RUMOURS OF SPRING

A Girlhood in Kashmir

FARAH BASHIR

For the children of Kashmir, who know nothing of a normal childhood
For my grandmother, Sarwa
For my sister, Bushera

Sing, daughters, of one woman and one thousand, of those multitudes who rushed like wind to free a country from poisonous beasts. Sing, children of those who came before you, of those who laid the path on which you tread toward warmer suns.

…

Sing of those who are no more,

Sing of the giants still amongst you,

Sing of those yet to be born.

Sing.

from The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

THE DAY I WAS DEAD

IT WAS A CHILLY DECEMBER evening in 1994, which had the stillness of snow without any snow.

I had turned eighteen that year, and for the first time in my life, I felt grateful for the dusk-to-dawn curfew. My grandmother, Bobeh, had died late that afternoon. It was because of the curfew that I could spend an extra night with her around. On an ordinary night, curfew swelled up the air with fear and uncertainty. It controlled everything. It disciplined people inside their own houses, animals on the streets, and had even tamed the loud sneezes of the tobacco-seller who lived two houses from ours. That night, however, the curfew felt like a blessing.

I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to my grandmother, my Bobeh. Had I known on the night of 18 December that it would be our last one together, I’d have been more polite to her. The next day, she was already gone by the time I reached home after taking my exams.

The previous night, I had decided to stay up late to study. Bobeh stayed up with me as long as the dim light of the kerosene lamp lasted. She’d had an asthmatic attack recently, and that made her look visibly distressed. But it was her unwavering gaze on me that made me irritable.

‘I am studying! Do you think I’ll revise insincerely if you look away?’ I told her, raising both my chemistry book and my voice.

She didn’t respond, but continued to watch me, wheezing occasionally. She had had several asthmatic attacks before, but they had become more frequent since the time the firing of tear gas had become the norm. It used to be so harsh on her. Later I wondered if, on that night, it was also the torment of death that had shown on her face.

In the morning, after I had left to take the exam, a few adjoining neighbourhoods between home and school were cordoned off by the troops so that they could conduct search operations, commonly known as ‘crackdown’. On such days, our roll number slips doubled as our identity passes and we were let through. By the time we finished writing our exam, at around two o’clock, the search had been extended to more areas. By the time I reached home, it was around five.

Chemistry was the first paper on the schedule. I had done reasonably well and the feeling of relief that followed gave me a ravenous appetite. As always, I had been too nervous that morning to eat anything and had sat through my exam on an empty stomach. I was looking forward to a hearty meal, but the detour I had to take emaciated me further. Famished, I reached home to find a commotion of people outside our koche. My heart sank.

Was someone hit by a bullet?

Who could it be?

Was Father injured at the shop?

Was Mother hit by a grenade shell or a shrapnel?

As these thoughts came to my mind, my throat tightened, as if I was being strangled. I could barely breathe. I inched towards our house with wobbly knees. The main wooden door was open. A couple of shopkeepers from the neighbourhood were coming out of the house as I floated in bewildered. Sajida, our elderly next door neighbour, and the keeper of most secrets in the neighbourhood, was descending the stairs as I slowly climbed up. ‘Go, have one last look at your grandmother.’ As Sajida uttered those words, for a brief second, all I could see around me was a blackness. The turquoise shawl she had wrapped around her head disappeared. The darkness was followed by a sharp pain in my belly. I got my period which lasted less than a day.

In the corridor, I heard Father’s voice say: ‘How am I to take the responsibility of so many curfew passes? What if they shoot someone?’

They were trying to decide if they should bury Bobeh that very night or on the following day. Father seemed adamant about everyone’s safety. He declared that the burial was to be postponed by a night.

Father, Mother, Ramzan Kaak and Pophtaeth, an aunt of mine who had come to pay Bobeh a visit, stayed up all night in the living room as some of the neighbours left. They spent the long hours praying for her. I didn’t pray. I felt numb, and then restless.

That night, too, the room was dimly lit. Mother had arranged blankets under which everyone could sit through the night. Ramzan Kaak readied kerosene lamps and lined them by the door. Everyone had a booklet of Quran that they were reciting verses from. Had the body of Bobeh not been lying in the corner where she’d usually sit, it could pass off as the Night of Atonement or Shab-e-Baraat, when all of us stayed up the whole night to pray. The room was humming, but a strange silence befell the corner Bobeh was lying in. The heavy soundlessness of that corner was more overwhelming than the unease the silence of the dawn-to-dusk curfew brought on. I sat in another corner of the room, staring at Bobeh’s still hands and her long, delicate fingers.

