The iron commando had been shot full of holes. Hence the new tactic. They accepted some small loss of life in order to inflict large wounds. February 19 saw the first fidayeen attack on Badami Bagh. Two personnel killed. Three weeks later, a second suicide bomb attack on HQ, four army personnel dead.
There were those who claimed that the terrorists, inspired by fidayeen activities, were gaining momentum, that the war was being lost. There were calls for General Kachhwaha to be replaced. Fidayeen bombed the police control room in Srinagar (eight personnel killed). Fidayeen attacked Wazir Bagh base in Srinagar (four killed). Fidayeen attacked Lassipora army base, district Kupwara (six). And alongside this, there was a non-fidayeen ambush at Morha Chatru, Rajouri district (which claimed fifteen lives), a patrol party ambushed at Gorikund, Udhampur (five lives), an attack on Shahlal base, Kupwara (five), on Poonch police station (seven). IEDs were placed under military buses at Hangalpua (eight) and Khooni Nallah (five). Very well, General Kachhwaha grudgingly conceded, the list was long. Fidayeen attacks at Handwara, twice. The annual Amarnath pilgrimage attacked, nine pilgrims killed. More Hindus dead at Raghunath temple in Jammu courtesy of two fidayeen bombers. Fidayeen attacked a bus stand in Poonch, and the deputy superintendent of police was killed. A three-man fidayeen squad stormed the army camp at village Bangti on Tanda Road, Akhnoor, Jammu: eight dead, including a brigadier, and four top generals injured. Then, at last, there were some successes to report. Baby Che, the notorious militant Anees Noman, was dead. A fidayeen attack on a security force camp in Poonch was foiled; two foreign mercenaries were slain. A daring and highly dangerous fidayeen attack on the chief minister’s residence on Maulana Azad Road, Srinagar, was thwarted; both terrorists were killed. The tide was turning. The political echelon must appreciate this. The situation was being stabilized. Approximately one hundred alleged insurgents and their alleged associates were being shot dead every day. The point was to have the will to succeed. If fifty thousand deaths were required there would be fifty thousand deaths. The battle would not be lost while the will was there and he, General Kachhwaha, was the embodiment of that will. Therefore the battle was not being lost. It was being won.
News of the razing of Pachigam spread quickly. The Hammer of Kashmir had made an example of this village and his strong-arm tactics had been effective in their way. People were even more scared of harboring militants than before. The few survivors of the crackdown action, some oldsters, some children, a few farmhands and shepherds who had managed to hide in the wooded hills behind the village, made their way to the neighboring village of Shirmal where they were shown such kindnesses as the Shirmalis could afford in that time of empty pockets and open mouths. The old resentments between Pachigam and Shirmal were forgotten as if they had never been. Bombur Yambarzal and his wife Hasina a.k.a. Harud personally ensured that the refugees were fed and housed for the time being. The ruins of Pachigam were still smoldering. “First let things cool down,” Harud Yambarzal told the terrified, heartbroken Pachigamis, “and then we’ll see about rebuilding your homes.” She was trying to sound as reassuring as she could but was inwardly panic-stricken. In the privacy of the Yambarzal home she hit both her sons across their faces with an open hand and said that unless they broke all their connections with militant groups immediately she personally would cut off their noses while they slept. “If you think I will allow what happened to Pachigam to befall this village,” she hissed at them, “then, boys, you don’t know your mother. I raised you to be sensible and practical fellows. This is when you repay the debt of childhood and do as you are told.” She was a formidable lady and her sons the secretive electricians mumbled okay, okay, and skulked out the back way to smoke beedis and wait for the ringing in their ears to stop. By that time there was a shortage of young men in the villages of Kashmir. They had gone underground in Srinagar, which was still safer than the villages, or underground to join the militants, or underground into the army’s counterinsurgency fifth columns, or underground across the Line of Control to join the Pakistani ISI’s jihadi groups or just underground into their graves. Hasina Yambarzal had held on to her boys by sheer force of personality. She wanted them where she could see them: overground, at home.
