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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Fiction & Poetry |
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Fiction |
The Last Candle
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Published : 1 December 2011 |
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ABOUT THE STORY One of fiction’s great themes is the self’s estrangement from itself, whether through the simple processes of time and memory or the thunderous shock of violence and trauma. In this story set in Kashmir, all these processes unite in the narrative of a young man broken up into pieces by horrors past and present. Feroz Rather’s story groans with the spectacle of physical and verbal violence, expressed in short, declarative sentences as stunted as the sympathies of those who wield the whip of power. But in its interstices we sense a vision of an alternative world, animated by freedom, poetry, yearning and compassion. In the ambiguous closing line about the narrator-protagonist “trying to be the master of his own story”, we see the personal (the narrator’s rebellion against his own feelings of impotence) and the political (the Kashmiri desire for the right of self-determination) melt into each other. The last candle, we see, is not just the flickering flame threatening to leave the writer and his story in the dark. It is also perhaps the last candle of a people’s sufferance of subjugation and injustice.
| H |
IS SHADOW IS QUIVERING on the curtain. |
It has stopped snowing. A cold moon is shining over the walnut tree in the backyard, over the leafless willows by the road and the old shingle roofs of my neighbours’ houses beyond. The village is quiet and its surfaces hidden by a thick bandage of snow. The dogs bark occasionally and I worry the soldiers might be entering the village. Every time the soldiers approach, the dogs bark long, mournful barks.
Winter is the season of mourning, the season of remembrance here. Two winters have gone by since you left. My hands shiver as I write to you from my far- off country. Kashmir. Kerseymere. Cochemar. Cashmere. “Tell me about Kashmir? Tell me about your people, tell me about your world?” You always asked those questions and I failed to answer in that city in the Indian plains, far from Kashmir. This autumn, I too returned home. I would walk by the village post office and think of you and writing to you. I was waiting for winter, for snow, the season my war began. The winter of 1989 and the war are still with us, twenty winters later.
I want to tell you about him. His shadow is quivering on the curtain with dark roses. He is feverishly working on his story. He lives in the house across the backyard. I always hated him for being a weakling at school. He was bright and cowardly. He wouldn’t fight and he was a bad player of cricket. His brother was brave, rebellious, handsome, a fierce player on the cricket ground, and he taught me to play.
But now, after so many winters, I have come to like him, to think of him as a friend. We were born on the same day and we resemble each other. When I was reading him, I felt his voice becoming mine. Ah! There are new nails growing on his fingers.
The dogs are barking again, the soldiers are entering the village. The barks are fierce, full of remonstrance. Snow is breaking a walnut branch. Dark clouds have hidden the moon. His shadow has disappeared. I can’t see the dark roses on the curtain. I hear the heavy military on the road and the dogs. If the night allows, I will resume writing tomorrow.
| O |
N T HE RIVER SANDREN near the town of Countless Springs, the village stretched unevenly by the edge of highway. Amid a sprinkling of mud houses by the walnut grove, stood our house with its cement plastered facade, its large pine doors and glass windows, and a conical tin roof. Father would leave for work very early in the morning. I woke up |
to his absence, sensing only the presence of Nusrat, my elder sister. I found her sweeping the corridor. She told me to get ready for school. She went into the bathroom and wrapped a blue towel around her shoulders. I followed her along a grassy bank and my bleary eyes opened with the sensation of cold dew under my feet. She carried Father’s soap case in her right hand with a magnificent pink bar in it. We stopped and took soft pulls with our noses; we drew joyous smiles at each other feeling its rosy scent.
A canopy of willows overhung the icy water, sending yellow leaves floating down into it. The water came down from the spring, Vaernag, up above in the mountains, and ran smoothly over round brown stones. The sun had just come out and the morning was alive with the twitter of birds. Nusrat asked me not to go into the middle where the river was deeper and one could drown. She watched over me while I took some fresh dips near the bank, gasping at the water’s coldness.
