The Night of Broken Glass

by Feroz Rather

  While these thoughts were taking shape in my mind, the image of the boatman’s face recurred. I marvelled about the creator who, in the first place, had conceived of the boatman’s face in his intelligence, and afterwards, like a supreme aesthete, had cast it in flesh and bones. I was distracted and I could not arrange my thoughts about Shafiq into a coherent whole because my mind veered towards the violence of the human hands that had cut off the ears and mutilated the boatman’s beauty.

  I stared hard at Shafiq Galwan, trying to concentrate. Unlike him, it dawned on me, God had never had any rational appeal for me. The appeal, when it was there, was purely aesthetic. It was odd and petty to be jealous of Shafiq. He was firmly moored to his place; of his own setting he was a natural emanation. Despite his increasing prosperity and Kashmir’s sudden descent into turmoil, not once did he even dream of abandoning his home, family or Kanelwan. I was aware of his presence that I shared with him, with his pair of eyes, the view. He mitigated the terror of isolation and estrangement that the pasture unfailingly stirred in me. He enhanced me; and in diminishing my fear, he diminished me.

  I rose through the ranks, from an ordinary reporter and through many levels of correspondence to become the bureau chief of the Informer. During these two decades, I witnessed the worst. However, this ascent in my career necessitated befriending officials and authorities who committed the atrocities and squeezing bits of information from them. It was necessary to be shrewd and alert. To establish my supremacy in the hierarchy, I threw my weight around, belittling my colleagues. I ensured that I conveyed to them where they stood beneath me. And then, with a radical shift in the other direction, I said good and kind words to appease and create an impression of empathy.

  With each rung that I climbed, with each story I found and broke to reach the top of the ladder, something in me, like a handful of fertile moist soil deposited on my being, withered and fell off. The appeal of a just god dwindled until it vanished altogether. I was left hollow and purposeless. I became solitary and conscious of my solitude. I frequented Café Barbarica every night and drank myself into a stupor. I wanted to cut off all my ties with the people of power in Srinagar; I wanted to be a complete vagrant. The desire to retreat kept mounting until it became oppressive. The only way to drown it was by drinking more and more.

  In the mornings, I woke up with a hangover and a sharp headache. I wished I could escape to some remote place, away from Srinagar, where the city’s brutal soldiers and conniving policemen and scarred civilians could not reach me.

  During the day at the Informer, I was loud and unproductive; I barked at my subordinates as I failed to dispense my duties.

  At night when I returned to my lodge, Safir told me about his fantasies of travel roused by the movies he watched. I pictured him, and in those moments I bitterly envied him, as he pictured himself, seated comfortably by the glass window rolling past a pasture. However, before his arrival in a remote English village, I fancied that the train was hit by an explosion, putting an end to his fanciful escapades.

  ‘In the pasture,’ Shafiq Galwan said, ‘there is a small house. It was there that Showkat cut Major S’s right arm.’

  I listened to him, without taking notes.

  Major S had entered that hovel where Showkat, hanging upside down from the ceiling, lay in wait with a dagger. He had descended with speed and slammed the door shut on Sunil before he could follow the major inside. Showkat grabbed Major S’s arm and his dagger ripped through his uniform, sinking deep into the startled man’s inner elbow. Recovering from the shock, Major S kicked his assailant hard in the chest, shoving him against the wall. Major S ran out of the house, but his arm came loose and he left it behind. Sunil charged in, pounced on Showkat and snatched his bloodied dagger. He handcuffed and blindfolded him and led him away into the army’s garrison.

  Shafiq Galwan told me that he didn’t know whose command they followed after this because Major S was sent off to the army hospital in Srinagar. But when Major S returned to the camp, he told Sunil to release Showkat immediately. The villagers were amazed that the soldiers did not imprison Showkat, neither did they beat him or shoot him dead.

