Shalimar The Clown_ A Novel Part 5

One day Pyarelal emerged from his meditations to see a young woman sitting on a rock by the Muskadoon and for a confused instant he thought Boonyi had returned. When he realized that it was Gonwati Sharga the singer's daughter he fought down his disappointment and went out to keep her company. "Panditji," she said after a time, "I used to see Boonyi and Shalimar the clown sitting here and forgive me, panditji, but I was a little jealous. I also wanted to hear your brilliant words. I also wished to benefit from your wisdom. Yet I was not your daughter and had to accept my lot." Pandit Pyarelal Kaul was deeply moved. He hadn't known! He had sometimes felt his own daughter was merely humoring him when she sat with her beau and listened to his ramblings. But this girl actually wanted to learn! Gonwati's confession put a smile on Pandit Pyarelal Kaul's face for the first time in months. In the following weeks the girl came to sit at his feet as often as she could and such was the seriousness and sympathy of her attention that he unburdened himself of many of his most private thoughts. Finally she rose from her rock by the river, went over to take Pyarelal's hand in her own, and offered her own version of her sister's advice to Shalimar the clown.

"Don't blame yourself for what's dead," she said, "but thank G.o.d for what's alive."

Abdullah Noman could not stand against the mritak mritak plan if Boonyi's own father was in favor of it. "Are you sure?" he asked Pyarelal at the next panchayat meeting. They were drinking pink salty tea in the upstairs meeting room at the Noman house. Pyarelal's cup began to rattle against its saucer as he p.r.o.nounced the sentence of death. "For eleven hours a day," the pandit told his old friend, "I have contemplated the topic of living in the world while also not living in it. Much has become clear to me regarding the meaning of this riddle. Bhoomi my child has chosen the path of death in life. Once she has so chosen I must not cling to her. I choose to let her go. And then," he added, "there is also the question of bringing your enraged son under control." plan if Boonyi's own father was in favor of it. "Are you sure?" he asked Pyarelal at the next panchayat meeting. They were drinking pink salty tea in the upstairs meeting room at the Noman house. Pyarelal's cup began to rattle against its saucer as he p.r.o.nounced the sentence of death. "For eleven hours a day," the pandit told his old friend, "I have contemplated the topic of living in the world while also not living in it. Much has become clear to me regarding the meaning of this riddle. Bhoomi my child has chosen the path of death in life. Once she has so chosen I must not cling to her. I choose to let her go. And then," he added, "there is also the question of bringing your enraged son under control."

"They killed you," Zoon Misri told Boonyi in the snowstorm. "They killed you because they loved you and you were gone."

There was a deserted stretch of the Muskadoon just past Pachigam where the river was s.h.i.+elded by foliage from prying eyes. In childhood summers the four inseparable girls, the Sharga sisters, Zoon Misri and Boonyi Kaul, would rush there after school, throw off their garments and dive in. The bite of the water was exciting, even arousing. They screamed and laughed as the river G.o.d's cold hands caressed their skin. Then they dried themselves by rolling on the gra.s.sy banks and rubbed their hair between the palms of their hands and didn't go home until the evidence of their transgression had dried off. And on winter evenings the four fast friends, along with the rest of the village children, would crowd for warmth into the panchayat chamber upstairs from the Nomans' kitchen and the adults would tell them stories. Abdullah Noman's memory was a library of tales, fabulous and inexhaustible, and whenever he finished one the children would scream for more. The women of the village would take turns to tell them family anecdotes. Every family in Pachigam had its store of such narratives, and because all the stories of all the families were told to all the children it was as though everyone belonged to everyone else. That was the magic circle which had been broken forever when Boonyi ran away to Delhi to become the American amba.s.sador's wh.o.r.e.

