The Night of Broken Glass

by Feroz Rather

  With fluttering eyes, the imam returned to consciousness. He beckoned to Aslam to draw closer and whispered in his ear. Aslam’s eyes hardened, and he shook his head vigorously. He stepped away from his father and whispered into Jamshid’s ear.

  The murmurs in the great hall died down with Jamshid’s first utterance. He took his place behind the lectern and in a calm and assured voice he recited the chapter of ‘Joseph’ from the Qur’an with such passion that Anzar Shah began to weep.

  Gulam, who did not understand Arabic and didn’t know what the words meant, felt odd and isolated when all the other worshippers in the mosque began to weep as they recited along with Jamshid. Their supplications irritated him. He knew that ‘Pasture’, who was also there somewhere in the front row, was sobbing like a child.

  As Jamshid’s voice rose to a crescendo, the men beat their chests, pleading with Allah for forgiveness. However, Gulam was not moved. He sat cross-legged with his back firmly pressed against the wall. You won’t win this time, Jamshid, he thought, not again. He longed to return to his seat of bedraggled gunny bag. He desperately wanted to grab hold of his hammer, spread the hands of both ‘Pasture’ and Jamshid across the face of his cluttered worktable and smash their knuckles and fingers, releasing little white bones to set sail in pools of blood.

  He exited the mosque quietly. Major S watched from the veranda of the bungalow with his binoculars, as Gulam emerged into the lawn and ran down the highway.

  The panting and hungry dog at the corner of his street, by the bakery, greeted Gulam, wagging its tail. Gulam knelt with tears in his eyes and hugged the dog. He stroked its back and kissed its cheek. The dog lowered its ears, whining.

  ‘What’s the matter, Gulamah?’ Misreh asked from behind a basket of shirmals in her bakery. ‘Such a show of affection!’ Misreh was fresh from a bath and smelt of Hamam soap, her face dusted with white Pond’s powder. Big cylindrical ear-rings dangled from her earlobes.

  ‘Give me a shirmal. Give me two shirmals,’ Gulam said urgently, wiping a hanging thread of snot from the dog’s mouth.

  Misreh emerged through the door with two crisp shirmals. As she handed them to him, her soft fingers brushed against his coarse, callused hand.

  Gulam broke off a piece of the bread and fed the dog. ‘I’m going to close the shop now,’ she said. ‘Do you need anything else?’

  ‘I’ll help pull the shutters down,’ Gulam offered.

  They locked the shop together and went up the staircase into Misreh’s house where after talking for a few minutes, all the while staring at her, drunk with desire, he gently removed her pheran. She clutched his hand, gliding it under her frock, leading it above her belly button into the gap between her big soft breasts. As he fondled her, her lips parted, her breath growing uneven.

  The hand slid lower down, down to the drawstring, where it yanked at a complicated knot.

  They lay together naked on the hay-mat. A sodden stench rising from their twining bodies filled the room.

  ‘I am a watul,’ he said, entering her.

  ‘Mukur watul,’ she replied, biting his neck. Dirty cobbler.

  ‘Watul.’

  ‘Mukur watul.’

  ‘Watul, watul, watul.’

  ‘Mukur watul, mukur watul, mukur watul.’

  When they were done, Gulam closed his eyes and snuggled up against her. But before he could fall asleep, she nudged him.

  ‘I don’t want you to go, but before the sermon ends you must.’

  ‘Because your son will be returning home?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll meet you in the willow coppice by the river tonight.’ She kissed him on the forehead. He gathered his clothes hurriedly and found the dog waiting for him patiently on the top step. He patted its head and went down the steps.

  His house was sandwiched between two big buildings, three-storeyed structures with whitewashed walls and framed windows of pinewood, both owned by Rafiq Galwan. He crossed the road and went near the worktable he had placed under the staircase; he peered closely at the new gnawings by the woodworms in the wood. Inside the table were his sole possessions: anvil, hammer, nails, rubber soles, stitching thread, Fevicol, boxes of brown polish and black polish, and a bottle of white cream. He could see himself, an unkempt, ugly man, slightly built, haggard, miserable and exhausted. His head throbbed with weird thoughts; he heard bats flitting through the cramped dark of his room, and a herd of lambs bleating on the highway.