There was a night when Bobeh looked close to how she looked after passing. Pale, silent and stiffened. It was on the eve of Eid in 1989, the Eid that set a precedence for future ones to come. That Eid eve, as a twelve-year-old girl, I decided unwittingly to never participate in festivities again. In fact, from then on, I began associating inexplicable melancholy with Eid, and the heaviness that settled on the heart that day sank deeper each year.

Before 1989, my anticipation of the festivities on the eve of Eid usually surpassed the excitement I felt during the festival itself. There was an eagerness to wear new clothes, along with matching shoes and fashionable accessories. The rich, spicy aromas that wafted from every kitchen in the neighbourhood, suffused not just the individual courtyards but the entire mesh of interconnected narrow streets. The menu at our house was carefully selected. Mother would cook some of the dishes herself while the rest were ordered from Ashraf waze, the renowned chef of our area. Father would sit quietly in a corner of the living room, away from his usual spot. With his back towards the door, he’d stealthily count the crisp currency notes that he’d distribute among his sisters and their children as Eidi the next day. The whole evening would be punctuated with the sound of the main door being opened and shut by my sister Hina, who’d invariably have to go out for her last-minute visits to the tailor and the salon.

In comparison, the day of Eid was rather muted. It began with wearing fineries, sitting in front of the Dastarkhwaan, drinking kahwe, breaking bread together as a family. The rest of the day was spent waiting for the relatives to visit our house with my share of Eidi.

When I was around eight or nine years old, Father would pack me in the back of his car – an ochre Range Rover, JKD 7575 – on Eid as he’d drive along with Ramzan Kaak. Ramzan Kaak was Father’s assistant at his clothing shop in Boher Kadal. He was roughly Father’s age, physically stronger, and the most trusted man of our household. I remember seeing the mass prayer congregation that year at Eid Gah where hundreds of men, clad in crisp Khan dress and skull caps, had gathered to pray with their children, who were dressed up in bright colours. Rows of vendors selling wooden horse carts, rattlers, red strips of crackers and colourful plastic toys surrounded the large field where the men prayed. I didn’t know then that the same prayer-ground would come to be known as the martyrs’ graveyard.

I was never attracted to toys, and that was perhaps because I wanted to do the things my beautiful sister, Hina, did. A decade elder to me, she was past her age of playing with dolls and so, I, too, didn’t develop a liking towards them. In fact, that year (1989), as I turned twelve, I was finally allowed to take the first step in emulating Hina’s ways. After much bargaining with and emotionally blackmailing Mother, I could visit the salon that Hina used to frequent. Moving up from the barber who used to cut Father’s hair at home to the hairdresser famous for styling fashionable cuts, felt like a rite of passage for me. The occasion chosen for that was Eid. No one said no. But the yes was delayed interminably.

The salon, where some of my friends had already been for their grown-up haircuts, was in the posh neighbourhood of Raj Bagh. As per my sister’s advice, we scheduled the salon visit for the evening so that our coiffure would retain their shapes the next morning. I felt very glamorous in my freshly trimmed, salon-washed, blow-dried hair. I felt like the model from a shampoo ad who turned her head from left to right and right to left as she flaunted her straight, lustrous, bouncy hair. ‘Halo giiiiiiiiiirl,’ the jingle played in the background as she looked happy and confident with her lush hair.

We were among the last few customers at the salon. By the time we left, it was already dark, but we noticed a marked shift in the air which had nothing to do with the inky, funereal colour of the evening sky. Shopkeepers were bringing down the store shutters in a frenzy. Instead of the pre-Eid festive chaos caused by the shoppers and shopkeepers alike, the roads began emptying out. There was barely any traffic. Police vehicles were whizzing past us and there were policemen all around.

‘Looks like a curfew. Like we’re under Gul Karfi again,’ Hina whispered to me. ‘Hold my hand and don’t look up.’

I clutched Hina’s wrist, and feverishly wished that we’d somehow vanish from the streets and land straight into our living room with Father, Mother and Bobeh. I could feel the tears pooling in my eyes, but the tears just wouldn’t roll down. Perhaps it had something to do with the panic that was building up inside me.

Home was some distance from the salon and we had to break our journey into two halves. We took a minibus until Amira Kadal and managed to negotiate the second leg of the journey with an autorickshaw driver who sensed our desperation and didn’t charge us for the ride. He dropped us in Nawab Bazar, around a kilometre away from our house.