On the day she returned to Pachigam, obese, crippled by addictions, covered in snow, her old friends Himal and Gonwati circled her in the blizzard and the emotions they felt did not include any trace of their childhood love. If Gonwati Sharga felt any guilt about the cold-blooded machinations that had led to Boonyi's killing, she suppressed it beneath her anger. "How dare she come back here," she hissed at her sister, "after all the harm she's caused?" But Himal was filled with happiness at the changes in Boonyi's appearance, the advantages of which greatly outweighed the outrage of a dead woman's return to life. "Just look at her," she whispered to Gonwati. "How can he love her now?"

The terrible truth, however, was that Himal Sharga's failure to seduce Shalimar the clown had nothing whatsoever to do with his continuing feelings of love for his treacherous wife. The truth was that Shalimar the clown had stopped loving Boonyi the instant he learned of her infidelity, stopped dead like an unplugged automaton, and the immense crater left behind by the destruction of that love had at once been filled by a sea of bile-yellow hatred. The truth was that even though he had been brought home from Lower Munda by his brothers he had sworn an oath on the bus that he would kill her if she ever returned to Pachigam, he would cut off her lying head, and if she had any b.a.s.t.a.r.d offspring with that s.e.x-crazed American he would show them no mercy, he would cut off their heads as well. The main reason Pyarelal Kaul had supported the idea of his daughter's death by official decree, and Abdullah Noman had gone along with the plan, was that the bureaucratic killing of Boonyi was the only way of holding back Shalimar the clown from committing a horrible crime. The two fathers worked hard to persuade the abandoned husband that there was no need to think about decapitation when a person was already deceased. Shalimar had been doubtful about the mritak mritak plan at first. "If we all agree to lie," he had argued, "then how are we better than her?" Abdullah and Pyarelal argued with him without sleeping for three days and two nights and when all three of them were dying with exhaustion the two fathers managed to persuade Shalimar the clown to accept the compromise, made him swear that he accepted it as a full settlement of his legitimate grievance, but in his secret heart he knew that the day would come when his two oaths would come into conflict, his two shadow planets, the dragon's-head Rahu-oath that obliged him to murder her and the dragon's-tail Ketu-oath that obliged him to let her live on, to the degree that dead people can and sometimes do, and he was unable to foretell which of the two promises he would break. plan at first. "If we all agree to lie," he had argued, "then how are we better than her?" Abdullah and Pyarelal argued with him without sleeping for three days and two nights and when all three of them were dying with exhaustion the two fathers managed to persuade Shalimar the clown to accept the compromise, made him swear that he accepted it as a full settlement of his legitimate grievance, but in his secret heart he knew that the day would come when his two oaths would come into conflict, his two shadow planets, the dragon's-head Rahu-oath that obliged him to murder her and the dragon's-tail Ketu-oath that obliged him to let her live on, to the degree that dead people can and sometimes do, and he was unable to foretell which of the two promises he would break.

To lay a trap for himself as well as Boonyi he went on writing letters to her, those same letters which had angered her and led her to despise him for his weakness, letters whose purpose was to fool her into believing that he was ready to forgive and forget, and whose deeper purpose was to bring matters to a head, to bring her back and to force him to choose between his oaths, so that he could find out what sort of a man he really was. And then there she was at the bus stop in a blizzard, coated in adipose tissue and covered in snow, and without stopping to think he ran toward her with his knife in his hand, but the two fathers blocked his way, grabbing him by the dragon's tail and reminding him of his vow. They circled her in the thickly falling snow, and Pyarelal Kaul told Shalimar the clown, "If you try to break your word you will have to kill me on the way to her," and Abdullah Noman confirmed, "You will have to kill me as well." This was when Shalimar the clown solved the riddle of the two oaths. "In the first place," he said, "the oath I made to the two of you was my personal promise to you, and so I will respect it as long as even one of you is alive. But the oath I made to myself was a personal promise as well, and when you are both dead you will no longer be able to hold me back. And in the second place," he concluded, turning to go without so much as a nod in the direction of his dead wife, "keep the wh.o.r.e out of my sight." The snow kept falling, thickly falling, upon all the living and the dead.