  Jamshid’s extraordinary voice resonated from the mosque. Gulam trudged upstairs and slammed the door shut behind him. He shut the windows, and securely latched them from inside. He sat down in the corner of the room, squeezed his eyes shut and jammed his fingers into his ears to ward off Jamshid’s chanting. He felt utterly wretched, bitter and vengeful.

  The next morning, Gulam went downstairs to find ‘Pasture’ under the staircase. With an expression of deep remorse ‘Pasture’ handed him a basket of fruits, ‘These are for you,’ he said ruefully. ‘The Syeds are happy with Jamshid.’

  Gulam held the flat wicker basket covered with translucent amber paper, beneath which were triangles of pistachios, almonds, raisins, apricots and cashew nuts.

  ‘Go feed this to Jamshid,’ he said, pushing the peace offering away. ‘I don’t need any crap from him or his Syeds.’

  As ‘Pasture’ turned to leave, Gulam grabbed the hammer from his table.

  ‘If you ever came back here, I’ll drive a nail into your head!’ Gulam plumped down on his seat as ‘Pasture’ vanished through the doorway. He put the hammer down on the worktable and began to work.

  A few minutes later, a jeep chugged into the street and halted in front of Gulam’s door. The soldiers, standing erect on the seats, jumped down.

  Major S balanced a gun in his hand. The gun was not a donkey’s dick to caress and flaunt, but very much a weapon used to kill.

  ‘Where’s Jamshid?’ he barked at Gulam.

  ‘Sir,’ Gulam said, rising from his seat, ‘he did not come home last night.’

  ‘Where is he, Jamshid, your son?’ Major S repeated.

  ‘Sir, he didn’t come home last night. You can check my house.’

  Major S nodded and Sunil and Raman thudded up the stairs.

  ‘Give me your ID and sit down,’ said Major S.

  Gulam pulled out the card from his breast pocket and sat down.

  Major S scrutinized the card carefully and Gulam stood up apprehensively.

  ‘Sit down,’ Major S snapped.

  Gulam sat down only to bounce up again when he heard Sunil and Raman trooping down the staircase heavily.

  ‘Major, there’s no one upstairs,’ Sunil reported.

  Major S smiled unpleasantly at Gulam. He returned the ID card. ‘Tell Jamshid to come to the camp tomorrow, early in the morning.’

  ‘If he comes home, I will, sir,’ Gulam replied.

  Major S turned to leave when he espied a box of shoe polish on the worktable. He picked it up and sniffed it.

  ‘Robin Polish,’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Gulam nodded. ‘Robin Polish.’

  ‘Is this high quality?’ Major S asked.

  ‘The highest quality of polish, sir,’ Gulam replied.

  Major S sucked at his front teeth, making a hissing sound. The two bodyguards who flanked him, gazed straight ahead.

  Major S examined the rim of the box closely, his tongue sticking out with intense concentration.

  ‘Open the lid,’ he commanded.

  Gulam’s hands shook as he tried in vain to pry open the lid.

  ‘Open … the … lid,’ Major S repeated softly through clenched teeth.

  Gulam’s hands trembled even more.

  ‘MADERCHOD, OPEN THE LID,’ Major S bellowed. ‘Your son is a close friend of Showkat.’

  Gulam wept, his palms together in entreaty. ‘Forgive me and my son, sir. Please spare us,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Grab his arms behind his back,’ ordered Major S.

  Sunil and Raman w
renched Gulam’s arms behind him. Gulam kicked out in pain and Raman slapped his face. Major S opened the lid and dipped his fingertips into the shoe polish. He smeared this on Gulam’s face while his henchmen held the hapless cobbler immobile.

  12

  The Boss’s Account

  T

  wo months after the massacre, I returned to the spot. I stood at the edge of the highway, contemplating the tarmac moist with dew. If the tarmac could speak, it would tell me how it had felt when the bullets ripped through it. The darkness was about to vanish. I felt lonely thinking about the bodies felled here. In the middle of the road, I imagined a tree and the shadows of its severed branches floating through the dawn.

  I lit a Revolution and looked east, across the highway. The sun would rise soon over the lovely brick houses of Bijbyor with their conical roofs and white windows and light up the drooping willow branches. No vehicles passed at that hour. The wisps of smoke suspended above my head, lingering above the tarmac, were like mute impressions of the last screams of the dead. I threw the Revolution with its burning tip onto the highway and walked into the street behind me. The shops were still shuttered, and the birds barely awake and numb in the nests. I listened to the sound of my own haunted footfalls, a feeble trot through the desolate dawn.

