The Muezzin’s Call

 

I flew from Delhi to Srinagar on 15 January 1990, intending to restart in my job as the Assistant Surgeon at the District Hospital Tangmarg. The hospital had an outpatient department, operating theatre, a maternity ward, and an emergency services section. The past November, Dr Rafiq Mohammad, the Block Medical Officer, and I had treated a young Gujjar lady who had been surprised by a haput (bear). She had not even winced as we stitched up the deep claw wounds on her shoulder and neck carefully. She was thankful that her face had escaped being disfigured, and so were we. Her threshold for pain tolerance was remarkable and I was amazed by her grit.

 

The flight to Srinagar was uneventful. As we exited the plane, Professor Mushir-ul-Haq called out to me warmly, “Beta, Hamare Saath Chalo (Daughter, come with me).”

 

My father had met him at Delhi Airport earlier in the day, and requested he drop me off in Rainawari. A white Ambassador car was waiting for the vice-chancellor. I sat in the back seat next to him, while Abdul Gani, his assistant, sat in the front. Professor Haq seemed deep in thought, and not much inclined to have a conversation. Awed by his humility and grateful for the ride, I kept quiet. The car sped along without being challenged at the CRPF check-posts set along the road. As we neared Shiraz Cinema Hall, Mr Gani suggested that they could drive to Motiyar, but that meant a detour of about fifteen minutes.

 

“Beta, Hum Ghar Pohancha Deinge (Daughter, I will drop you at your home),” Mushir-ul-Haq reassured me, while looking at me intently. Not wanting to inconvenience him, I thankfully declined his offer. They dropped me off at the Nehru Memorial Hospital, in Rainawari and I walked home.

Arundati met me at the door. A transient smile came over her face, but it was quickly replaced by an anxious query.

 

“Kyabe? Schech Kerzihey (Hello? You should have informed me),” she admonished. She had not expected me back in Srinagar.

 

Keen to report to duty, I travelled to Tangmarg the next day. The hospital staff seemed surprised at my naiveté. I had been in my office for a few hours, when Dr Rafiq Mohammad quietly and urgently advised me to return to Srinagar immediately. The situation had turned nasty in Tangmarg. I caught a bus to Srinagar and reached Batmaloo around 4 p.m. Transport was unavailable because of a hartal. So I walked through the interior areas of the city towards Rainawari. Black flags hung from doors and windows. I reached home late in the evening, scared but relieved.

 

The next day, I went to visit Fir Afroz, who lived nearby, to get a sense of the situation from her perspective. Surprisingly, her mother, who knew me by sight, waved me off and brusquely instructed me not to visit them anymore. Fir Afroz was a close friend, and my junior at Srinagar Medical College. I had known her for years and often visited her home. She too visited me regularly. The Afroz home, which was once a welcoming place, had turned cold on me.

 

I decided to go to the Lal Ded Hospital to enquire whether I could rejoin my service there. As I disembarked at the Women’s College bus stop, a bearded person was hitting every female not wearing a veil, with a stout stick. He barely missed my head, but struck my shoulder hard as I ran beyond his reach. A truck with people shouting anti-India slogans drove past. The clerks at the hospital were dismissive. I could not get a posting. Dr Lalita Tickoo, the senior resident, cautioned me to cover my head with a chunni, and not to use the bindi (an ornamental mark worn on the forehead by Hindu women).

 

Srinagar seemed to have slid from a cosmopolitan city to one demanding adherence to Islamic laws. A year ago, my teachers like Dr Girja Naseer, Dr Farhat Khan, Dr Jahan Ara Naqshbandi and I, frequently window-shopped along Residency Road, dressed modestly but fashionably, with heads and faces uncovered. The idea of wearing a veil or a burka would have been rejected out of hand by all, especially the very fashion-conscious Dr Naqshbandi.

 

My husband, Neeraj, who had been desperately trying to telephone me, had called Arundati several times. She urged me to return to Chandigarh. Officially, I was still employed by the Health Department, and did not want to abandon my job. I remained in Srinagar, hoping the situation would improve. Instead, it worsened. Firing and cross-firing became a daily occurrence. Wild rumours that the JKLF was planning to capture Srinagar radio station and Doordarshan TV centre fed our fear. I followed the news closely.