The spring was an illusion of renewal. Flowers blossomed, baby calves and goats were born and eggs burst open in their nests, but the innocence of the past did not return. Boonyi Kaul Noman never went back to live in Pachigam. For the rest of her life she inhabited that hut on the pine-forested hill where a prophetess had once decided that the future was too horrible to contemplate and had waited cross-legged for death. She slowly became competent in practical matters, but her hold on reality grew correspondingly more erratic, as though something inside her refused to grasp that the world in which she was getting to be so self-sufficient would never turn back into the one she wanted, the one in which she could fold her husband's love around herself while also wrapping him up in hers. Her phantom mother was now her perpetual companion, and as Pamposh's ghost did not age the two dead women became more and more like sisters. When Pyarelal Kaul visited his daughter to warn her against visiting the village because it was all he and Abdullah could do to hold back Shalimar the clown when she was out of sight, and it was impossible to guarantee her safety if she came down to Pachigam, she replied with the gaiety of madness, "I'm fine here with Pamposh. n.o.body can lay a finger on me while she is by my side. You should stay with us. Neither of us ladies is allowed in the village, it seems, but the three of us could have a high old time up here by ourselves."

Faced with the derangement of his beloved daughter, Pandit Pyarelal Kaul entered into a darkness of his own. He climbed the mountain every day to care for her needs and listen to her ramblings and was not able to tell her of the disillusion that had taken hold of his own optimism and squeezed it almost to death. The love of Boonyi and Shalimar the clown had been defended by the whole of Pachigam, had been worth defending, as a symbol of the victory of the human over the inhuman, and the dreadful ending of that love made Pyarelal question, for the first time in his life, the idea that human beings were essentially good, that if men could be helped to strip away imperfections their ideal selves would stand revealed, s.h.i.+ning in the light, for all to see. He was even questioning the anticommunalist principles embodied in the notion of Kashmiriyat, Kashmiriyat, and beginning to wonder if discord were not a more powerful principle than harmony. Communal violence everywhere was an intimate crime. When it burst out one was not murdered by strangers. It was your neighbors, the people with whom you had shared the high and low points of life, the people whose children your own children had been playing with just yesterday. These were the people in whom the fire of hatred would suddenly light up, who would hammer on your door in the middle of the night with burning torches in their hands. and beginning to wonder if discord were not a more powerful principle than harmony. Communal violence everywhere was an intimate crime. When it burst out one was not murdered by strangers. It was your neighbors, the people with whom you had shared the high and low points of life, the people whose children your own children had been playing with just yesterday. These were the people in whom the fire of hatred would suddenly light up, who would hammer on your door in the middle of the night with burning torches in their hands.

Maybe Kashmiriyat Kashmiriyat was an illusion. Maybe all those children learning one another's stories in the panchayat room in winter, all those children becoming a single family, were an illusion. Maybe the tolerant reign of good king Zain-ul-abidin should be seen-as some pandits were beginning to see it-as an aberration, not a symbol of unity. Maybe tyranny, forced conversions, temple-smas.h.i.+ng, iconoclasm, persecution and genocide were the norms and peaceful coexistence was an illusion. He had begun to receive political circulars to this effect from various pandit organizations. They told a tale of abuse that went back many hundreds of years. was an illusion. Maybe all those children learning one another's stories in the panchayat room in winter, all those children becoming a single family, were an illusion. Maybe the tolerant reign of good king Zain-ul-abidin should be seen-as some pandits were beginning to see it-as an aberration, not a symbol of unity. Maybe tyranny, forced conversions, temple-smas.h.i.+ng, iconoclasm, persecution and genocide were the norms and peaceful coexistence was an illusion. He had begun to receive political circulars to this effect from various pandit organizations. They told a tale of abuse that went back many hundreds of years. Sikander the iconoclast crushed Hindus the most. Sikander the iconoclast crushed Hindus the most. The crimes of the fourteenth century needed to be avenged in the twentieth. The crimes of the fourteenth century needed to be avenged in the twentieth. Saifuddin crossed all limits of cruelty. Saifuddin crossed all limits of cruelty. Saifuddin was the prime minister under Sikander's son, Alishah. Saifuddin was the prime minister under Sikander's son, Alishah. Out of the fear of conversion Brahmins jumped into the fire. Many Brahmins hanged themselves to death, some consumed poison and others drowned themselves. Innumerable Brahmins jumped to death from the mountains. The state was filled with hatred. The supporters of the king did not stop even a single person from committing suicide. Out of the fear of conversion Brahmins jumped into the fire. Many Brahmins hanged themselves to death, some consumed poison and others drowned themselves. Innumerable Brahmins jumped to death from the mountains. The state was filled with hatred. The supporters of the king did not stop even a single person from committing suicide. And so on, all the way up to the present day. Maybe peace was his opium pipe-dream, in which case he was as much of an addict in his own way as his poor daughter, and he, too, needed to go through a painful cure. And so on, all the way up to the present day. Maybe peace was his opium pipe-dream, in which case he was as much of an addict in his own way as his poor daughter, and he, too, needed to go through a painful cure.

