“When will I see you?”
“Sooner than you think. I’ll find you. Khuda Hafiz, Babajaana.”
And he was gone.
—
In the morning Gulrez gave her a Kashmiri breakfast. Chewy lavasa rotis with butter and honey. Kahwa with no sugar, but with shredded almonds that she had to scoop up from the bottom of her cup. Agha and Khanum displayed deplorable manners, skittering up and down the dining table, knocking around the cutlery, spilling the salt. At ten sharp, Khadija arrived with her two young sons. They crossed the lake in a shikara and drove downtown in a red Maruti 800.
For the next ten days Tilo traveled through the Kashmir Valley, each day accompanied by a different set of companions, sometimes men, sometimes women, sometimes families with children. It was the first of many trips she made over several years. She traveled by bus, in shared taxis, and sometimes by car. She visited the tourist spots made famous by Hindi cinema—Gulmarg, Sonmarg, Pahalgam and the Betaab Valley, which was actually named after the film that was shot there. The hotels where film stars used to stay were empty, the honeymoon cottages (where, her traveling companions joked, their oppressors had been conceived) were abandoned. She trekked through the meadow from where, a year ago, six tourists, American, British, German and Norwegian, had been kidnapped by Al-Faran, a newly formed militant outfit that not many people knew about. Five of the six were murdered, one escaped. The young Norwegian, a poet and dancer, had been beheaded, his body left in the Pahalgam meadow. Before he died, as his kidnappers moved him from place to place, he left a trail of poetry on scraps of paper that he secretly managed to give to people he encountered on the way.
She traveled to the Lolab Valley, considered the most beautiful and dangerous place in all of Kashmir, its forest teeming with militants, soldiers and rogue Ikhwanis. She walked on little-known forest paths near Rafiabad that ran close to the Line of Control, along the grassy banks of mountain streams from which she would drop down on all fours and drink the clear water like a thirsty animal, her lips turning blue with cold. She visited villages ringed by orchards and graveyards; she stayed in villagers’ homes. Musa would appear and leave without notice. They sat around a fire in an empty stone hut high up in the mountains that was used by Gujjar shepherds in the summer when they brought their sheep up from the plains. Musa pointed out a route that was often used by militants to cross the Line of Control:
“Berlin had a wall. We have the highest mountain range in the world. It won’t fall, but it will be scaled.”
In a home in Kupwara, Tilo met the older sister of Mumtaz Afzal Malik, the young man who happened to be driving the taxi that took Amrik Singh’s accomplice Salim Gojri to the camp the day they were murdered. She described how, when her brother’s body was found in a field and brought home, his fists, clenched in rigor mortis, were full of earth and yellow mustard flowers grew from between his fingers.
—
Tilo returned to HB Shaheen from her excursions in the Valley, alone. She and Musa had said their goodbyes, casually, just in case. Tilo learned quickly that, in these matters, casualness and jokes were strictly serious, and seriousness was usually communicated as a joke. They spoke in code even when they didn’t need to. That was how Amrik Singh “Spotter” got his code name: Otter. (There hadn’t been a formal convocation, but the degree they had jested about had been conferred and accepted. Even though Tilo was nothing less than irreverent about the slogan Azadi ka matlab kya? La ilaha illallah, she could now certainly, and correctly, be described as an Enemy of the State.) The day after she returned, when she saw Gulrez laying the table for two, she knew Musa would come.
He came late in the night, looking preoccupied. He said there had been serious trouble in the city. They switched on the radio:
A group of Ikhwanis had killed a boy and “disappeared” his body. In the protests that followed fourteen people had been shot dead. Three militants had been killed in an encounter. Three police stations burned. The toll for the day was eighteen.
Musa ate quickly and stood up to leave. He murmured a gruff goodbye to Gulrez. He kissed Tilo on her forehead.
“Khuda Hafiz, Babajaana. Travel safe.”
He asked her to stay inside, not to come out to see him off. She didn’t listen. She walked out with him to the rickety, makeshift dock where a small wooden rowboat was waiting. Musa climbed in and lay flat on the floor of the boat. The boatman covered him with a woven grass mat and artfully arranged empty baskets and a few sacks of vegetables over him. Tilo watched the boat row away with its beloved cargo. Not across the lake to the boulevard, but along the endless line of houseboats, into the distance.
