Sopore smoulders

Nawaz Gul Qanungo

Dinamalar | February 22, 2011

On the night of January 31, Arifa, 17, was cooking rice in her room. The 6-by-12 room in the Muslim Peer locality in Sopore is what her parents, elder sister and younger brother called their home. At 7.45 pm, a few masked men armed with guns barged in and asked for Arifa and her elder sister Akhtara, 19. They wanted to “talk to them outside”. Akhtara was in her uncle’s house upstairs cleaning fish, a job both sisters did for earning a few rupees a day. Their father, Ghulam Nabi Dar, a labourer, was out in the mosque. Akhtara was called from her uncle’s house. And both the sisters were dragged out. Their mother, Fareeza, begged the masked men. They’d be back soon, she was told.

It’s been three weeks now. Fareeza’s eyes have run out of tears. And the tears seem to have drained all her blood leaving her with a pale, yellow face. She talks to the people around her, then to herself, and then to her two dead teenage daughters. “Tami Lalla Dedi pruchhnam yi kehe daleel ateth, mama?That noble girl had asked me, what’s the matter there, Ma? And she went to the gunmen and asked them if she and her little sister had made a mistake. Forgive us if we have done wrong, she told them. What took you away, then, Akhtara? Did you both beg them and fall on their feet, my brides? Why did you leave me alone, shattered? What hit my world, what storm was this?”

The gunmen dragged the two sisters out and took them away. Gunshots were heard a while later. The two sisters had been taken to a distance of half a kilometre and killed in cold blood. No one claims to have the knowledge of who the killers were, except the police, which, within hours of the killings, came out with the names of two local Lashkar e Taiba militants. The Lashkar and the militants across the line of control have refuted the claim repeatedly, blaming the security agencies for trying to malign them. During the days in between, posters appeared with the Lashkar claiming the responsibility for the murders saying the girls were killed for being informers, and for being promiscuous. Not that it mattered, but there’s nothing about the very poor family of Dar to corroborate this.

“This pile of clothes is all they had. These are their clothes,” says Shareefa, the sisters’ aunt, who used to help them with cleaning the fish. Crumpled, old worn-out clothes lie on the shelf. Electric wires hang around the ceiling. A blackened yellow clock hangs on the wall, ticking. Jeelani, 16, the sisters’ little brother, is fighting the silence imposed on him. “Sit there. Don’t say anything, please,” Fareeza tells him.

“These clothes are all that belonged to them. They had nothing more. They didn’t even have a mobile phone. They didn’t know what SIM cards mean,” says Shareefa. “Akhtara was cleaning fish even at that time,” she says. “All that Akhtara had on herself was an old bangle made out of a piece of iron. Arifa had in her pocket a rubber band she used to tie her hair,” says Shareefa, who also helped wash their dead bodies. “We didn’t even have a picture of theirs. They never clicked a photo of themselves. The only picture we had of them was at their maternal home taken during a marriage. What danger could they have posed and to whom?”

“Akhtara’s hands still smelt of fish. Are such girls accused of promiscuity? This is how old scars are peeled off and wounds opened afresh,” she says. It’s not the first time violence has shattered the family.

On August 14, 1993, one of the brothers of Fareeza, Muhammed Sultan, was killed when he was raising a flag during a pro-independence demonstration. He was shot in the neck and died on spot.

Hardly three months later – November 27, 1993 – Dar’s brother, Khazir Muhammed, was killed. An encounter between the security forces and militants had been going on and houses in the neighbourhood had been set on fire. “He went outside with water to put out the fire in the neighbourhood. Hamsaayan log balaayi. He sacrificed himself for the neighbours. He was shot dead right there,” says Shareefa. “Our families are left shattered ever since. What more sacrifice is expected of us,” she asks.

“This year, we may have somehow managed to get both the sisters married. But where does one go in life when such disasters hit you one after another?”

Dar enters the room. A corner at the window is cleared for him and he absorbs himself in the little space. Dar begins to speak, without betraying any emotions: “Every group has come to visit us. The Hurriyat. Shabir Shah. Yasin Malik. They came. They condemned what had happened. Expressed sorrow. Deep sorrow. And left. But help for us... No one has come to help. The police came when the dead bodies were brought. They looked around the place and left.”

“He would go for labour even in poor health. What labour will he do after going through all this,” asks a lady in a room full of women and children. Dar has left. “The family needs some help now.”

“Their father would toil, bring what he could manage. And give his daughters what they needed,” says Fareeza. “Even murderers are given the time to have their say,” she says. “My daughters were innocent...”

Jeelani, meanwhile, has uttered the only words he spoke: “Is anyone out there who condemns this? Or is this all over?” He is signalled to exit the room. He leaves.

A couple of weeks ago, Jeelani looked stunned, floating in an aimless world, unable to believe that he had lost his sisters forever. He had helplessly watched them being dragged out. Today, he is aware of the world around him, the rage within him unmistakable.

Dar returns and speaks again: “Let me say one thing. The daughters of the rich are troubled with what helps them look beautiful. And the daughters of the poor are bothered with what covers their bodies. My daughters didn’t need any artificial beauty. God had bestowed upon them enough of it. God knows, maybe they rebuffed someone, and paid the price.”

INSIDE DAR’S HOUSE, the neighbourhood women, most of whom are relatives, are brave, defiantly vocal. “Today it’s us. Tomorrow, it may be your turn,” said a woman. The meek indifference of men of the Muslim Peer neighbourhood outside Dar’s house is shocking. But it is practically impossible, too, to meet anyone in Sopore who doesn’t have a tale of suffering to tell – a tale of destruction and bloodshed that has hit almost each one of them during the last twenty years.

Meanwhile, outside Dar’s neighbourhood, two young boys of not more than 12 years, well-dressed and in small pherans, come running from the main road through a busy market, frolicking into a narrow lane, laughing. One of them suddenly stops, turns around and stands still on one side of the lane. A police van passes by on the main road and the boy throws a stone. He misses the target. Dismayed, the boy turns to his friend and says, “Wucchtha? Did you see that?” With arms around each other’s shoulders, they disappear in the clutter of the little houses of Muslim Peer.

Some of the inputs previously in this piece have been removed and added here:

Sopore sisters: In death, and life | http://drqanungo.blogspot.com/2011/02/sopore-sisters-in-death-and-life.html