He forced such forebodings to the back of his mind and nursed his daughter. The delirium of her withdrawal symptoms worsened, and for long periods she shook convulsively and sweated ice and her mouth was full of needles and her hungers felt like wild beasts that would gobble her up if they weren't given what they really wanted. Then slowly the crisis pa.s.sed, until she was no longer at the mercy of the chemicals she could no longer have; and her tobacco habit, too, was broken. During the hallucinatory period of her helplessness she knew that the guardians in the trees were taking care of her. Gradually they emerged from the shadows, and in her groggy condition she imagined her mother Pamposh leading them to her, her daring, independent mother who did not judge people for giving in to their s.e.xual urges. Pamposh's ghost was at least as substantial to her daughter as the others who visited her, and although she recognized among her angels her own father above all, and Firdaus Noman and Zoon and Big Man Misri as well, it made her happy to believe that her beloved mother was actually running the show.

Pyarelal blamed himself for her obesity. "Poor girl inherited my physique and not her slim mother's," he chastised himself inwardly. "Even as a child she was buxom. No wonder Shalimar the clown fell for her when she was still a child. Food was my weakness and this, too, I pa.s.sed on to her." But his body had changed as a result of his new ascetic's regime, and her body changed as well. Her beauty returned slowly, as her physical health improved. The months lengthened into years and the fat fell away-n.o.body around here was going to help her eat seven meals a day!-and she looked like herself again. Some damage remained. She suffered from backaches. Black veins stood out on her legs and in some places the skin hung off her more loosely than it should have. The tobacco's discoloration of her teeth never entirely faded, even though she was a.s.siduous in the use of the neem sticks with which her father kept her supplied. She intuited, from occasional spells of arrhythmia, that her heart had been damaged, too. Never mind, she told herself. It was not her destiny to grow old. It was her destiny to live among ghosts as a half-ghost until she learned how to cross the line. She said this aloud once and her father burst into tears.

Her self-sufficiency was hard won. The food addiction was as painful to break as the chemical dependencies, but in the end her att.i.tude to all things edible became less rapacious. For a long time her father and the other friendly villagers continued to provide her with essential supplies, and she learned how to supplement them. She began to grow her own vegetables. One day she found a pair of young goats tethered to a post outside the hut. She learned how to raise them and as time pa.s.sed her flock grew. It became possible for her to sell goats' milk, and other things. Her father carried a metal milk-churn down the hill to the store every day, and tomatoes in season. This was a small rehabilitation. People accepted the idea of paying real money to buy things from the dead. Her days were filled with physical labor and as long as she was using her body the madness was held at bay. Her body strengthened. Muscles made their appearance in her b.u.t.tocks, arms and legs. Her shoulders hardened and her belly flattened out. This third-phase Boonyi was beautiful in a new way, the bruised, life-hardened, imperfect way of an adult woman. It was her reason that had been bruised most deeply and at night those bruises still hurt. At night, when the day's work was done, when it was time for the mind to take over from the body, her thoughts ran wild. Some summer nights, she was sure, Shalimar the clown prowled in the trees around the hut. On those nights she deliberately went outdoors and took off all her clothes, challenging him to love her or kill her. She could do this because everybody knew she was mad. Her mother Pamposh came out with her and they danced naked in the moon like wolves. Let a man try to approach them! Let him only dare! They would rip him to shreds with their fangs.

