“Beyi sund doud chui beimaanee, Yas akis banith aaw suyi zaani!”
“Another’s pain is meaningless, he only knows who suffers. Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches”
Narration by – Advocate Tehmeena Majid
Editor – Tuba Beg
THIS PIECE WAS REFUSED PUBLICATION BY A LEADING NEWSPAPER DUE TO THE INDIAN STATE CENSORSHIP ON MEDIA IN KASHMIR.
While the world is stifled, overpowered by the gruesomeness of the pandemic, Kashmir is on its own streak of misery. It seems like a bundle of woes has engrained itself into the collective heritage of the Kashmiri populace. You might have come across narrations after narrations of the horrors Kashmiris face, so here’s another to appeal to your sense of humanity.
This is not a fictitious story; it is the reality of “encounter operations” in Kashmir. However, if that is what helps you visualize and translate, you are welcome to paint a picture using this record.
This dreadful event took place in Machua, a Northern region of Kashmir on October 27th, 2020. It was a normal day to us, well what any Kashmiri knows to be normal. This sense of fleeting security lasted only till 4 p.m. when our whole locality was cordoned off by the military forces, a swarm in uniforms that we have known to never bring peace. Private vehicles carrying army men, carriages with their trunks covered with tarpaulins were zooming past our streets. People soon confirmed that the ostracizing of the cordon was real, we were entrapped, our whole area enclosed. The game of anxiety and fear had begun.
A phone call from my rattled cousin who suffers from cardiac complications, begging for help brought me to tears. Their house was one of the suspected ones. My cousin’s family wanted to leave for their lives.The army yelled at them to stay put or they would be shot down. After pleading for what felt like hours, they were let go.
All of us took shelter in my house, people felt like a war-torn refugee in their own town! We were just shoved into this one single home, the army lacked clarity of directives, they couldn’t tell left from right in that moment. They forced people into nooks and crannies which in no means were safe and mere moments later received shrapnel and even bullets from the ongoing fight outside. Had these people not resisted the army’s directions, they would have wound up dead. It bewilders me, how they carry out such elaborate, sensitive operations under the guise of security and yet understand so little about civilian safety. In situations like these, such grave miscalculations cannot be allowed. If by some means these actions can be excused, what about their active misconduct?
They stormed into houses around the locality, separated children from families, men from women and in one house asked a teenage girl to make them tea! Please let the gravity of that sink in. Even in international armed conflict, families are to be held together, familial safety is an understood priority.
All these simultaneously unfolding horrors numbed my mind. The booms of the artillery would commence any moment now and fear paralyzed me, I couldn’t bear to see my little sister with her shaky hands, pale face and empty gaze. I will do anything to protect her, I vowed to myself. The sound of the first gunshot pierced through the sky at 10 p.m. I looked around frantically, realizing that there were now a lot more helpless faces accompanying me. With every gunshot, I could feel the terror rising, the tension in the house was palpable.
It was now midnight and the air tasted like ash, my sister still looked horrified and I still had no power to make it all go away. I knew this meant that the army had set that house ablaze. We looked outside and could see flames licking away at the pitch black sky; the fire seemed to be advancing. People wailed at thoughts of their homes being engulfed by the fire. It isn’t that easy to invest your life and love into a house, turn it into home, only to have it succumb to this uncertainty. Moved out of his wits at, one of my uncles ran out to check at his house. We yelled in sheer terror, pleading him to retreat as we knew that he was walking into a deadly maze of stray bullets. He was just mere seconds into the street when we heard an array of gunshots. I couldn’t tell what my mind was awaiting but the horror in that moment shattered through time, I felt like the seconds became painstakingly long, until I saw him crouch back in through the door. We briefly checked to see if he was in one piece, our eyes couldn’t believe that he made it back, dodging bullets.
A massive blast at 2 in the night shook the earth beneath us and our cores alike. Most of the details after this come in hazy details, the vacancy in everyone’s eyes, glistening tears, and faces cast red from the crimson glow of the flames; all I could hear was the roaring of the army vehicles outside, again and again. It looked unreal, the sight, like a bloodbath, only we were bleeding inside with our eyes showing it .It was now 8 in the morning and I was stirred out of my daze by more gunshots , it went on until 11 a.m.
I turned to look at my sister, hoping that we could find solace in the fact that it stopped. But, only a glance was what it took for me to know that this would haunt her, like countless others. The panic attacks came mere hours later in the evening; she was reliving the last night, shrieking. She curled up into a ball, clutched her head between her shaky palms and yelled, warning us that the army was coming to set us alight and shoot us down. It took injected sedatives at the hospital to finally calm her down and help her sleep.
I died bit by bit inside at how she ached, at how my family ached, at how we are so fragile and so defenseless. I wondered how the world rallied for protecting intellectual property rights while our entire existence could just dissipate in moments with no one as much as batting an eye. All I could see now was that we too were what Kashmir is , bearers of tragedy , with a horror etched onto our minds and hearts.
Tuba Beg 