  Shafiq Galwan found Showkat in the same shack where he was captured. He was wearing a clean kameez and shalwar. He was in a deep sleep on a spotless white sheet in the corridor. Shafiq woke him up by shaking his shoulder. Showkat couldn’t recognize him but begged him to bring him some food. Shafiq ran back through the pasture, came home and asked his wife to warm up the chicken and rice that she had made the previous night.

  When Shafiq went back, he found Dilbar and Farhad standing at Showkat’s head, their faces masked with black scarves. Both had placed their Kalashnikovs on the floor beside Showkat. He lay with his eyes half-open, the veins on his forehead distended and blue.

  Shafiq immediately understood what had happened and dropped to his knees by Showkat’s feet. The box of food fell out of his nerveless fingers. He glanced at Dilbar and wondered how Showkat must have shook and writhed his legs; how he must have struggled when one of them or both – who knew – grabbed his neck and squeezed his throat so hard that they blocked the flow of air and blood. His whole body must have convulsed as his pounding heart stopped beating altogether.

  ‘Who did this?’ Shafiq had asked.

  ‘I strangled him,’ Dilbar replied, removing his mask.

  Shafiq had grabbed his collar. Was he not your own? he had screamed.

  But Dilbar shoved him away. ‘How could he come back in one piece from the camp then? How come he is wearing the best shalwar and kameez that he ever wore in his life? It wasn’t like he had gone to visit his in-laws that he should come back dressed in finery. Had he?’

  The sun slanted above the roof of the house behind us. The courtyard filled with wails. I walked away into the pasture where a faint wind had begun to blow from the direction of the river. Behind me, Shafiq Galwan kept calling my name. He wanted me to stay for the wake and eat the meal brought over by the neighbours. Showkat was like one of Shafiq Galwan’s own kinsmen. I did not stop. Although my stomach was empty, I was not hungry. I always considered funeral food as inauspicious and it nauseated me, evoking the smell of the dead. The sight of the chicken dishes and kebabs that the neighbours had cooked killed my appetite. The festive fare, intended to facilitate forgetting, had a reverse impact on me.

  I walked on until a fear seized me and I started running. I ran towards the river and a pack of stray dogs followed me. I speeded up, ducking under the tangles, and the dogs gave chase barking enthusiastically, their mouths agape.

  I was as breathless as the dog, the one with a dark snout that had managed to reach me. I’m fairly sure that the dogs would have slain me that day and I would have become fodder for the pasture had the boatman not advanced with his oar and struck at the head of the dog. Reeling from the unexpected blow, the dog fell to the ground, its furious growl turning into a sad whine. The other dogs took fright and stopped their headlong rush towards me. They growled and dug their forepaws into the sand before slowly backing away from their new adversary armed with an oar.

  I was silent. I was expecting a told-you-so from him. But he held his peace. With concentration, he struck the water rhythmically, now a darker shade of green in the evening that had descended on the river. He deftly steered the boat against the current, cutting through the wind.

  I saw the spot, the darkening mouth of the street, where he had picked me up that morning, and I asked him about his missing earlobes.

  ‘Before I tell you how my ears were cut off, I want to share with you an old story in my family.’

  I was grateful to him; I listened with patience.

  ‘I know you, you know,’ he remarked.

  How did he know me?

  ‘I once visited my brother in Srinagar. He ferries under Zero Bridge. It was there that I saw you, going in and out of the big building on the bank that I suppose is your office. I was staying with him in the boathouse right outside on the
Jhelum and when in the evenings, he was tired, I took over from him which was when I ferried you. You probably thought I was him.’

  I apologized.

  ‘It’s okay. We kind of look alike.’

  I smiled.

  ‘You’re a journalist.’ He frowned. ‘As soon as you write a few stories, you get cocky like the policemen. If you had only paid some attention as you strolled along the bank smoking those long cigarettes that are so fashionable these days – what are they called? Yes, Revolution. Ah, I love their scent!’

  I took out my packet of Revolution and gave it to him.

  ‘Do you have a matchbox?’

  I rose and extracted the box of matches from my trouser pocket. I asked him to slow down the boat. I stepped closer and lit the cigarette.