‘Yath tcha nih patah kith haalat roazan. Can’t say how the circumstances will shape up.’ With that, he drove his autorickshaw off, like a bullet, as they say.

As we took a few steps forward, a police jeep was doing rounds and announced a message in loop in as hostile a manner as possible: ‘Awaam se appeal ki jaati hai ki apne gharoon se baahar na nikleyn, sheher mein shoot at sight ka order hai. People are requested not to step outside their homes for there is shoot at sight order across the city.’

Hina urged me to walk faster. I cannot recall with certainty, but perhaps I was slowing down to look at the shards of glass and plastic scattered on the road. Amidst broken lamps, coloured glass bangles, stomped-on plastic kitchen sets, dolls with soiled and squished faces, there was debris enough to distract one all along the way. We reached home after walking for what seemed like an eternity and arrived to Bobeh’s sobs.

Our legs having transformed into trembling, rickety appendages, Hina and I dragged ourselves up the stone steps leading to the living room. We could hear the phone ring incessantly and grew more anxious because of that. Bobeh sat beside it, oblivious to the noise and panic that it was creating. A map of purple lines appeared on her temples as her daej, the embroidered, square bandana, with which she covered her hair, lay crumpled on the floor. She was breathing laboriously; her asthma seemed to have worsened. The moment she saw us, she held her uncovered head in her hands. Even in the moment of panic, my brain registered what an uncommon sight it was.

‘Are you really alive?’

Bobeh repeated her question in a broken voice as she held my face in her ice-cold hands. While my face was still in her corpse-like hands, I pulled away from her, as if someone had pushed me. I could hear my heart beat loudly and felt my body shake.

I was in a daze, hardly being able to take note of what was happening. Mother walked into the room and held us close to her. She asked us questions, most of which were answered by Hina. I cannot remember where Father was. I heard his voice coming faintly from the direction of the courtyard of his cousin, the one who lived next door. The phone kept ringing. Someone, possibly Ramzan Kaak, finally picked up the phone and said, ‘Shukur, she’s here, they’re safe.’

Mother said that all our relatives were calling to ask after me. There was news that a twelve-year-old from our clan had been killed. Asiya, one of my friends from school, who lived nearby, had been calling, as she too had feared that it was me. Neither Bobeh nor anyone else could confirm anything until they saw me in flesh. Unbeknownst to us at the time, my second cousin, exactly my age, had also gone out with his father. They had been out to buy shoes for him for Eid. As they were returning home in their car, he was hit by a bullet. His last words to his father were, ‘Myeha log haelyis toat. I am feeling warm on the side of my stomach.’ He bled to death on his way to the hospital.

At that point, no one knew what exactly had happened. Ramzan Kaak came to the room and said that there was news of multiple shootings, and the city was under curfew. Barely a kilometre from where our house was, next to Father’s shop in Boher Kadal, there was a shooting incident involving a well-known militant, Mushtaq Latram. Absorbing the news from all around made my hands shake. In a moment of confusion and fear, I plucked a chunk of my hair from right behind my ear. It hurt to pull the hair out, but my hands needed to clutch at something. I pulled some out again to punish myself for not being able to make sense of what had befallen us as a people. I couldn’t help but feel that none of this would have happened had I not troubled everyone about going to the salon. Somehow, I felt responsible for all of it: for being rumoured to be dead, for Bobeh’s condition: she had begun to wheeze uncontrollably. Since then, a dark, silent cloud of death hovers above me every Eid.

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NOTES

EVENING

The Day I Was Dead

Koche: An alley. The old city of Srinagar is woven and connected by an intricate maze of alleys.

Gul Karfi: ‘Gul’ is short for Ghulam and ‘Karfi’ the colloquial term for curfew. Ghulam Mohammad Shah, known as Gul Shah, was the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir from July 1984 to March 1986. He repeatedly imposed curfew in the city during his tenure, which earned him the epithet Gul Curfew or ‘Gul Karfi’.

Mushtaq Latram: Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar was the founder of Al-Umar, an active militant outfit of the early 1990s. He was arrested in 1992 and then released in Kandahar in 1999 in exchange of a passenger flight. (There was a running joke about his nickname: Two carpenters, frisked by the troops, were questioned about the contents of their gunny sacks. They replied, ‘Keel, Hathoda aur Latram Shatram [Nails, hammer and miscellaneous items]’. The troops then started beating them up, thinking they were teasing them with Latram’s name.)