Seven nights after the crackdown on Pachigam, to Hasina Yambarzal’s horror, Maulana Bulbul Fakh entered Shirmal in the first of three Jeeps, accompanied by Shalimar the clown and twenty more riders from the terrifying iron commando. Soon the Yambarzal home was besieged by armed men. The iron mullah came inside with a few of his aides, one of whom was the only surviving son of the deceased sarpanch of Pachigam. Even Bombur Yambarzal, a man whose sense of self-importance made
him a bad observer of others, noticed the change in Shalimar the clown and later that night, in bed with his wife, he asked her about it. “Tragedy has struck that man so hard it’s not surprising he looks like he would cut your throat if you snapped your fingers at the wrong time, eh, Harud,” he said softly, afraid to raise his voice in case anyone was listening outside. Hasina Yambarzal shook her head slowly. “The tragedy is a new wound, and you can see its pain, that’s for sure,” she answered in a voice as low as her husband’s. “But I also saw in his eyes the thing you’re talking about, and I’m telling you that assassin’s look has been there for a long time. That’s not the look of a man shocked by his family’s death, but the expression of a man accustomed to killing. God alone knows where he’s been or what he’s become, to come back wearing a face like that.”
“Our bereaved brother needs to visit his parents’ graves,” Bulbul Fakh had said without preamble. “For tonight therefore I require your assistance in the matter of accommodation and food for the animals and men.” Bombur Yambarzal shook in his shoes and temporarily lost the power of speech because he was sure that the iron mullah had not forgotten the day he had defied him so many years ago, and so it was Hasina who said, “We’ll do what we can but it won’t be easy because we already have the homeless from Pachigam to feed and find roofs for.” She proposed, however, that the abandoned Gegroo house be opened for the fighters’ use, and the iron mullah agreed. Bulbul Fakh stationed himself in that dusty old ruin with half of his fighters on guard and Bombur personally served them a simple meal of vegetables, lentils and bread. The other fighters ate quickly and then dispersed into the shadows around Shirmal to keep watch.
Shalimar the clown borrowed a pony and rode off alone in the direction of Pachigam without a word to anyone.
“Poor fellow,” Bombur Yambarzal said as he watched him go. Nobody replied. Hasina Yambarzal had noted some time earlier that her two sons were nowhere to be seen, which meant that the instructions she had issued the moment she saw the fighters of the iron commando ride into town were being followed. The thing to do now was for everyone to get indoors. “Come to bed,” she said to Bombur, and he knew better than to argue with her when she used that particular voice.
In the small hours of the night General Hammirdev Kachhwaha’s forces, informed of the situation by Hasina Yambarzal’s emissaries, Hashim and Hatim Karim (who were highly commended for their patriotism and immediately inducted into places of honor in the anti-insurgency militia), launched a major assault on Shirmal. “First the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin started betraying the JKLF,” General Kachhwaha reflected, “and now the people have started betraying the Hizb. The situation has many satisfactory aspects.” The sanitary cordon around the Shirmal area was established so stealthily and swiftly that none of the iron-commando fighters managed to escape. As the noose tightened the sentries in the woods fell back toward the Gegroo house and there made their last stand. When the army tanks rumbled into Shirmal there was no indiscriminate destruction of the type so recently suffered by Pachigam. Cooperation had its rewards, and in any case, thanks to Hasina Yambarzal, the rats were already neatly in their trap. After a brief but overwhelming period of grenade explosions and artillery fire the Gegroo house had ceased to exist and nobody inside it remained alive. The bodies of the iron-commando fighters were brought out. Inside the garments of Maulana Bulbul Fakh no human body was discovered. However, a substantial quantity of disassembled machine parts was found, pulverized beyond hope of repair.
General Hammirdev Suryavans Kachhwaha lying in bed in his darkened quarters at Army HQ, Badami Bagh, slipped contentedly toward sleep. He had been awakened by a phone call informing him of the successful eradication of at least twenty iron-commando fighters and the presumed death of their leader, the jihadi fanatic known as Maulana Bulbul Fakh. General Kachhwaha replaced the receiver, sighed gently and closed his eyes. The women of Jodhpur appeared before him, spreading their arms to welcome him. Soon his long northern marriage would be over. Soon he would return in triumph to that land of hot colors and fiery women and at the age of sixty would be restored to vigorous youth by a beauty whose attentions he had earned, whose sweet attentions he so fully deserved. The beauty approached him, beckoning. Her arm slipped around his shoulder, supple as a snake, and like a snake her leg coiled around his. Then like a third snake her other arm and like a fourth snake her other leg until she was slithering all over him, hanging around his body, licking at his ear with her forked tongues, her many forked tongues, the tongues at the ends of her arms and legs. She had as many arms and legs as a goddess, and multilimbed and irresistible she coiled and tightened around him and, finally, with all the power she possessed, she bit.
