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www.freepresskashmir.news VOL 10 ISSUE 20 SRINAGAR MAY 17, 2021 PAGES 16 15.00 FREEPRESS JKENG/2011/36414 : REGISTERED CAPTIVE CHORUS WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE MAY 17 – 23, 2021 WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE MAY 17 – 23, 2021 MEMORY CONFLICT COUPLE PANDEMIC By Talib Zaffer EDUCATION CAMPUS CRISIS By Qurrat ul Ein /Coverstory CAPTIVE CHORUS By Marila Latif PHOTOSTORY CURBED CELEBRATION By Zainab Owned, Printed and Published by: Qazi Zaid | Published from: Second Floor, Aqsa Mall, Jehangir Chowk, Srinagar | Printed at: Khidmat Offset Printing Press, The Bund, Srinagar Registered: JKENG/2011/36414 | Features Editor: Bilal Handoo | Layout & Graphics: Suhail Sultan | Contact at: +0194-2475633 | E-Mails: [email protected] | [email protected] WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE MAY 17 – 23, 2021 WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE MAY 17 – 23, 2021 Conflict Couple In Nund Reshi’s totem town turned cindering community on May 12, 1995, a young couple was fighting their own loving hearts amidst the larger confrontation. 26 years later, the ‘better half’ recounts her lost love in this deeply-intimate first- person account. /Memory By Talib Zaffer lease, don’t do it! He’s a dissident, you never know what could happen to him tomorrow,’ my elder sister pleaded before me with folded hands in a bid to con- vince me against marrying the man I loved. I don’t know if it was the cecity of love or the na- ivety of my youth but I could never imagine him Pdead. I was well aware of the unpredictability of the life he had chosen for himself and yet, whenever I looked at him, something assured me of his safety – of the future I had dreamt of with him – off the long walks in the evening and warm mornings. Perhaps, that’s the reason why, when I sat beside him for the last time his face looked so full of life to me. Like he was suddenly going to call me by my name, as usual, and I was going look at him sheep- ishly and answer. I caressed his plush hair. It was a little wet. WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE MAY 17 – 23, 2021 I remembered how much he hated done with his evening prayers. It was He told us that he would go and have thing I remember- we were slinking his hair. He often said that he wanted the 8th of May 1995, two days before a look and instructed us to lock the through the alleys of Charar-i-Sharif. it to be a bit curly. I thought the blood Eid-Ul-Adha. door from inside. From a distance, we could see the on his hair would soak in after a while ‘These are desperate times; you should For the next hour or so, I held on to flames. The fire had escalated inex- and make his hair a little rough and have left with your siblings too. It is his arm like a child-a terrified child. plicably. It had burnt a few houses and curly, the way he liked it. not safe here anymore,’ he replied a I had that dreaded sensation in my gut shops already. We could also hear His bullet-ridden body was covered little pensively. My siblings along with telling me something terrible was gunshots, one after the other, though in a white sheet; I didn’t want to look my mother (like most of the people going to happen but his presence always we didn’t understand where exactly at the rest of it. I just kept my gaze on from the town) had fled. They were at gave me that slight sense of calm. That they were coming from or who ex- his beautiful face. I wanted to memo- my maternal home in Srinagar. Father little tinge of faith and hope. actly they were being fired at. rize the minute details: the mole on and I stayed back. At around midnight I heard some- The armed forces had cordoned off his right cheek, the bridge between ‘If I leave, you will have to come too. thing again. This time though, both the area for a couple of months leading his nose and forehead, the single strand Otherwise, I am going nowhere,’ I of us did. up to that day. The presence of a few of grey hair in his beard. reiterated. He didn’t reply. We had had ‘They have opened fire on us,’ he foreign militants had brought the spot- It had been just a little over a couple this conversation before as well, and said looking for his combative gears. light on the town otherwise known of months to our wedding. We were by then I had figured out how to stop I remember feeling my limbs lifeless for its shrine and spirituality. No mat- staying at my parents’ place. It was it. and a strange numbness in my body. ter how much I was hoping against safer for him there for it was right in Just when I was about to doze off I I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. All the hope, a confrontation had seemed the middle of the main residential heard an explosion. My heart skipped I could do was tighten my grasp on inevitable lately. space of our town. a beat. I got up and lit a candle. The him and thinking I would never let He took me to one of his cousins’. Besides, the architecture around electricity had been cut off for more him leave. She lived on the outskirt of the town was very compact. Some houses even than a week. By then he had also wok- With every passing second, the fir- so he thought I would be safer there. had common walls. From our roof, en up. He asked me what was wrong. ing was only getting louder and more ‘They won’t allow fire tenders to one could just canter over the houses Before I could answer my father knocked frequent. The whispers were true. The come in, so we need to help people get and reach some other end of the vicin- on the door. I quickly put my scarf on army was going in for the kill, or con- their stuff out before it is all burnt,’ ity. and opened the door. sidering geography and my relationship he told Shameema’s husband. Before ‘This would be our first Eid togeth- ‘Fire has broken out in a nearby with the equation, ‘coming in for a leaving, he held my hand, told me to er, I wish everybody was here,’ I said mosque. It is probably because of a gas kill’ should be more apt. take care of myself, and promised that making the bed while he was just about cylinder or something,’ said father. He asked me to get dressed. The next he would be back in the morning. I WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINE MAY 17 – 23, 2021 was reluctant at first but then he man- aged to convince me, as he always did. I didn’t sleep that night. Through a windowpane, I could only see the flames burning the place I grew up in and hear the screams of panic and despair. By then I had known that our home would burn too and along with it my jewelry, my clothes, and, my childhood memories-basically all that I had ever owned. It didn’t matter much though, as long as he was safe, as long as he came back to me. He did come back in the morning. And even in that time of unforeseen travesty, there was a smile on his face. We spent that whole day together. I clinched on to him all the time. Wher- ever he went I followed. The next day, the 10th of May was the first day of Eid. Needless to say that nobody celebrated. You don’t cel- ebrate when everything around you is burning, you mourn for yourself and everyone around you. In a way, we all did celebrate actually. What better way is there to celebrate the festival of sacrifice than sacrificing your home? Sacrificing your loved one maybe! But I was going to do that too, in a few hours. ‘The army is closing in. We need to regroup and plan our defense,’ I heard someone telling him on his wireless set. ‘I won’t let you go,’ I said crying, and snatched his radio. ‘We will shave your beard and colour your hair and leave in the evening. They won’t rec- ognize you. We will stay in Srinagar for a few days and come back when this ends or we will never come back, we don’t need to.’ He looked at me, squinted at me, and shook his head in agreement. ‘How could he leave without telling Father sat down and asked for water. time. I ran through the alleys I had Around noon he came up to me with me,’ I shouted at them like they were I went to the kitchen and with my grown up playing in. I saw the shop a glass of pomegranate juice he had responsible. They understood my frus- hands shaking poured a glass of water. where I used to take my younger broth- prepared himself. tration and tried to calm me down. When I was coming back I heard my er to buy cotton candies, the school I ‘You are pregnant and you have But I knew why he left like that because father saying that some of the rebels went to as a child, the tailor’s shop barely eaten or slept these days.

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