An Illusory Peace

Of all the myths that I came to know of it was the Greek myth of Philomela that I could not reconcile with. In violation of the trust reposed in him a lustful Tereus rapes his wife’s sister Philomela and cuts off her tongue to hide his misdeed. The only justice that the gods could provide was to turn Philomela into a nightingale and leave her to sing her song of woe in perpetuity. That seemed cruel, even for the Greek gods. They could have turned her into one of the Furies at least.

Or so I thought.

August 4 was an ominous day. No sooner was Article 370 abrogated than we were gagged. The Internet was blocked, mobile connectivity barred, and every other conceivable means of communication with the outside world was severed. Silence descended upon our houses and stalked our conversations. As the curfewed days turned into curfewed weeks the stalking grew bolder. And as weeks turned into months somewhere along the way, we had given in to the silence. We had let it in. It was now within us as well as around us. Thus, when eventually mobile phones started to ring again and the Internet limped back onto our screens, it came as no surprise that the silence did not go away. It persisted—within us, around us. It had become a part of us.

It had taken over us.

I used to be an active Facebook user; posting poems, memes, satires and other such stuff that were not exactly politically correct on my wall all the time. It did not mean that I used to post whatever I felt like posting. Of course, there was an element of self-censorship lest I wanted to pay the price. Let us just say I treaded a fine line. A sub-conscious filter had been set up that would allow only such stuff to appear on my Facebook timeline that were low risk, while the high-risk words and verses were restrained within the deepest recesses of my thoughts. These fugitive thoughts were debated and discussed in my head and maybe occasionally with someone in person, but they never found an expression in the written word. That is how it used to be. That is how it has always been here.

But now despite the restoration of the Internet, silence has taken over my Facebook. You will find nothing there. The bar of risk has been lowered to silence. And it is not just that I cannot post because I do not dare to but what is most horrifying is that I don’t want to. Silence has invaded the innermost recesses of my thoughts. There is nothing on my Facebook now and there is NOTHING in my head now. The Dictatorship of Silence is finally complete.

Every day I find myself trying to unravel this silence, trying to understand it and explain it. But even if I were given a thousand tongues I would still fail. How did things come to such a pass? Have I finally given up? Have I finally surrendered? Or is it just that the stakes are too high this time? Or is it that the fatigue has finally set in? Is it that I just want to break away from years and years of torment and finally find some peace whatever it may cost? Have I finally accepted desolation as the only peace that could be achieved? Should I give up on the past as some sort of deluded misadventure? Or is this just one more turn of the circle that has become our history? Have we been brought out of our delusion? Or are we just staring at an illusion? Is this finally it? Or is there worse to come?

Back to the Ballot: Zamir and Zahir Abdullah at an election rally in Baramulla in 2024 - Photo: Manpreet Romana

Manufactured Silences: The Suppressed Voices Of Kashmir

BY Zahir Abdullah

Every day the questions try to rebel against the tyranny of silence. Every day they end up defeated as no answer comes to their rescue.

Every day I find myself praying more and more fervently if only I could perch on the highest branch of a Chinar and weep aloud like a nightingale as the Silence keeps gnawing at my heart.

An Excerpt from Shabir Ahmad Mir’s Unpublished Novel The Last Knot

The Pebble

In the beginning it was water. Water, water all around. Only water. Just water. As if someone had tied knot after knot of water till the carpet of water had overflown its loom and spread itself all around and everywhere. Water that was grey on the winter morning, blue on the summer noon and, sometimes, green on the spring evening. Water that gurgled a laugh and tiptoed on a ripple as it explored its own immense solitude and sang strange songs of longing when it rained. Water that told its own story to itself in its own guttural voice, sang a lullaby to itself when it grew too dark. Night after day. Night after night.

Water that delighted in each knot of its being as it discovered the miracle that was its existence.

Water that, impregnated of its own happiness, bore two sons. Tsand and Mond. Two big-boned, immense babies whose giant guffaws could be heard miles from the shores of the Water in whose proud womb they swam incessantly. Tsand and Mond whose huge joy and large laughter frightened the men who had just arrived on the shore to lay claim to the land by the Water. Men who prayed to the gods, that they had bought with them, to tame the Water and exorcise it off its monsters before they consecrate it for eternity. Gods whose trident of anger is roused in all its phallic fury and out flies a Haer—a sparrow—from their loins. The Sparrow that picks up a pebble and drops it like a curse from the immense height of its power and contempt. The pebble that, like the sentence of a tyrant, grows in its wrath all the way down on to the Water. The Water whose liquid ribs break under the weight of the engorged pebble and fails to protect her Tsand. Tsand who lays buried under the pebble; groaning, his words no more than empty bubbles floating away…

With each dying breath of Tsand the pebble grows. Grows and grows and grows till it becomes a rigid knot across time and space; till it becomes a parbat—a giant rock. A hill. Haer Parbat. The Hill of Sparrow. And centuries of history gather around this hill like moss on a stone.

Proud as a tombstone the hill stood with all its moss when the victorious Great Emperor from the plains beyond mountains arrived. Let us start history anew, he decreed. Let us built a new city on the Haer Parbat, he decided. For the city that knelt before him, with all its history and moss, was nothing more than the spoils of war and the spoils of war, they always belong to the victor. Thus the great Emperor builds a wall all around the Hill of Sparrow to demarcate this new city—this new history—from the old one that remained sprawled around the meandering waters of the river Jhelum. Ka’lai, people called this wall and lured by the safety that walls conjure some of the more wretched ones moved within this wall only to find that it was all the same both within the wall and beyond it. Those wretched ones found that new histories, new cities are just mirages borne on the skeletons of the old ones. And centuries later when a governor of another victorious Emperor builds a fort atop the Hill with its own set of walls all that the people saw was one more folly of history. One more spoil to one more victor.

The Fort changes hands after due intervals of time as new victors ride to its door but no matter whose time it is, the Fort itself, always, perches like a vulture on the top of Haer Parbat, digging its talons deep, deep into the flesh of memory as well as the body of the hill. The only solace one can find on this tormented hill is the shrine of Makhdoom Saab, just below the fort, on the southern slope.

Up on this hill I climb. To the shrine of Makhdoom Saab I climb. Breath by slow breath I climb. I heave. I pant. I breath in gasps. But I climb and climb. My chest tightens. Something heavy churns within me. Thick, heavy; I want to vomit so badly. My heart pumps fear and pain. I try to run. But my legs refuse; the ground beneath them waxes and wanes into a web of taut, tired threads. A cobweb! A familiar cobweb! A loom! A loom! I stand on my loom!