  At the end of the street, I saw the river, subdued and glimmering. I asked the boatman, squatting at the stern, to take me to Kanelwan immediately. He was a middle-aged man with chiselled features set in dark, luminescent skin, and sported a stubble. However, both his ears were missing. Those missing ears! What a violation! What a pity!

  I had met him once the last time I had visited this little town some thirty miles south of Srinagar, and I still thought of him as a stranger. But he glanced at me as if he could peer inside me directly and decipher all my intentions. I felt uncomfortable. I asked him his name, pretending I had forgotten it.

  ‘You want to go to Shafiq Galwan’s house because Showkat is there,’ he said instead, moving his head up and down. ‘Isn’t that who you are looking for?’ he asked.

  I assented angrily and he lifted the oar from the bottom of the boat. Its tip was wet, covered with a film of water; he had ferried other people during the night.

  ‘Hop on,’ he said. As I sat myself down on the plank spanning the other end of his narrow dinghy, he pushed the tip of the oar against the bank of the falling muddy slope where the grass was sparse like the beard on the slope of his jaw. He sliced the water at angles, throwing a splash of needling sparks over the surface of the river.

  ‘You’ll see willows and more willows,’ he announced. ‘The pasture is vast and the paths are choked. Don’t get lost in the willows, don’t get bitten.’

  The boat gliding above the deep waters was becoming heavy as though with the weight of the words streaming out of his mouth.

  ‘You will see a mosque,’ he said, striking the water again and jolting the boat, ‘if you look in the right direction in the west. You’ll see houses and men and women and children. You have ears all right. You’ll hear their cries and you’ll cry.’

  His tone became direct and disruptive. I raised my head an inch and scoffed at him.

  ‘Once you find the mosque,’ he went on eloquently, ‘even a blind man cannot miss Shafiq Galwan’s house. It is right there, by the side of the mosque.’

  I fished out a crumpled ten-rupee note from my pocket and threw it in his direction. He watched it fall like a brittle feather on the bottom of the boat. I resented him and didn’t ask for change. He could have it all, good riddance, I thought. I stood up and scrambled out on to the bank. I ran away from this earless monster, not looking back once. I ran towards the west, following his instructions all the same. He was right; I saw the glinting bronze spire of the mosque through a tangle of twigs.

  Showkat reclined on a cot in the middle of the courtyard. He was wholly intact, in a clean white shalwar and kameez made of gauzy cotton. People from Kanelwan and the town of Bijbyor had gathered around him in concentric circles; the adults standing in the outer rings and children in the inner section. I shouldered my way through the crowd. The sun that had climbed above the pasture sent down unimpeded streams of light. Showkat’s face shone so radiantly that for one blinding moment I couldn’t believe that this was the visage of a dead man. He still had the glistening and moist brown skin, the skin that had not dehydrated yet. On his lips rested a smile, vague but unvanquished. His eyelids were swollen and whoever had closed them – it could not have been Dilbar and, in all probability, it was Farhad, I came to reckon later – had not done a good job. There was a narrow gap between the lids through which I glimpsed the dark, soulless eyeballs. There was something utterly terrifying and abysmal about those blank, half-shut eyes of a freshly murdered man where life lay extinguished.

  The men debated the loyalty of Showkat endlessly. Was he a renegade or a martyr? Was he a rebel or a collaborator? In their unceasing murmur of suspicion, I heard the women’s wails coming from inside the house. Those cries were half-hearted and desperate. They floated above the courtyard and died as soon as they entered the dense pasture.

  On the windows, thronged with young girls, I saw such beautiful eyes, bright gleaming eyes, sad clear eyes, eyes filled with innocence and purity of wonder, all looking at Showkat. I reached for and lifted his hand to my lips.

  ‘Wake up,’ I said. ‘Wake up.’

  Showkat did not wake up. He was always a reluctant riser in the mornings and loved to lie abed until he was forcibly yanked out of the duvets. It reminded me of the time when I was in Srinagar. He had arrived unannounced late one night at my lodge. I had happily invited him in. I allowed him to sleep in my bed, while I slept on the sofa in the living room.

  One of those mornings, while he was still asleep, I went into the bedroom to rummage around in my chest of drawers for some of my stuff when I saw Sunil through the window that opened up to the street outside. Sunil was on short leave from the camp in Bijbyor and stayed in the apartment next to mine. He was in civil clothes. He hailed me in a friendly way.