In the kitchen, my mother didn’t take her eyes off the oven and I couldn’t see her face. She called Nusrat, who poured me tea from the samovar and gave me a poppy seed tsochevor from the locked kitchen-cabinet. Bitter smoke rose from the mud oven. My mother worked dried willow branches into its mouth. I knew the smoke was burning her eyes and the charcoal dust and soot were darkening her face. Nusrat prodded me to hurry for school. I ate the tsochevor melting in the pink salt tea. I went back to my room to put on the uniform.
Nusrat helped me tie my green necktie over my white school shirt. I put on black cotton pants and blue socks, right leg first both times. A large mirror framed in an ornate silver case hung by the book rack. As I brushed my hair, Nusrat appeared in the mirror. Over her tall, slim frame, she had a gentle round face, cupped by chestnut tendrils of hair. I stood behind her, waiting to appear there myself. And after her, I looked at my eyebrows and felt happy. They were almost as thick and were connected in the middle by a bridge like hers. I returned to mother to get my lunch box. She spoke without looking at me. “The rice is not ready yet,” she said. “I was not well, couldn’t sleep.”
I stood there listening to the twigs burning in the oven. I hesitated for a while. “What?” she shouted without turning around. “Five rupees,” I said. She tore her face away from the oven and yelled, “What do you want? Do you want me to sell myself off? Your father winds his tail and leaves for work before sunrise. What can I do! Don’t ask me!”
I could not look into her face. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I had some money in the tin trunk! That loafer Showket stole it for his puffs.’’ I ran back to my room. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. I picked up my satchel and wooden slate and left.
| ECHOSTREAM |
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In the neighbouring market, Mir Bazar, I suddenly saw Showket, my elder brother, standing against a cemented wall of his shop with his back to me. Perhaps my mother’s curses had brought him to this pass, as six soldiers encircled him. Showket was moving his head up and down—what was he doing? Licking the rough cemented wall of his own shop, his tongue following the letters of graffiti: JKLF. Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, the guerrilla group that was fighting for an independent Kashmir, that was fighting the Indian soldiers now kicking Showket as his tongue caressed the letters: JKLF. The soldiers smashed the shelves of Showket’s shop—the shop where sometimes my brother would give me milk candies for free—and broke the glass jars filled with spice. They smashed the wooden boxes of apples and oranges. They threw away bundles of spinach and cabbage. They threw away the packs of biscuits and scattered the gunny bags of beans and rice on the road.
“I don’t know who has done this. I don’t know who painted it,’’ Showket screamed.
“Fuck your mother, we will fuck your sister! Can’t you say ‘Sir’ while addressing us!” roared one of them.
“Sir, please don’t!’’
Showket got another kick. And another. He screamed. They kicked. His reluctant tongue rubbed against the letters. JKLF. The letters were changing colour, a darker shade of red after his gashed tongue had added his blood to that name. JKLF. They punched him in the ribs. “You mossie fucker! Is it your mother, you’re being so gentle with your licks!” Another kick in the ribcage and Showket doubled over. A moment later, Showket stopped screaming. He stared back. Something in his face seemed to change.
“Aazadi!” he burst out.
All of us had been shouting that word, chanting it like a prayer, the holiest of all words: Freedom! Independence! An end to the rule of the soldiers from the plains! And now Showket’s valiant scream rising from the core of his being had shaken the ground beneath them.
They held their guns by the barrels and took turns. A worried circle of villagers stood around the soldiers, their faces swinging between despair and anger. I covered my eyes with my hands, which began to shiver. I hid my face behind my bag. Two women took off their scarves and began to beat their chests, wailing: “He is a mother’s son. Wae! He too is a mother’s son. Wae! Wae!” The men and the boys stood in stark silence. They would speak later, in another language.
The morning convoy appeared on the highway. A soldier in enormous white boots fired a few bullets in the air. People scattered. Showket was still lying on the road. They beat everybody coming their way, keeping people away from the convoy on the highway. They moved about with restive wild eyes, their fingers on the triggers. They waved at the convoy. I somehow ran across the road. Some distance away, I looked back: those macabre-olive military trucks groaned on the highway; the soldiers mounted on truck tops, brandishing their guns, shouted severe words.
