Arundhati Roy - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

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-kak 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.