Boher Kadal: Bohri Kadal.

Memory of the Scalp

Seemaab: Quicksilver, mercury. A home remedy used to keep hair free from lice infestations.

Wanwun: An indigenous style of women’s singing in chorus, usually at weddings, without the help of any musical instrument.

Taeleem: A rhythmic chant that is hummed by traditional carpet weavers in Kashmir. It is to that mysterious sound flow that they weave carpets.

Maam Toath: A term of endearment for one’s maternal uncle, usually used by older generations.

Braandh: The elevated extension of a house, just at the threshold outside the main door.

Yakhyen/Yakhni: A yoghurt based gravy cooked with cinnamon and dried ginger, garnished with dried mint. Cooked in three styles: with mutton, lamb tripe or bitter gourd. At weddings, large meatballs called goshtaab are cooked in this gravy, and it marks the culmination point of a thirty-six course meal.

Zombre Thool: Hard-boiled eggs cooked either with a tomato paste or sliced onions.

Zaene Kadal: Zaina Kadal.

Do Wishes Come True?

Saat-e-Hassan: A supposedly divine moment that has the power of turning anything uttered in that instant true.

Khawaja Khazir: In the Quran, in Surah Al-Qahaf, there is a reference to a mystic who possesses great wisdom. He is found near rivers and streams. His company was sought by prophet Musa, who wanted to witness and understand how the saint receives direct illumination from God. In the Sufi tradition, Khawaja Khazir is believed to have the gift of eternal life.

Kanger: A portable earthen fire-pot. With a wickerwork exterior and a clay interior, it is used to carry hot embers. Essential to surviving bitter cold winters, it is usually carried around under the pheran.

Evening Salute

Waan pyend: The extension of a shop; a spot availed by men in the neighbourhood for passing time. Often used to have witty banter or serious political discussions.

Juloos: Procession.

Nezabaen sunnd tchu bozan Khodah: ‘God listens to the voiceless.’

The Metallic Monster

Laalan tchu kormut BA/ BT Haariy kor invarsity saal: A song celebrating the education of newly-weds. It translates as: ‘the groom is graduate with a BA/BT, the bride has invited everyone at the university’.

Dass kad nebar tchai qabeel daeri Tcze hav tchi saeri tamahdaar: ‘Extend your hand to your guests, all of them are fond of you.’

Hye wayn hez karrini dubareh, diss hez maefi: ‘She won’t do it again, please forgive her!’

Rituals Old and New

Dum chai: A strong flavoured tea. Made with boiling cinnamon in water for over ten minutes, after which a pinch of green tea is added and the brew is boiled for another minute. Often had post dinner, at the end of a physically exhausting day or to get relief from gastric discomfort.

Malaroat: Malaratta.

NIGHT

When Our Folk Tales Dried Up

Moaj aes jantich hooer: ‘Mother was an angel from heaven.’

Tilleh (Tilla): It is one of the most prevalent forms of traditional embroidery in Kashmir. Woven with gold or silver thread on ethnic wear, pherans, or the borders of a shawl, that form a part of every woman’s wardrobe. Worn by some elderly ladies as a part of their daily wear, it is included as a part of trousseaus too.

Halam: Lap; the part of a traditional pheran, used to denote the cloth slightly above the hem.

Voal: Waalah. It connotes the male gender of a person.

Heart Goes Boom-Boom

Kafan: A shroud.

Tabaruk/Tobruk: Blessing, benediction. At local shrines in Kashmir, priests keep dates or shireen (sugar balls) in front of them while chanting verses, making the items sacred so that they can be distributed to the devotees. At the Hajj pilgrimage, tabaruk comprises dates, Zam Zam water, skull caps and tasbih (prayer beads).

‘Iss ke liye paisa kahaan se aata hai, saale madarchod aatankvadiyo?’: ‘Where does the money for such expensive things come from, you motherfucking terrorists?’

May I Become Invisible, Please?

More than one hardliner factions: Al Baqr, People’s League, Wahdat-e-Islam and Allah Tigers had demanded the ‘more Islamic’ ways of living. After the initial excitement and fear to adhere to the new diktat, the movement gradually lost relevance. After all, the fight wasn’t about establishing a religious republic, but about the political aspirations of a people. The struggle has been about their inalienable right to self-determination.