  ‘Love this fragrance,’ he said, taking a deep, appreciative drag.

  I told him I was glad and smiled.

  He noticed me looking closely at the blank spaces where his ears ought to have been. Taking another long drag, he indicated his right lobe.

  ‘As for this,’ he said, tapping the missing organ, exhaling smoke, ‘my ancestors were from Srinagar. One day, many centuries ago, one of my forefathers happened to be at a funeral. They were walking on what is now called Zero Bridge, just as the Afghans rode into the city for the first time. They collided with the procession. The Afghan leading the cavalcade stopped the procession by pointing his lance at the pallbearers. He asked them to lower the corpse to the ground. Then he grabbed my forefather and smiled malevolently at him. He leaned towards his face, as though he was going to whisper something sweet in his ear. With a savage violence, the Afghan bit off my ancestor’s earlobe and spat it out. When one of his tribesmen asked him why he had done that, he replied that as soon as the dead man was interred in the earth, he would convey the news to the kingdom of the dead that the Afghans had arrived in Kashmir.’

  The boatman stopped and handed me the smouldering cigarette. He pulled the oar out of the water. ‘Those fucking Afghans,’ he said, casting the oar into the boat. He leaned over, scooped up some water and splashed it on the orifice.

  ‘I still feel a strange tingling here as though recounting how my forefather lost his ear has resurrected the horror that my ancestor lived through and I can feel the Afghan’s teeth right now.’

  He picked up his oar angrily and began to row the boat that had drifted down with the current.

  ‘I lost my ears a few months ago. Do you know who cut off my ears with a knife? You came to visit when there was a lot of gunfire on the bridge after the Friday prayer at the mosque and fifty-one worshippers were killed on the highway. On day that you came to interview me, Sunil took me to the camp with him in the evening. Major S interrogated me about Showkat and his friends and whether it was I who had ferried them across the river.

  ‘I did not confirm this, but because in fact I had, Sunil grabbed my right ear and dragged me to a room where a cauldron of water simmered with an electric immersion heater placed on its rim. Sunil grabbed my hair and threatened to plunge my head into the water if I did not tell him the truth. So, I confessed.’

  I passed the cigarette back to him, its tip momentarily brightening in the heaving dark.

  ‘When he brought me out to the veranda, Major S was sitting there having a snack. He smiled as Sunil nodded at him and cordially asked me to sit in the chair beside him. He summoned his cook and told him to give me a cup of tea. I was terrified but he seemed genuinely friendly. Suddenly, before the tea arrived, he turned and grabbed my neck and shoved my face on to the patio table by the bowl of snacks. I don’t quite remember how I felt in that moment. He whipped out a knife with tremendous speed and sliced it across my ears.

  ‘He kicked me from behind and I fell to the ground, squirming in agony, my hands covering the bleeding sides of my head. Major S folded the penknife with a snap and put it back into his pocket. He calmly pushed the bloodied potato chips aside and fished out a clean sliver from the bowl and ate it.’

  We had reached the bank by now. The tip of his Revolution was still smouldering. The boatman took one more drag. I put my hand inside my pocket, but he shook his head.

  ‘I do not need the fare, not always,’ he said and smiled.

  13

  The Night of Broken Glass

  F

  atima sat by a wall-sized window, scribbling. Her notebooks were scattered about her on the fur carpet. Ample light streamed in through the glass pane. The white ceiling fan hung lifeless without electricity; the air inside the sitting room was stuffy and static.

  Fatima glanced sideways and noticed me by the door. She jumped up and ran to me, throwing her sweaty little arms around my neck. Her hot cheeks brushed against my stubble. Her eyes lit up as she covered my face with kisses. ‘Uncle, let’s go,’ she cried excitedly.

  We entered a dense clump of willows through a cluster of brown brick houses. The canopy formed by the profusion of branches and leaves was lit from above by the sun in descent and stretched all the way to the riverbank where the sky came into view again, vast and wide. Fatima led me down to the flat polished bed of rocks jutting out of the bank. She thrust her hands forward to shoo away a fish and I held her to make sure she didn’t fall headlong into the river.