She was right; Shalimar the clown did sometimes climb the hill, knife in hand, and watch her from behind a tree. It comforted him to know she was there, that when he was released from his oath she would be right there to kill, defenseless, just as his life had been defenseless when she ruined it, defenseless and vulnerable just as his heart had once been, defenseless and vulnerable and fragile just like his shattered capacity for trust. Dance, my wife, he told her silently. I will dance with you again one day, for one last time.

Shalimar the clown decided he had to murder the American amba.s.sador at some point not long after the end of the Bangladesh war, around the time that the Pachigam bhands went north to perform near the cease-fire line which had just turned into the Line of Control; that India and Pakistan signed the agreement at Simla which promised that the status of Kashmir would be decided bilaterally at a future date; that the Indian military tightened its choke hold on the valley-because tomorrow was for politicians and dreamers but the army controlled today-and stepped up the toughness of its approach to the majority population; and that Bombur Yambarzal's wife bought the first television in the locality and set it up in a tent in the middle of s.h.i.+rmal. Ever since the commencement of television transmissions at the beginning of the 1960s the panchayat of Pachigam had taken the view that as the new medium was destroying their traditional way of life by eroding the audience for live drama, the one-eyed monster should be banned from their village. The waza of s.h.i.+rmal, however, was swept along by the entrepreneurial spirit of his bride, the red-haired widow Hasina "Harud" Karim, a woman with a strong desire for self-improvement and two secretive sons, Has.h.i.+m and Hatim, who had learned the electrician's trade in Srinagar and were keen to bring the village into the modern age. "Give everyone a free show for a couple of months," Hasina Karim urged her new husband, "and after that you can start charging for tickets and n.o.body will argue about the cost."

To finance the purchase of the black-and-white set she sold some pieces of wedding jewelry from her first marriage. Her sons, who, like her, were of a practical cast of mind, made no objection. "You can't watch soap operas on a necklace," Has.h.i.+m the elder pointed out reasonably. The two brothers were not close to Bombur Yambarzal but not opposed to their mother's new husband either. "If we know you are not lonely then it liberates us to follow our own paths, about which it's better that you don't know too much," Hatim the younger explained. He was a tall young fellow but his mother reached up and ruffled his hair affectionately as if he were a toddler. "I taught my boys good sense," she said proudly to Bombur Yambarzal. "See how well they calculate life's odds?"

Once the Yambarzals' TV soirees got going in s.h.i.+rmal, evening life changed, even in Pachigam, whose residents proved perfectly willing to set aside the long history of difficulties with their neighbors in order to be able to watch comedy shows, music and song recitals, and exotically ch.o.r.eographed "item numbers" from the Bombay movies. In Pachigam as well as s.h.i.+rmal it became possible to talk about any forbidden subject you cared to raise, at top volume, in the open street, without fear of reprisals; you could advocate blasphemy, sedition or revolution, you could confess to murder, arson or rape, and no attention would be paid to what you said, because the streets were deserted-almost the entire population of both villages was packed into Bombur the waza's bulging tent to watch the d.a.m.n-fool programs on "Harud" Yambarzal's s.h.i.+ning, loquacious screen. Abdullah Noman and Pyarelal Kaul were among the few who refused to go, Abdullah for reasons of principle and Pyarelal on account of the bitter, deepening depression that had spread outwards from his physical person to affect his immediate surroundings, hanging in the enclosed air of his empty home like a bad smell. Some days it would shrivel the riverbank flowers as he walked by. Some mornings it would curdle his milk supply.