The Country with a Burnt Post Office

Tehreek: In local parlance in Kashmir, it is referred to the beginning of the armed insurgency that erupted against New Delhi in 1989.

Gaw Kadal: On 21 January 1990, hundreds of unarmed protestors defied a civil curfew and shouted slogans of independence. The paramilitary troops of CRPF shot at the crowd. Up to fifty-one civilians were reported to have been killed and hundreds injured. See William Dalrymple, ‘Kashmir: The Scarred and the Beautiful’, The New York Review of Books, 1 May 2008, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/05/01/kashmir-the-scarred-and-the-beautiful/, accessed on 18 January 2021; Also, Victoria Gatenby, ‘Kashmiris mark 28th anniversary of Gaw Kadal Mark Anniversary Massacre’, Al Jazeera, 21 January 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/kashmiris-mark-28th-anniversary-gaw-kadal-massacre-180121185626847.html, accessed on 18 January 2021;

‘“Everyone Lives in Fear”: Patterns of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir’, Human Rights Watch, 11 September 2006, https://www.hrw.org/report/2006/09/11/everyone-lives-fear/patterns-impunity-jammu-and-kashmir, accessed on 18 January 2021.

Tengpur/Tengpora: In 1990, mass demonstrations were rampant. Some protestors took out a march to visit the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to submit a memorandum seeking resolution to the Kashmir conflict. In an attempt to stop them, the troops fired on the crowd, killing around twenty-five civilians.

Faheem Aslam, ‘Zakura, Tengpora carnages haunt survivors’, Greater Kashmir, 14 March 2015, https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/more/news/zakura-tengpora-carnages-haunt-survivors/, accessed on 18 January 2021; and KL News Network, ‘March 1, 1990: “The Day When Army Men Fired 47 Dead in Srinagar”’, Kashmir Life, 28 February 2017, https://kashmirlife.net/march-1-1990-day-army-men-fired-47-dead-srinagar-133692/, accessed on 18 January 2021.

Djinn and Jahanam

Tasruf: To be possessed.

Anti-depressants are colloquially called ‘nindreh dawah’ (sleep or calming medication). According to a report released by MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders) in 2016, 1.8 million Kashmiris (45 per cent of the population) showed symptoms of significant mental distress. See https://www.msfindia.in/msf-scientific-survey-45-kashmiri-population-experiencing-mental-distress/

EARLY HOURS

Pasikdar: The Benign Spirit

Brokus kornam kaanyen raatas: ‘The spirit kept crushing my sides all night.’

Ayat-al-Kursi: Called the ‘Verse of the Throne’, it is a specific verse from the Quran which is known to protect its reciter. Our parents and grandmother would encourage us to say it before going to bed in order order to avoid nightmares and to stay safe from evil spirits and jinns.

The Door on the Floor

Apne gharoon se baahar nikaliyey. Koi aadmi ghar pe na paaya jaaye: ‘Come outside of your houses. No man should be found inside his house.’

Crackdown: An impromptu siege would be announced on loudspeakers from the mosques or whizzing jeeps in a neighbourhood. It’d start at any part of the day. Back in the 1990s, it’d mostly begin soon after morning prayers and last from a few hours to a couple of days. All the houses would be thoroughly searched and ransacked during this time. The male members of the family were assembled in large grounds or compounds of local schools, sometimes in sub-zero temperatures, and the women and children remained petrified at home. The men were queued up and paraded in front of a gypsy that had a police informer, commonly known as Mukhbir, sitting inside, who’d identify militants or militant suspects. Crackdown is now termed as CASO (cordon and search operation). See ‘“Everyone Lives in Fear”’.

I Miss Walking

Girde, lawase, baker-khani: Various types of bread eaten at different hours of the day. While preparing girde (also called czot) in the tandoor, the pattern of the baker’s fingertips forms on top of the bread. Lawase is an unleavened bread and had with morning tea. It is also used as a wrap for roadside barbecued meat (tujje). Baker-khani is a wafer-like bread which is served to guests or had during the four o’clock teatime instead or along with tczochvoar.

Kyenz: A copper bowl with an elevated hollow base. The base has an intricate pattern carved on it that differentiates it from a Toor or a Bushkaab which have ornate solid bases.

DAWN

Forbidden Courtyard

Poand: The then currency denomination in the form of a brass coin.

Kreth: The stinging and burning sensation caused from the smoke created during tempering, especially when spices are added to hot, boiling oil.

Asr: The third of the five obligatory daily prayers in Islam.