The thought of Musa lying at the bottom of a boat, covered with empty baskets, did something to her. Her heart felt like a gray pebble in a mountain stream—something icy rushed over it.
She went to bed, setting her alarm to be up in time to catch her bus to Jammu. Fortunately she followed Kashmiri protocol, not because she meant to, but because she was too tired to undress. She could hear Gul-kak pottering around, humming.
—
She woke less than an hour later—not suddenly, but gradually, swimming through layers of sleep—first to sound and then to the absence of it. First to the hum of engines that seemed to come from every direction. Then, when they were switched off, to the sudden silence.
Motor boats. Many of them.
The HB Shaheen pitched and rolled. Not much, just a little.
—
She was already on her feet, braced for trouble, when the door of her carved, embroidered, filigreed bedroom was kicked down and the room was full of soldiers with guns.
What happened over the next few hours happened either very quickly or very slowly. She couldn’t tell which. The picture was clear and the sound precise, but somehow distant. Feelings lagged far behind. She was gagged, her hands were tied, and the room was searched. They hustled her down the corridor into the dining room where she passed Gul-kak on the floor, being kicked and beaten by at least ten men.
Where is he?
I don’t know.
Who are you?
Gulrez. Gulrez. Gulrez Abroo. Gulrez Abroo.
—
Each time he told the truth they hit him harder.
His wails speared clean through her body like javelins and drifted across the lake. When her eyes got used to the darkness outside, she saw a flotilla of boats full of soldiers bobbing on the black water, the aquatic equivalent of a cordon-and-search. There were two concentric arcs, the outer arc was the area domination team, the inner one, the support team. The soldiers that made up the support team were standing in their boats, probing and stabbing at the water with knives tied to the end of long poles—improvised harpoons—to make sure the man they had come for did not make an underwater getaway. (They were mortified by the recent, but already legendary, escape of Haroon Gaade—Haroon the Fish—who got away even after the raiding party thought it had cornered him in his hideout on the banks of the Wular Lake. The only possible exit route he had was the lake itself, where a team of marine commandos lay in wait for him. But Haroon Gaade got away by hiding underwater in a clump of weeds, using a reed of bamboo as a snorkel. He was able to remain concealed for hours—until his flummoxed pursuers gave up and went away.)
The boat that had carried the assault team was docked, waiting for its passengers to return with their trophy. The man in charge of the operation was a tall Sikh wearing a dark green turban. Tilo assumed, correctly, that he was Amrik Singh. She was shoved on to the boat and made to sit down. Nobody spoke to her. Nobody in the neighboring houseboats came out to find out what was happening. Each of them had already been searched by small teams of soldiers.
In a while Gulrez was brought out. He couldn’t walk, so he was dragged. His big head, covered by a hood now, lolled forward. He was seated opposite Tilo. All she could see of him was the hood, his pheran and his boots. The hood wasn’t even a hood. It was a bag that advertised Surya Brand Basmati Rice. Gul-k
ak was quiet and appeared to be badly hurt. He could not sit up unsupported. Two soldiers held him up. Tilo hoped he had lost consciousness.
The convoy set off in the same direction that Musa’s boat had taken. Past the endless row of dark, empty houseboats and then right, into what looked like a swamp.
Nobody spoke, and for a while there was silence except for the drone of boat engines and the plaintive mewling of a kitten that filled the night and made the soldiers uneasy. The mewling seemed to be traveling with them, but there was no sign of a kitten on board. Finally she was located—Khanum the harlequin—in Gulrez’s pocket. A soldier pulled her out and flung her into the lake as though she was a piece of garbage. She flew through the air, yowling, with her fangs bared and her little claws extended, ready to take on the entire Indian Army all by herself. She sank without a sound. That was the end of yet another bewakoof who did not know how to live in a mintree occupation. (Her sibling Agha survived—whether as collaborator, common citizen or mujahid was never ascertained.)