Father was still absent. I couldn’t go back to the saw mill behind the shop. “Father! Look what they are doing to your son!” I wanted to scream. I wiped my tears and saw the graffiti, JKLF. It was painted in black synthetic paint, and the ascending cap over J, the sprawling wings of K, the intersecting lines of L, the flutter in the F, were all smeared with Showket’s blood. I wanted to run and wipe it with my school tie. I wanted to go to him and hold his hand. Showket rose from the ground. He wiped the blood oozing out of his mouth off his chin. The soldiers were still shouting. I ran away before he could see me; I was scared to run to him, and also Showket always wanted me to go to school without finding any excuses.
I started walking the four long miles to the school. The buses wouldn’t stop for me. I missed my bus driver friend, Dilbar. Spires of poplars grew along the fringes of apple orchards flanking the road. The sun climbed like a fluorescent disc, shortening our shadows. On other days, I would stop to eat some rice from my lunch box. But that day, I just walked on.
Across the Akhran Bridge, I saw groups of the pupils walking to school. Ripe paddy fields extended on the either side. The sun grew hotter in the brighter, bluer sky above the jagged, snowy Himalayas. I caught up with a few classmates and walked alongside them.
The mud and brick building that was our school was by a spring. Two tall sycamore trees stood in the middle of the school lawn. A few hundred students had gathered under the shade. Nobody was reciting Morning Prayer. The headmaster appeared on the small stage we all faced. The chairman of the school stood by his side. An exuberance spread among the students sitting in untidy, winding rows; the girls in long-tailed sky-blue frocks and black scarves stood in neater rows a few feet from the boys. I tried to see her. I could not see where she was.
Then the examination results were announced: ‘The first position in the eighth grade goes to....!’ I closed my eyes, my heart skipping a beat. ‘Safina Azad!’ I smiled and watched her walk to the stage. Her silken scarf slipped from her head and fell on her shoulders. I stole a glimpse of her braided black hair before she recovered it. She walked neat steps in her low black shoes. Safina beamed with joy and received her prize: three notebooks wrapped in brown paper. The students broke into riotous clapping. I, too, smiled and clapped.
‘The first position in seventh grade goes to…’
The headmaster announced my name.
I didn’t move. Showket will die if I walk to the stage, I thought. Such a good thing can’t happen to me on the same day such a bad thing is happening to him. I waited. Everybody started talking, looking for me. I began to perspire. My name was about to be called again. I squinted at her. Many rows across, she smiled and nodded. I stood up and walked to the stage. The chairman shook my hand. He gifted me, yet again, a copy of the Quran. I held the holy book with trembling hands. I felt Showket was dying. Safina looked at me and raised her hands above the others that were clapping for me.
I had seen Safina a week ago in Maengaom. In the nearby village, amid vast fields, she lived in a house adjacent to my grandmother’s. Through the window of her room on the second storey, she might have seen me approaching. I felt her quickening footsteps in the rustle of crisp leaves on the path leading me there. She was in a black velvet pheran with white-laced sleeves. Paisleys on a blazing red kerchief clung to her neck. I looked into her amber eyes. A rosy blush spread over her face. Her cheeks bloomed into dimples, and the corners of her lips began to quaver. In the distance, the sun was setting over the mountains, its last rays like streams of wild honey. The evening breeze, swishing through the sea of paddy, hushed up. We stood looking into each other’s eyes, suspended in an ether of delicious unease. Then she lowered her gaze. The tips of the leaves crackled and began to catch fire near our feet. She ran back to the house and emerged with a book: Habbah’s Love Songs for Yusuf. I spread open both my hands. She placed it on them. On homemade paper, the songs were written in a flowing calligraphic flourish with a reed pen. The book, as I learnt decades later, was compiled by her great-grandfather a year before he was killed in the last half of the nineteenth century while leading a mutiny against begaer, against the disgrace and misery of slavery and forced labour, against the soldiers of the despotic Dogra king. In the raging fire, Safina did not ask me who had kindled the flame of songs in my soul. She knew it already. The croonings which suddenly began to emit from me the day we bumped into each other for the first time in the school corridor two years ago, and reached her at the earliest dawn from my grandmother’s house every time I visited, were for and due to her. But now through the gift of her heroic legacy, she conferred a musical recognition on us. And I, still locked in the stormy silence of her eyes, unable to utter a single word, carved deep on my heart the meaning of her name. Safeeeeeeeeeeeena: ah my ferry! And with her, in her, forever, I decided to set sail in and glide over the turbulent waters of life.