Trath Peynakh: ‘May lightning fall upon them.’ ‘Trath’, meaning lightning, is usually used as a curse, but can also be used to describe a stunning woman. ‘Trath hish’ translates into ‘lightning-like’.

Surah Fheel: Faith in the Faith

Wapas pheyr sa hye, ati tchuui jang chalaan!: ‘Turn around, there is a war going on there!’

Shadow of a Siege

Tokke kor: An ethnic gold bangle with two open ends. Each end has a snakehead design. Some snakeheads are embellished with tiny, glittering semi-precious stones fitted in the place of their eyes.

Lal Chowk fire: After a gun-battle in Lal Chowk, troops had set ablaze an entire patch of shops. In April 1993, The New York Times reported that Indian security forces had been blamed for arson and killings across Srinagar. See, Asia Watch, A Division of Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, ‘Violations by Government Forces’, in ‘The Human Rights Crisis in Kashmir: A Pattern of Impunity’, p. 57, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/INDIA937.PDF;

also Nisar Dharma, ‘April 10, 1993: The day a boat sank with the dead’, FreePress Kashmir, 10 April 2018, https://freepresskashmir.news/2018/04/10/april-10-1993-day-boat-sank-with-the-dead/, accessed on 18 January 2021.

Moi-e-Muqadas: A strand of hair of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Vejbyoar/Bijbehara: Protests erupted in the valley against the siege laid on the Hazratbal shrine. In one such protest in Vejbyoar, the troops (74th Battalion of Border Security Force), in an attempt to disallow the crowd from moving forward, fired on it killing up to fifty civilians. See ‘“Everyone Lives in Fear”’; also Majid Maqbool, ‘At Bijbehara, Site of 1993 Massacre, the Killing of 43 Kashmiris is Still a Raw Wound’, The Wire, 22 October 2017, https://thewire.in/rights/twenty-four-years-after-kashmirs-bijbehara-massacre-victims-still-wait-for-justice, accessed on 18 January 2021.

Cinemas? No Scope!

Lion of the Desert that had instigated anti-Sheikh Abdullah sloganeering and protests in the 1980s: The dialogue from the 1981 war film Lion of the Desert, ‘We will not surrender. We win or we die’, uttered by the film’s protagonist Omar Mukhtar, a Libyan tribal leader, gained extreme popularity in Srinagar when it was released and inspired a whole generation. The lines continue to be quoted in the current times.

A Wedding, a Funeral

Traem/Trami: A medium-sized copper plate on which food is served during weddings and shared amongst four people. It comes with a concave lid called sarpoash.

Muss miczraven: A pre-wedding ceremony held before the bride’s henna ceremony. The bride is surrounded by her relatives and friends who have to undo the multiple plaits that are braided by her friends. As they proceed with the activity, trinkets such as combs, hair clips, hair pins and ribbons are distributed among young girls.

MORNING

Speech Impediments

Taavan ha pyoam: ‘A curse has fallen upon me.’

Hedwun: Headwin, pronounced as ‘Hedwun’, is the informal name for the SMHS hospital near Government Medical College, Srinagar. It was named after an Austrian trader and philanthropist, Headow, who donated his estate for the construction of the first state hospital.

Curfew as Poison

Wurusi: Certain architectures allow carved wooden planks to form partitions in a room. Usually three in number, these planks are adjustable and can be stacked up together inside an arched, hollow cove to allow more space between two chambers. Or else, these are brought down and act as a wooden wall between the chambers or rooms.

Goshtaab: A big meatball. It is cooked with Yakhyen/Yakhni, a yoghurt-based gravy made with dried ginger, cinnamon, and dried and crushed mint leaves. That dish marks the culmination of a feast at a wedding or a celebration.

Power blackout: Black Day was observed on specific dates which included 27 October (Accession Day), 26 January (India’s Republic Day) and 15 August (India’s Independence Day). It culminated in a power blackout when all lights were switched off in the evening. To avoid even the slightest flicker escaping out, we covered small windowpanes, without curtains, with a blanket or some dark coloured cloth.

Memory of the Lake

Sanam sunte hain teri bhi kamar hai/Kahaan hai, kis taraf hai, kidhar hai?: ‘Beloved, they say you possess a waist/Where is it? Which side, where indeed?’

The couplet by Urfi, a sixteenth-century Persian poet, can be translated into: ‘Such is the climate of Kashmir/it will regrow the feathers of a burnt bird.’

