Violet vipers

COVER STORY

“All right.” Jaleelah marched past the three of them and grabbed Yusuf firmly by the arm. “Enough. I’m leaving right now and Yusuf is leaving with me. and you. How many copies have you printed tonight, Sameer?” The business-like tone of her voice dampened Sameer’s excitement at meeting YSM. “We’ve done 200 today. Maybe fifty more in the morning and then we can give them to the hawkers?”

“If the hawkers arrive.” She remarked. “Shut down Bertha and go home. We’ll see about the distribution tomorrow – not that there’s a lot to distribute!” Ignoring her colleagues who wanted to have a cup of tea with Yusuf, she led him resolutely down the dinghy staircase and out of the shop.

Outside, she turned to him, her eyes flashing. “Why did you come here?”

“Your mother sent me.” He pulled his arm away finally, miffed at the discourteous treatment. “Why are these people treating me like this? First that pet major of yours and now them?”

“He’s not my pet; he’s my father’s. And if I were in the habit of sneaking around other people’s lives, reading their books and barging into their offices, I’d take care to keep my mouth shut tight around them so they wouldn’t have any good opportunity to slap me.”

Yusuf opened his mouth to answer her, decided this impertinent speech did not deserve an answer, closed it firmly and pointed at the taxi. “Get in, please. Your mother’s beside herself with worry.”

“Isn’t.” she said, slipping into the backseat. “My mother knows I’m always at Awaz if I’m late. Khatri was over to meet my father today?”

“Yes.” He got in beside her, tapped the driver’s seat from the back. “Chalo, bhai. Chinkral, Makan Taintees, Gali Sola .”

“Stop at Baba Fateh Deen’s Dhaba along the way.” She ordered.

“Your mother’s waiting at home.” He told her in a low voice, acutely aware of the taxi driver’s curious glances at their reflection in the rearview mirror.

“I can’t ask my mother to make me roti at this time of the night.”

“Jaleelah baji, should I call Fateh Deen to prepare a meal?”

“Haan, tell him to make some vegetable bhujya for me.” She settled back into her seat and shrugged when she saw Yusuf’s annoyed face. “It’s a small world. Everybody knows everybody here.” To the driver, “Imam bhai, is your wife’s fever any better yet?”

“Ji, baji. She’s fit as a fiddle now, talked to her half an hour ago.”

The short journey to Fatah Deen’s broken-down dhaba passed in Jaleelah asking after Imam’s wife and children.

At the dhaba, an old, sluggish man with a scraggly beard met them at the doorway and led them to a rickety table, looking particularly pleased when Jaleelah handed him a jar of some powder that she insisted would help with his gout.

“It won’t, you know.” Yusuf told her, as soon as the old, world-weary waiter had shuffled out of earshot to get her food. “Gout isn’t cured by phakki.”

“No, but it’ll pull him on a little longer.” She shrugged. Opening her small handbag and pulling out a ’kerchief, she poured a cupful of water from the unsealed bottle of mineral water on the table onto it and started rubbing her hands with the wet cloth. He noticed that the tips of her long fingers were inky. She had probably been working the press before the other girl, Sameena.

“Pulling on a little longer to die of gout and bad phakki?” he sounded vaguely amused.

“Pulling on a little longer despite gout of bad phakki.” She corrected him. “Take care to not go to Awaz office again.”

“There are two Yusuf Shaheer Maliks, apparently.” Yusuf remembered Major Khatri’s hand digging into his shoulder. “And the one that’s not me has way too many enemies.”

“And friends.” The food arrived, a steaming hot mess of brinjal cooked in tomatoes and a thin, long white chapatti. “The Kashmiri Yusuf Malik has many friends too.”

“If he’s the Kashmiri Yusuf Malik,” Yusuf said, pouring water into the steel glass and placing it in front of her, “what am I?”

“You’re the Yusuf Malik who never returned.” She wrapped a lumpy piece of brinjal into a morsel of chapatti and popped it into her mouth.

“I didn’t want to leave, you know.” Hurt crept into his voice.

“That’s why you’re not the Yusuf Malik who left. You’re just the one who never returned.”

The ease with which the sentence covered the space between them and wrapped itself around Yusuf’s neck was upsetting. He didn’t answer. Pulling the changeir upon which the chapatti rested, he started breaking it off into smaller morsels. She told him to not bother but he did it anyway and after a while, she shrugged and started picking up the carefully broken pieces of chapatti and dipping them into the tomatoes.