The moon was high, and through the forest of reeds Tilo could make out the silhouettes of houseboats, much smaller than the ones meant for tourists. A ramshackle wooden construction fronted by a rickety wooden boardwalk—a backwater shopping arcade that hadn’t seen customers in years—sat just above the waterline on rotting stilts. The shops, a chemist, an A-1 Ladies’ store and several “emporiums” for local handicrafts, were all boarded up. Small rowboats were docked on the shores of what looked like boggy islands dotted with old wooden houses fallen to ruin. The only sign that the eerie silence which lay upon the swamp was not entirely unpeopled was the crackle of radios and the occasional snatches of songs that drifted out of the barred, shuttered shadows. The boat sat low in the water. That part of the lake was choked with weed so it felt surreal, as though they were cleaving through a dark, liquid lawn. Debris from the morning’s floating vegetable market bobbed around.
All Tilo could think of was Musa’s little boat that had taken the same path less than an hour ago. His had no motor.
Please God, whoever you are, wherever you are, slow us down. Give him time to get away. Slowdownslowdownslowdownslowdownslowdownslowdownslowdown
—
Someone heard her prayer and answered it. It was unlikely to have been God.
Amrik Singh, who was in the same boat as Tilo and Gulrez, stood up and waved to the escort boats, indicating that they should go ahead. Once they were gone, he directed the driver of the boat they were in to turn left into a waterway so narrow they had to slow down and literally push their way through the reeds. After ten minutes of suffocation they emerged in open water again. They made another left turn. The driver cut the motor and they docked. What followed appeared to be a familiar drill. Nobody seemed to need instructions. Gulrez was lifted up and dragged ashore through a couple of feet of water. One soldier remained on the boat with Tilo. The rest, including Amrik Singh, waded ashore. Tilo could see the outline of a large, dilapidated house. Its roof had fallen in and the moon shone through its skeleton of rafters that loomed against the night—a luminous heart in an angular ribcage.
A gunshot followed by a short explosion alarmed the ground-nesting birds. For a moment the sky was full of herons, cormorants, plovers, lapwings, calling as though day had broken. They were only playacting and settled down soon enough. The odd hours and unusual soundtrack of the Occupation were now a matter of routine for them. When the soldiers returned there was no Gulrez. But they carried a heavy, shapeless sack that needed more than one man to lift.
In this way the prisoner who left the boat as Gul-kak Abroo returned as the mortal remains of the dreaded militant Commander Gulrez, whose capture and killing would earn his killers three hundred thousand rupees.
The toll for the day was now eighteen plus one.
—
Amrik Singh settled back into the boat, this time seating himself directly opposite Tilo: “Whoever you are, you are charged with being the accomplice of a terrorist. But you will not be harmed if you tell us everything.” He spoke pleasantly, in Hindi. “Take your time. But we want all the details. How you know him. Where you went. Who you met. Everything. Take your time. And you should know that we already know those details. You won’t be helping us. We will be testing you.”
The same depthless, blank, black eyes that had pretended to laugh about pretending to forget his pistol in Musa’s home now stared at Tilo in the moonlit bog. That gaze called forth something in her blood—a mute rage, a stubborn, suicidal impulse. A stupid resolve that she would say nothing, no matter what.
Fortunately, it was never tested; it never came to that.
The boat ride lasted another twenty minutes. An armored Gypsy and an open military truck were parked under a tree, waiting to drive them to the Shiraz. Before they got in, Amrik Singh removed Tilo’s gag but left her hands tied.
In the cinema lobby, busy as a bus terminal, even at that hour, Tilo was handed over to ACP Pinky, who had been summoned from her sleep to deal with this unusual prisoner. The arrest was not registered. They had not even asked the prisoner her name. ACP Pinky led her past the reception counter where nine months ago Musa had left Amrik Singh’s bottle of Red Stag whiskey, past the advertisements for Cadbury’s chocolate and Kwality ice cream and the faded posters of Chandni, Maine Pyar Kiya, Parinda and Lion of the Desert. They threaded their way through the lines of the latest batch of bound, beaten men and the cement kangaroo garbage bins, entered the theater, crossed the improvised badminton court, exited from the door closest to the screen and then took another door that opened on to a backyard. There were more than a few amused glances and mumbled lewd remarks as the women made their way to the Shiraz’s main interrogation center.