Firdaus was itching to see the new marvel but ever since Boonyi's return she had been working mightily to change her behavior and avoid quarreling with Abdullah, no matter how great the provocation. So after the labors of the day were over she remained grumpily but uncomplainingly at home. After a few days, however, Abdullah couldn't bear the nightly pressure of her silent frustration anymore. "d.a.m.n it, woman," he expostulated, burbling the water violently in his hubble-bubble pipe, "if you want to walk a mile and a half to sell your soul to the devil, I don't want to stand in your way." Firdaus leapt to her feet and put on her outdoor clothes. "What you mean to say," she told Abdullah with majestic self-control, "is, 'Dear wife, after all your hard work, you deserve to go off and have a little fun, even if I am such an old curmudgeon that I've forgotten what fun is.'" Abdullah gave her a hard look. "Exactly," he agreed in a new, cold voice, and turned his face away.

All the way over to s.h.i.+rmal, Firdaus was thinking about that new voice and its shocking coldness. She had given this man her life because of his gentle manner and his air of caring for everyone's well-being. She hadn't minded, or had taught herself not to mind, that he had never pampered her, never remembered her birthday, never brought her a bunch of wildflowers plucked by his own hand. She had learned to accept the solitude of her marital bed, had resigned herself to a lifetime of sleeping beside a man whose most prolonged and enthusiastic s.e.xual performance had been less than two minutes in duration. She had admired his concern for their children and for the community whose shepherd he was, and had ignored or at least tried to understand his corresponding lack of interest in the needs and desires of his wife. But something had changed in him since the claw disease began to cripple his hands; his compa.s.sion for others had diminished as his self-pity increased. True, he had restrained Shalimar the clown from committing a vile crime; but perhaps that was a last twitch of the dying personality of the old Abdullah, the Abdullah whose gifts were tolerance, moral rect.i.tude and great personal warmth, in whose place this new, crippled Abdullah seemed to be showing up more and more often. In a cold country no woman should live with a cold man, she told herself as she arrived in s.h.i.+rmal, and her amazement at having considered the possibility of leaving her husband was so great that she failed to pay attention to the miracle of the television broadcast which she had walked all this way to witness, until the news bulletin began.