The lunch break was a long hour. I was playing cricket with some friends in the compound when a big military truck appeared abruptly. Six soldiers leapt out and barged into the headmaster’s office. They dragged him out to the lawn to call upon all the teachers and students. The headmaster called after everybody. His voice, as we swiftly ordered ourselves into neat lines, grew tremulous with fear.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Nazir
25 March 2012
03:58 PM
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Keep them coming, Our stories are yet to be told. Commendable work !!
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Nazir
25 March 2012
03:58 PM
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Keep them coming, Our stories are yet to be told. Commendable work !!
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wasim
5 January 2012
01:56 AM
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thumbs up bro..
lovelies..
well written i was almost lost in it..
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wasim
5 January 2012
01:40 AM
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LOVELIES.....;)
your writing has been always an inspiration..
God Bless...
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Ayesha Salma
20 December 2011
04:56 PM
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This one's really good..but somehow I could not take the part where the narrator goes to school leaving his agony stricken brother 'Showket' behind..doesn't sound justified considering the age and maturity levels of the narrator...he is portrayed as an insightful individual at the beginning of the narration..and the sudden shift from something utterly gruesome to something absolutely romantic confuses too..although the description of the landscape is in superlative degree, the situation of 'Showket' is where the reader gets stuck..is it insensitivity? helplessness? immaturity? (of the narrator) whatever..a good write..let peace prevail..let Kashmir get her due..and let the inhuman army withdraw forever leaving the valley in absolute peace..I pray ardently..aameen!!
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moonis
15 December 2011
10:52 PM
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gr8 one.. strong language, excellent narration, systematic balance of scenes wow. seems as if kashmir itself has written it.
gr8 one keep up the good work
www.wix.com/kasheerartfoundation/moonis
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Medha
6 December 2011
01:41 PM
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It's indeed a very powerful narrative, and a fresh perspective at that. Wonderful.
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Tanuj
6 December 2011
01:27 PM
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Not as tight as it should be, but well-written. We are made to accept the sometimes-mature voice of the child narrator knowing that the writing is being done in another time, a ruse which is not entirely convincing.
I will look for you elsewhere Feroz. Great work again! :)
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ayaz
4 December 2011
04:43 PM
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read a powerful story after a long time.well done.
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LearningKashmir
2 December 2011
03:40 PM
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Brilliant writing! But imagining the political consequences of such works is scary.
Don't they want to be a part of India? Which identity are they talking about, Kashmiri, Muslim? Is it religion, as I understand from various media reports? I have never heard of any non-Muslim from Kashmir fighting for Azadi; or is it because media snubs those accounts?
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Jaibeer
1 December 2011
04:32 PM
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Gripping!
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Ashfaq
1 December 2011
03:05 PM
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Beautiful and stunningly absorbing. One of the fine pieces i have read about and around kashmir. God bless you.
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Koshur Gulaam
30 November 2011
05:38 PM
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It can't be a fiction.
This has happened in Kashmir.
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Sabbah Haji
30 November 2011
05:01 PM
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Excellent, Feroz. You've brought everything alive.
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Tahi
30 November 2011
04:32 PM
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Really great !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It seems that real picture turns on papers
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