The other couplet referred to is by Amir Khusro.

Gar Firdaus Ba Roye’n Zameen Ast/Hamee(n) asto. Hamee(n) asto. Hamee(n) asto. It can be translated as: ‘If there is a paradise on earth/it is here, it is here, it is here.’

Aya ba daanish gah rafta boodi?: ‘Had you gone to the university?’

Rafta boodam, rafta boodam!: ‘Yes, I had, yes, I had.’

The local UN office: Refers to the office of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP).

Shared Grief

Zanneh nyoov jenazeh malaikav vidaan vidaan: ‘As if the angels flew his coffin away.’

CRP: Informally used for Central Reserve Paramilitary Forces (CRPF).

‘A hereditary Islamic leader, the most senior and influential opponent of Indian rule in Kashmir, was assassinated in his home in the state’s capital today. When 100,000 angry mourners followed his body through the streets of the city, security forces opened fire, killing at least 30 people and wounding some 200, according to hospital doctors.’ (Barbara Crossette, ‘Muslim Leader of Kashmir Slain; 30 Die as Police Fire on Mourners’, Special to the New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/22/world/muslim-leader-of-kashmir-slain-30-die-as-police-fire-on-mourners.html, accessed on 18 January 2021.)

See also, Faisul Yaseen, ‘25 Years of Deceit: Hawal Massacre Inquiry Yet to Take Off, Rising Kashmir, 21 May 2015, http://www.risingkashmir.in/news/25-years-of-deceit-hawal-massacre-inquiry-yet-to-take-off, accessed on 18 January 2021; Arif Shafi Wani, ‘Hawal massacre anniversary: “It Was Hell; Saw Paramilitary Men Firing with Machine Guns on Civilians”’, Greater Kashmir, 21 May 2015, https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/kashmir/hawal-massacre-anniversary-it-was-hell-saw-paramilitary-men-firing-with-machine-guns-on-civilians/, accessed on 18 January 2021.

Naareh: Slogans.

Jis Kashmir ko khoon se seencha, Woh Kashmir humara hai: ‘The Kashmir that has been irrigated with our blood, that Kashmir belongs to us.’

Of Men, Mice and Violence

Khyeczir: A porridge made of rice and lentils, flavoured with salt and cumin.

Jajeer: A traditional hookah with a copper or brass base.

AFTERLIFE

Q.K.: The Courtyard Graffiti

Livun: A light variant of water-based chalk paint that came in two colours – white and green. A coat or two of this was applied to the walls to keep them from looking weather-beaten.

Khoda karih sahlei: ‘Allah will have mercy.’

The Saintless

Aastaan: A shrine.

Tobruk/Tabaruk: Benediction or a blessing.

Resh sund Tobruk: Benediction received at the shrine of the Sufi master Baba Payyam udin Reshi. The shrine is situated near Tangmarg en route to Gulmarg.

Tczochvoar: A bagel-shaped bread with sesame seeds sprinkled on it. It is had with the 4 o’clock salty tea, nun chai.

Etiqaad: Belief.

Sounds and the Silencer

Zuv hai vandai: A term of endearment which literally means ‘my life for yours’.

Games Our Children Play

Pre-Tehreek: The decades before 1989.

Mushir-ul-Haq: Mushir-ul-Haq was a non-Kashmiri vice chancellor of Kashmir University in 1990. He was kidnapped on 6 April 1990, along with his personal secretary Abdul Gani Zargar. The militant outfit that had abducted them were demanding the release of militants from prisons. When the state didn’t comply, the duo was killed and their bodies were found on 10 April 1990.

The Dread of Dastarkhwaan

Dastarkhwaan: Tablecloth.

Aloo-bukhara chicken: A chicken dish cooked with dried plums that impart a tangy taste to the curry.

Tczaek waangan: Aubergines cooked with tamarind pulp.

Namda: An embroidered light rug made by felting sheep fleece.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Firstly, I must thank Ananth Padmanabhan for believing in this book when all I had was just the title.

For its title, I thank Agha Shahid Ali and his poetry that has been a place of refuge for years.

Mirza Waheed, for his sincere friendship.

Sohini Basak, my editor, for shaping this book and bringing a sense of stillness to my thinking.

Udayan Mitra, Publisher – Literary at HarperCollins India, for his reassuring comments.

In Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai: Arunav Gogoi, Sfoorti Sachdeva, and Amrita Goswami and her table.