The accidental death by king cobra snakebite of General H. S. Kachhwaha was announced at Badami Bagh the next morning and he was buried with full honors in the military cemetery on the base. The details of the accident were not made public but in spite of the authorities’ best efforts it wasn’t long before everyone knew about the writhing swarm of snakes that had somehow penetrated the innermost sanctum of military power in Kashmir, the snakes whose numbers multiplied in the retelling until there were dozens of them, fifty, a hundred and one. It was said, and soon came to be commonly believed, that the snakes had burrowed their way beneath all the army’s defenses—and these were giant snakes, remember, the most poisonous snakes imaginable, snakes arriving after a long subterranean journey from their secret lairs at the roots of the Himalayas!—to avenge the wrongs against Kashmir, and, people told one another, when General Kachhwaha’s body was discovered it looked like he had been attacked by a swarm of hornets, so many and so vicious were the bites. It was not widely known, however, that as she died Firdaus Noman of Pachigam had called down a snake curse upon the army’s head; accordingly, this macabre detail was not a part of the story that did the rounds.
She knew he was coming, could feel his proximity, and prepared for his arrival. She killed the last kid goat, skinned it, dressed it with her choicest herbs and prepared a meal. She bathed in the mountain stream that ran through the meadow of Khelmarg and braided her hair with flowers. She was almost forty-four years old, her hands were rough with toil, she had two broken teeth, but her body was smooth. Her body told the story of her life. The obesity of her insane time was gone but had left its wounds, the broken veins, a looseness in the skin. She wanted him to see her story, to read the book of her nakedness, before he did what he had come to do.
She wanted him to know she loved him. She wanted to remind him of the hours by the Muskadoon, of what had happened in Khelmarg, of the village’s bold defense of their love. If she showed him her body he would see it all there, just as he would see the marks of another man’s hands, the marks that would force him to commit murder. She wanted him to see it all, her fall, and her survival of the fall. Her years of exile were written on her body and he should know their tale. She wanted him to know that at the end of the story of her body she loved him still, or again, or still. She wore no clothes, stirred the pot of food on the low fire and waited.
He came on foot, holding a knife. There was a horse’s whinny somewhere but he did not ride. There was no moon. She stepped out of her hut to greet him.
Do you want to eat first? she asked, pushing a strand of hair away from her face. If you want to eat, there’s food.
He said nothing. He was reading the story of her skin.
Everyone is dead, she said, my father’s dead, and yours, and I think maybe you’re dead too, so why should I want to live?
He said nothing.
Get on with it, she said. Oh God, be done with it, please.
He moved toward her. He was reading her body. He held it in his hands.
Now, she commanded him. Now.
He was on his way down the pine-forested hill with tears in his eyes when he heard the explosions in Shirmal and guessed the rest. That simplified things, in a way. He had been the iron mullah’s right-hand man and communications chief but the two me
n no longer saw eye to eye. Shalimar the clown had never liked the use of fidayeen suicides, which struck him as an unmanly way of making war, but Bulbul Fakh was increasingly convinced of the tactic’s value and was rapidly moving from military raids of the iron-commando type toward fidayeen recruiting and training activities. The business of finding young boys and even young girls who were ready to blow themselves up felt demeaning to Shalimar the clown, who had therefore decided to make his break with the iron mullah as soon as he could think of a way of doing so that wouldn’t lead to his execution for desertion. The explosions in Shirmal solved that problem. There was nothing left for him in Kashmir and now that the last obstacle had been removed it was time for him to make his run.
He got off the little mountain pony he had borrowed from Bombur Yambarzal, wiped his face and fished in his backpack for the satphone. It was always risky to use satellite telephone communications because satchat was often monitored by the enemy, but he had no choice. He was too far from the northern passes over the mountains and the southern end of the Line of Control was heavily militarized and hard to cross. There were crossing places if you knew where to look, but even though he had a good idea of where to head for it would be a difficult trick to pull off on his own. He needed what would once, in another war, in another time, have been called a passeur.
Shalimar the Clown Page 37