  I was Fatima’s age, six, when her mother, Nuzhat, disappeared from home for four days. On the fifth day, when she returned home, she slunk out of the house in the evening, crossed the grove and sped to the river and jumped in.

  Showkat was alive then and so was Mother. It was he who pulled Nuzhat out of the deep waters and flung her on the bank at Mother’s feet. Mother, almost insane with worry, had thrown off her headgear and was tearing out her hair in desperation.

  Later that night, when I crept into Nuzhat’s room, she was under clean, white bedcovers, her head propped up on a soft pillow. She had almost drowned; her lungs had filled with water. Her face was pale. Her eyes, criss-crossed with a web of fine red veins, were filled with a strange sadness.

  ‘Killing yourself won’t bring Rosy back,’ Mother said, brushing aside a lock of Nuzhat’s hair from her forehead.

  ‘Rosy’s body was bloated beyond recognition, Mother. I’m not even sure that it was her at all,’ Nuzhat replied and drew the sheet over her face.

  Although Mother, Showkat and I did our best to speak to her, Nuzhat insisted that we leave her alone. She fell asleep without touching the bowl of mutton stew that Mother had made for her.

  As we went into the kitchen, Showkat said: ‘I’ll have to leave, Mother, before Major S comes here.’

  ‘Have food and go,’ Mother urged. But Showkat shook his head and got ready to leave.

  I followed him into the corridor. ‘What happened to Rosy?’ I asked.

  He ignored me and went on tying the laces of his shoes, without raising his head. Then he straightened up and said, ‘Something so terrible that only jumping into the river could drown.’

  Fatima wrenched herself free and kicked off her flip-flops. She climbed on to the bank and ran along it, her cream cotton dress, hemmed with miniature gardenias, billowing out in the cool air. She muttered fragments of rhymes, creating her own rhyme:

  Johnny Johnny, yes Papa

  Jack and Jill, no Papa.

  I held her flip-flops in my lap and Fatima curled up against me. I passed to her the pebble I had picked up from the grass. She flung it into the river and the pebble plopped down, creating concentric ripples on the water’s surface. The sun sank into the horizon behind us and a flock of cranes flew across the sky. Amused and startled, Fatima pointed a chubby finger at the magnificent birds. ‘Shin Chan, Ninja Hathode, Ninja, Ninja …’ she shouted.

  We walked upstream. The bank curved and climbed. The grass was thicker here and drenched in dew. Across the darkening willow spinney, the sky was an indigo blue, saw-toothed by the silhouettes of the roofs angling upward. As the twilight faded, the stars began to appear.

  Fatima clutched a tuft of grass. The dewdrops slid off the bla
des into her palm and slipped through her fingers, splattering her dress. I combed my fingers through her dark tresses and Fatima grew calm.

  The next morning, Fatima woke up late and missed her school bus. Nuzhat rebuked her sharply when she entered the kitchen. Fatima climbed up the steep staircase to my study on the second storey and pushed open the heavy door. There, behind a pile of books on the floor, surmounted by a fresh copy of The Night of Broken Glass, she found me asleep on my bed.

  ‘Uncle, the bus has left. What do I do now?’ she asked, tugging at my shirt impatiently.

  I opened my eyes. Her eyes were large, black-lashed and moist. Her face, a lot like my own, had dirty smudges.

  ‘Uncle,’ she repeated plaintively, ‘I missed the bus. Will you take me to school in the local bus?’

  I nodded. I walked her to the basin in the corridor and washed her face. I dabbed it delicately with my soft, white towel until it was clean and dry.

  It was a bright April morning. I carried her on my shoulder and we walked along the verge of the dusty road strewn with bright shingles. The street meandered out of the village and through an apricot grove in pink, incipient bloom to Mir Bazar. The village grocery market was built around the intersection where the narrow road from the village intersected the broad highway. The sun seethed overhead, burning the black tarmac. The dust seemed to be set ablaze over the rusting shutters.