She had always been like this, he thought with some resentment. Shrugging and doing things. He had been different. After the storm had subsided and the clothes hanger and chappal had been put away in their rightful places, she had shrugged and run off upstairs to the bedroom the two were sharing, while he had stayed behind to apologize first to Amma and then Chachi. After taking the admonishment meant for her as well as the ones meant for himself, he had gone upstairs to find her lying on his bed, reading his copy of Five go adventuring again.

“Can you move from my bed?” he had asked.

“No.”

He sat down on her bed, “You should have stayed with me to get scolded.”

“Why?” two large black eyes blinked at him over the top of the book. “Would you’ve liked watching me get scolded?”

A little disoriented, he muttered, “Of course not,”

She had shrugged and returned to the book.

With a start he realized Jaleelah had finished her meal. She cleared the bill and they left. The two walked in partial silence to Makan Taintees.

“Why did you have to stay so late at Awaz tonight?” he asked.

“Our issue on Badr Wani is coming out tomorrow.” She answered, pulling her dupatta around her shoulders to fend off the cold that seemed to seep into their skins. “I wanted to be there to see through the printing.”

“Who’s Badr Wani?”

She cast him a disparaging glance. “And then you get offended when I tell you you’re the Yusuf Malik who never returned.”

“I wasn’t offended.” He answered mildly. “Who’s Badr Wani?”

Badr Wani was a story, and the story went thus.

********

On the ninth of July, 2016, Badr Wani had been scheduled to meet an officer of the Rashtriya Rifles in Peer Bagh, Badgam, unarmed. Unarmed was quite unnecessary, Badr Wani had given up militancy in 2014 and publicly denounced the militant outfit he had been working with, choosing instead to become an active member of the Liberation Front, the Hurriyet Waley, as they were called by Kashmiris in general.

The tall, broad-shouldered boy had barely registered as a militant in the first place, with his rosy cheeks, characteristic porcelain Kashmiri skin and messy jewfro. His announcement, via video message in which he was seen symbolically shelving a battered AK-47 (the national weapon of Kashmir, some called it), had quickly gone viral in the subcontinent in December 2014 and he had become the face of the “organized struggle for freedom by the Kashmiri youth” as put by the BBC in a documentary called How Old is the Fight.

In late 2015, a year after his denouncement of militancy, Badr Wani had been barred from entering Srinagar following a speech of his after which an empty Rashtriya Rifles’ bunker had been stoned by a crowd of Kashmiri protestors. In May 2016, Wani, who was now regarded as a national separatist leader in Kashmir, announced during a press conference in Badgam his intention to return to Srinagar for a speech and Jummah prayers at the Noor Masjid, in Lal Chowk. In the beginning of June, he had been arrested from his hotel at Badgam by the RR officers and detained incommunicado in the military wing’s Srinagar “facility”. There had been protests and demonstrations after which the young leader had been allowed to roam free. Another presser by Wani and fellow leaders had incensed the RR further when they had announced multiple processions in Lal Chowk, Srinagar in July 2016. There had been some arrests here and there but none of the main Hurriyet leaders had been detained. On 26 June, the RR press wing had announced that the military was ready to discuss procession grounds and roadmaps with the Liberation Front.

It had been agreed that representatives from both sides would meet in Peer Bagh to decide the roadmap on July nine.

On the morning of July 8, Srinagar had woken to the news of Badr Wani’s brutal death, along with two fellow militants, in a “crossfire” in Srinagar Bazar where he had attempted to attack a jeep of the Rashtriya Rifles, believing an important official was inside. The army had “retaliated” and the retaliation resulted in three dead militants and two wounded army officers. Badr Wani’s dead body had been whisked off by his fellows to an unknown place but a trustworthy source from within Wani’s ex-militant outfit had confirmed the news of his death.

There had been protests for a few weeks. There had been demands to find the body, accusations that the army was lying, that the statement from the militants was forged. A young man had been shot dead when the military fired into a crowd of protesters in Srinagar bazar and ten students had been arrested during another procession for Wani.

Then the few weeks had ended.

Badr Wani had been declared dead the day he died. Badr Wani had been accepted dead a few weeks later.

To be continued …