It was an independent structure—an unremarkable, long, rectangular room whose primary feature was its stench. The smell of urine and sweat was overlaid by the sicksweet smell of old blood. Though the sign on the door said Interrogation Center, it was in truth a torture center. In Kashmir, “interrogation” was not a real category. There was “questioning,” which meant a few slaps and kicks, and “interrogation,” which meant torture.
The room had only one door and no windows. ACP Pinky walked over to a desk in the corner, pulled out a few blank sheets of paper and a pen from a drawer and slapped them on the table.
“Let’s not waste each other’s time. Write. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
She untied Tilo’s hands and left, shutting the door behind her.
—
Tilo waited for the numbness to go away and the blood to return to her fingers before she picked up the pen. Her first three attempts at writing failed. Her hands were shaking so much she could not read her own writing. She closed her eyes and remembered her breathing lessons. They worked. In clear letters she wrote:
Please call Mr. Biplab Dasgupta, Deputy Station Head India Bravo
Give him this message: G-A-R-S-O-N H-O-B-A-R-T
—
While she waited for ACP Pinky to return she inspected the room. At first glance it looked like a rudimentary tool shed, kitted out with a couple of carpenters’ worktables, hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, ropes, what seemed to be scaled-down stone or concrete pillars, pipes, a tub of filthy water, jerry cans of petrol, metal funnels, wires, electric extension boards, coils of wire, rods of all sizes, a couple of spades, crowbars.
On a shelf there was a jar of red chili powder. The floor was littered with cigarette stubs. Tilo had learned enough over the last ten days to know that those ordinary things could be put to extraordinary use.
She knew that the pillars were the instruments of the most favored form of torture in Kashmir. They were used as “rollers” on prisoners who were tied down while two men rolled the pillars over them, literally crushing their muscles. More often than not, “roller treatment” resulted in acute renal failure. The tub was for waterboarding, the pliers for extracting fingernails, the wires for applying electric shocks to men’s genitals, the chili
powder was usually applied on rods that were inserted into prisoners’ anuses or mixed into water and poured down their throats. (Years later, another woman, Loveleen, Amrik Singh’s wife, would display an intimate knowledge of these methods in her application for asylum in the US. It was this very tool shed that was the site of her field research, except that she had visited it not as a victim, but as the spouse of the torturer-in-chief, who was being given a tour of her husband’s office.)
ACP Pinky returned with Major Amrik Singh. Tilo saw at once, from their body language and the intimate way in which they spoke to each other, that they were more than just colleagues. ACP Pinky picked up the sheet of paper Tilo had written on and read it aloud, slowly and with some difficulty. Clearly, reading was not her forte. Amrik Singh took the paper from her. Tilo saw his expression change.
“Who is he to you, this Dasgupta?”
“A friend.”
“A friend? How many men do you fuck at the same time?” This was ACP Pinky.
Tilo said nothing.
“I asked you a question. How many men do you fuck at the same time?”
Tilo’s silence elicited a slew of insults along predictable lines (in which Tilo recognized the words “black,” “whore” and “jihadi”) and then the question was asked again. Tilo’s continued silence had nothing to do with courage or resilience. It had to do with a lack of choice. Her blood had shut down.
ACP Pinky noticed the smirk on Amrik Singh’s face—clearly in some way he admired the defiance that was on display. She read volumes into that expression and it incensed her. Amrik Singh left with the sheet of paper. At the door he turned and said:
“Find out what you can. No injury marks. This is a senior officer, this person whose name she’s written. Let me check it out. May be nonsense. But no marks until then.”
“No marks” was a problem for the ACP. She had no experience in that field, because she was not a trained torturer, she had learned her craft on the run, in the battlefield, and “no marks” was not a courtesy that was extended to Kashmiris. She did not believe that Amrik Singh’s instructions had anything to do with a senior officer. She recognized the look in his eye, and she knew what attracted him in women. Having to constrain herself offended her dignity and that didn’t help her temper. Her slaps and kicks (which came under the category of “questioning”) drew nothing from her detainee but expressionless, dead silence.