  ‘Who is this person asleep in your bed?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

  A guest, I smiled back. A very special guest and friend.

  ‘I’ll come over later,’ Sunil said, raising his bag of breakfast: bananas, a bottle of milk and a box of Kellogg’s cereal. ‘Diya is waiting.’

  I nodded and Showkat opened his eyes. Although Sunil was gone in a moment, his shadow, which the morning sun had cast on Showkat’s face, seemed to linger on.

  ‘If only he knew that you were the rebel …’ I said to Showkat and we chuckled.

  I gave him my hand and hauled him out of bed. It was the first time in my life that I had made breakfast for someone. I scrambled eggs with onions and bell pepper. As soon as he had taken a shower, we breakfasted heartily and washed it all down with tea.

  An hour later, Sunil arrived to play chess. He was great at manoeuvring his rooks and knights. Across the chessboard was Showkat, whose enthusiasm more than made up for his lack of experience and he put up a spunky fight. He advanced his pawns, although I suspected that he knew they were going to perish one by one. He played with a certain fearlessness and was resilient in his moves against Sunil’s cold calculations.

  Showkat had stowed his Kalashnikov beneath the bed and while the two went on playing in the sitting room, I worried about the fate of Diya and Pooja with whom I was well-acquainted by now, if Showkat went ahead with his plan to kill Sunil.

  At night, I heard their laughter as Sunil became a pony for his little daughter, Diya, to ride on. I heard his lullabies to the four-year-old girl. Every day after coming back from the Informer offices, reporting incident after incident of crossfire and killings, the sound of the child’s giggles raised my spirits.

  Sunil rampaged destructively through Showkat’s array of pawns, positioning his rooks and bishops around his king and blockading any chances of escape. Showkat shot me an angry glance and I shrugged non-commital
ly.

  After Sunil left, Showkat asked, ‘What should I do?’

  I could not bear the idea of young Diya living the rest of her life without a father and I did my best to discourage his plan to annihilate Sunil.

  ‘You cannot do it while you live under my roof,’ I said. In a kamikaze strike, Showkat had destroyed Sunil’s queen and bishop before his king had been struck down by a rook. He was clearly disappointed in me and left that evening.

  The first time I had visited the village, I had pondered the pasture. I had noticed that it was not like the pastures I caught a glimpse of in the English movies Safir kept watching on his laptop, the pastures drifting past the windows of the trains going out of London into the countryside. It did not have thick layers of fertile settled soil, though enough grass grew on it during the summer for all the cows of the village to graze. It was basically a bed of dry rocks and sand. The very thin layer of moist silted earth that was expediently deposited on the rocks in early spring by the river would be eroded when the rains grew profuse in autumn and the river flooded again. The willow trees that had obstructed my view of the river had separate trunks, but their branches were tangled together. I had walked into the middle of the pasture and had touched a willow. Its trunk was thick and the bark was hard and impenetrable. I could not picture the trunk individually; I could not think of it as something that belonged exclusively to the willow tree. It remained a part of the pasture, of the larger continuity, beyond and outside of me.

  I remembered how huge Shafiq Galwan had appeared to me at our first meeting. He was six feet tall, with wide dimensions. He was a warm fellow who worked with his three younger brothers in the farms behind the village. He raised cattle, sheep and goats. The purest moments of joy for him were scattered through the evenings when from the farms he transported home ripe bales of crop, mustard in early summer and paddies in late autumn, on the backs of his horses. He barely bore any traces of the miserliness and guile of his harsh father who had been a young man when the famine had struck soon after the transfer of land to the peasants in 1953 by Sheikh Abdullah. Unlike his father, Shafiq Galwan had not starved in his adolescence, eating raw apricots and fried chickpeas to get by. He did not suffer from the anxiety of needing to feed a huge starving family that he had inherited. Following the creation of genetically modified seeds, the effects of the green revolution had been felt in Kashmir too. During his youth, the indigenous low-yielding variety of paddy, Mushkibudij, had been replaced with Budij China. The massive increase in the production had planted feelings of generosity and philanthropy in him, turning him into an easy lender of money and labour to the villagers. He was overflowing with gratitude. He vaguely guessed that it was a result of divine intervention that the production had increased massively; he did not realize that somewhere an inquisitive mind had toiled hard to question and mutate what was given us by God.