In Washington D.C.: Agnès Bun, for creating our own maps of travel and a dictionary of typos.

In Singapore: Ketna Patel, Jayapriya Vasudevan, Nomita Dhar, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Pamposh Dhar, for opening their hearts and homes to me.

My Kashmiri friends: Ruwa Shah, Fozia and Sidiq, Inshah Malik, Cuhail, Sadaf and Sumi.

In Kerala: Thommen Jose, for his kindness.

My colleagues: Anand Murthy, Subbu, Shriram Iyer, Rajiv Chatterjee, Rana Barua and Vishnu Mohan, for their support.

Professor Iffat Maqbool, for her erudition and being of utmost help towards the completion of the final draft.

Rafiq Kathwari, for his exacting feedback on the first draft of the book.

Amandeep Sandhu, for his forthrightness.

Dr Nagpal, for his empathetic association over the years.

The song ‘Roz Roz’ by Parvaaz that held me together after the 5 August 2019 lockdown.

The by-lanes of downtown Srinagar, the shrine of Shah Hamdan, which keep me equanimous.

Dr Nisar Mir, for his support and love during some of the darkest times. Thank you, Uncle Nisar.

My parents: Bashir, for teaching us the value of travel and exploration; Rashida, for being the ever-giving spring of Persian literature. Thank you both for your unique layers of love.

Bushera Bashir, for never leaving my side no matter what.

Matthys Boshoff, for reinforcing my faith in humanity and love.

Roshina, for her resilience.

Lastly, I thank Father, Mother and Bobeh (Ghulam Hassan Ghani, Atiqa Hassan, Sarwa Begum) – the three members of my family who rest in the graveyard next to the shrine of Khankah-i-Maula but continue to live on in my heart.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Rumours of Spring by Farah Bashir is the unforgettable account of an adolescence spent in Srinagar in the 1990s. As Indian troops and militants battle across the cityscape, and violence becomes the new normal, a young schoolgirl finds that regular tasks - studying for exams, walking to the bus stop, combing her hair, falling asleep - are riddled with anxiety and fear.

With haunting simplicity, Farah captures moments of vitality and resilience from her girlhood amidst the increasing trauma and turmoil of passing years -secretly dancing to pop songs from banned radio stations; writing her first love letter; going to the cinema for the first time. This deeply affecting coming-of-age memoir portrays how territorial conflict surreptitiously affects everyday life in Kashmir.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Farah Bashir was born and raised in Kashmir. She was a photojournalist with Reuters and currently works as a communications consultant. Rumours of Spring is her first book.

Praise for Rumours of Spring

‘A terrifying yet tender account of a girlhood spent under near-constant siege. Farah Bashir’s story is especially instructive to those of us who cannot conceive of the insidious, often invisible, harm that thirty years of violence has wrought upon so many families in Kashmir. I found Rumours of Spring to be beautiful, painful and utterly revelatory.’  

– MADHURI VIJAY, author of The Far Field

‘Extraordinary – this memoir of growing up in Kashmir in the ’90s is illuminating, heartbreaking, and beautifully told.’

– KAMILA SHAMSIE, author of Home Fire

‘Written with aching tenderness, Rumours of Spring reveals the intimate details of Bashir’s childhood in Kashmir and lays bare the brutal realities of Indian repression. By using the life of her family as a lens, Bashir settles an unflinching gaze on the emotional, physical and mental toll of years of oppression. This is an unforgettable work that refuses silence. It is an urgent, brave call for justice.’

– MAAZA MENGISTE, author of The Shadow King

‘Page after page, Farah Bashir juxtaposes moments of heart-stopping terror and beauty in a stunning memoir of life and love under a bloody military occupation.’

– MIRZA WAHEED, author of Tell Her Everything

‘An extraordinary memoir, lovingly vivid and sparklingly precise. I couldn’t put it down, and even after it had ended, the people and their stories – wonderful, horrific, familiar and unfathomable – stayed textured and formidable in my mind.’

– JENNIFER CROFT, author of Homesick

‘A beautifully tender and often heart-stopping memoir of growing up in a world that is spinning out of control.’

– MAHESH RAO, author of Polite Society

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First published in India in hardback in 2021 by Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India

www.harpercollins.co.in

Copyright © Farah Bashir 2021

P-ISBN: 978-93-5422-421-8

Epub Edition © April 2021 ISBN: 978-93-5422-422-5

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by her, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

Farah Bashir asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.

Cover design: Gavin Morris

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