 

The news bulletin on the evening of 19 January 1990 announced that Shri Jagmohan had been sworn in as governor of the state. A dusk to dawn curfew was imposed on Srinagar. The next day we were horrified to learn that thousands of protesters and armed militants had run into a CRPF unit stationed near the Basant Bagh end of Gaew Kadal. Dozens were shot dead. The loss of lives and the dire implications of this event saddened and alarmed me. We remained indoors, apprehensive of revenge attacks.

 

Our apprehension was not ill-founded. The night of 20 January was a night saturated with fear and verbal assaults, and one I am unlikely to forget. It must have been around eight when the quiet of the night was rent by the slogans:

 

“Musalmano Jago, Kaffiro Bhago, Jihad Aa Raha Hai.”

(Muslims arise, Infidels run away, Holy war is coming.)

“Aay Zalimo, Aay Kaffiro, Kashmir Hamara Chodh Do.”

(Oh Tyrants, Oh Infidels, Leave our Kashmir.)

 

These slogans, in the Urdu language, seemed to be emanating from the loudspeakers of the mosques in our vicinity. Mixed in with these was a more sinister slogan, in the Kashmiri language:

 

“Asi Gacche Pakistan, Batav Ros Te Batnev Saan.”

(We want Pakistan, without the Pandit men, but with their women.)

 

The hum of the loudspeakers reverberated in the cold air, playing the same slogans over and over. The virulence of these announcements sent shivers up my spine.

 

“Bhabi, Kya Karav? (Bhabi, What should we do?)” I asked Arundati anxiously.

 

“Wyen Cha yim Baangh Boezni? (Do we have to listen to these rants?)” she shot back, but left my question unanswered.

 

The implications of the exhortations were obvious. Arundati strode to the front door to check that it was locked and barricaded. It was a very cold night. We hurried up to the kainee, and locked ourselves in Satish’s small bedroom. Prithvi Nath was panicking. Young Sachin was clinging to Santosh’s pheran. Satish’s easy smile and boisterous laughter had been replaced by a look of wild-eyed terror. For Arundati, the demons of the Qabaili invasion of 1947 reappeared on her face.

 

“Bei Pvew Taawan (Another havoc is in the offing),” she hissed angrily.

 

She started relating how the options for her, a newly-wed bride, and for the young women and girls in the household, had narrowed as the Qabailis advanced on Srinagar in 1947. Her accounts of the killings in Muzaffarabad, Domel and Baramulla were chilling. Tathaji, my grandfather, sometimes talked about the Qabaili invasion. However, I had dismissed these as fifty-year-old history, never to be repeated. But Arundati’s re-telling of the anxious and traumatic events of those days, in her strained voice as she paused, searching for words, took on a hard edge which could not be dismissed. Her distressed look, her odd silence and vague phrases, hid something yet told it all. Would it come to pass again? Would history repeat itself?

 

Each echoing wave of the scratchy slogans filled the winter night with fear. One slogan stopped and another started, sometimes in competition with each other. That day the muezzin’s calls from the mosques, were not urging one to seek enlightenment and emancipation. Instead, they were rousing religious fervour and instilling terror in the non-Muslims’ hearts. What used to be a call to prayer had turned into a call for jihad. Never before had I heard such venom being exhorted from a religious place.

 

To me, this Baangh-e-Raath (night of rants) evoked echoes of the Kristallnacht of November 1938. Windows of synagogues and Jewish shops had been shattered by Nazi Party activists and shards of glass had lined the streets of Berlin then. Nearly fifty years later, the Kashmiri Pandits’ brittle sense of security was being shattered in Srinagar. Just as the Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the incarceration of Jews, so did the Baangh-e-Raath of 20 January 1990 terrorise the Kashmiri Pandits to flee the Valley. The parallels, though of vastly different scales, were unnervingly similar. Every noise, real or imagined, took on an ominous overtone. I mentally prepared for the onslaught, trying to remember my NCC training from years ago about how to handle a gun. Ironically, I did not even have a surgical knife with me. The hours passed fitfully, in sleepless anxiety. One had to live through that night to comprehend the depths of fear it created. The slogans died down as dawn broke on 21 January 1990. Arundati opened the window to let in some air. A bulbul perched on a mulberry tree branch was startled by the noise. The curl of the black feathers on its head sprung back and forth. It seemed so free and without a care. . .