The evening news bulletin, the least interesting program of the night because of the deadening and often fictionalizing effect of heavy government censors.h.i.+p, usually emptied the tent. People went outside to smoke beedis, joke and gossip. Although men and women sat together inside the Yambarzal auditorium as equal members of the great national television audience, they separated when they emerged, and stood in separate groups. But Firdaus Noman joined neither group; she was a first-timer and remained in her place. An Indian Airlines Fokker Friends.h.i.+p called Ganga Ganga after the great river had been hijacked by Pak-backed terrorists, two cousins called Qures.h.i.+, who had absconded across the border to Pakistan. The cousins Qures.h.i.+ had allowed the pa.s.sengers to leave, then blown up the plane and surrendered to the Pak authorities who had gone through the pretense of jailing them but had refused to entertain Indian requests for extradition. It was manifestly plain that the archterrorist Maqbool b.u.t.t who now based himself in Pakistan with the full connivance and collusion of the Pak leaders.h.i.+p was behind the exploit. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had visited the terrorists in Lah.o.r.e, described them as freedom fighters, and declared that their "heroic action" was a sign that no power on earth could stop the Kashmiri struggle. He further promised that his party would contact the Kashmiri National Liberation Front to offer its cooperation and a.s.sistance, which would also be given to the hijackers themselves. Thus the Pak regime's entanglement with terrorism was proved for all the world to see. After some sort of show trial, the report conjectured, the bounders would doubtless be released as heroes. However, the Indian government's resolve would never weaken. The state of Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part, et cetera et cetera, the end. When the audience charged back into the tent at the end of the news Firdaus stood up and told them about the hijacking, whereupon an extraordinary thing happened. Members of the minority community unanimously condemned the treacherous Qures.h.i.+ cousins and their leader Maqbool b.u.t.t's desire to destabilize the situation in Kashmir, while members of the majority cheered the hijackers loudly and drowned out the angry Hindus' protests. There was no trace of a s.h.i.+rmal-Pachigam divide, no distinction between male and female opinion, only this deep communal rift. The Muslim majority eyed their Hindu pandit opponents with a sudden distrust that crept uncomfortably close to open hostility. Yet a few minutes earlier they had been smoking and gossiping together outside the tent. It was suddenly oppressive to be there in that ugly crowd. Wordlessly, as if some sort of vote had been taken, every member of the pandit community rose up and left the tent. Firdaus remembered Nazarebaddoor's last prophecy-"what's coming is so terrible that no prophet will have the words to foretell it"-and her appet.i.te for further TV entertainment disappeared. after the great river had been hijacked by Pak-backed terrorists, two cousins called Qures.h.i.+, who had absconded across the border to Pakistan. The cousins Qures.h.i.+ had allowed the pa.s.sengers to leave, then blown up the plane and surrendered to the Pak authorities who had gone through the pretense of jailing them but had refused to entertain Indian requests for extradition. It was manifestly plain that the archterrorist Maqbool b.u.t.t who now based himself in Pakistan with the full connivance and collusion of the Pak leaders.h.i.+p was behind the exploit. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had visited the terrorists in Lah.o.r.e, described them as freedom fighters, and declared that their "heroic action" was a sign that no power on earth could stop the Kashmiri struggle. He further promised that his party would contact the Kashmiri National Liberation Front to offer its cooperation and a.s.sistance, which would also be given to the hijackers themselves. Thus the Pak regime's entanglement with terrorism was proved for all the world to see. After some sort of show trial, the report conjectured, the bounders would doubtless be released as heroes. However, the Indian government's resolve would never weaken. The state of Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part, et cetera et cetera, the end. When the audience charged back into the tent at the end of the news Firdaus stood up and told them about the hijacking, whereupon an extraordinary thing happened. Members of the minority community unanimously condemned the treacherous Qures.h.i.+ cousins and their leader Maqbool b.u.t.t's desire to destabilize the situation in Kashmir, while members of the majority cheered the hijackers loudly and drowned out the angry Hindus' protests. There was no trace of a s.h.i.+rmal-Pachigam divide, no distinction between male and female opinion, only this deep communal rift. The Muslim majority eyed their Hindu pandit opponents with a sudden distrust that crept uncomfortably close to open hostility. Yet a few minutes earlier they had been smoking and gossiping together outside the tent. It was suddenly oppressive to be there in that ugly crowd. Wordlessly, as if some sort of vote had been taken, every member of the pandit community rose up and left the tent. Firdaus remembered Nazarebaddoor's last prophecy-"what's coming is so terrible that no prophet will have the words to foretell it"-and her appet.i.te for further TV entertainment disappeared.

The s.h.i.+rmal-Pachigam road was a humble country lane, rutted and dusty, running along a bund bund or embankment a few feet higher than the fields on either side; and it was lined with poplar trees. Shalimar the clown was waiting for Firdaus near the midway point of her journey home. He had not been in the television tent; in fact, he had been away for several weeks, because the bhands of Pachigam had been hired by the state government's cultural authorities to provide entertainment in one of the world's least entertained areas, the villages and army bases to the immediate south of the de facto border drawn through the broken heart of Kashmir. Abdullah, nursing his damaged hands, had told his talented son to take charge of the troupe. "You'll have to do it eventually," the sarpanch had said in a clipped voice stripped of all emotion, "so you may as well start up right now in that G.o.dforsaken part of the world in front of our brutalized countryfolk and those Indian soldiers for whom I can't find the words without using language I do not care to employ in front of my children." Abdullah's politics were changing like the rest of him. These days he was disillusioned with the Indian government, which kept putting his namesake, the leader Sheikh Abdullah, in jail, then doing secret deals with him, then reinstalling him in power on the condition that he supported the union with India, then getting irritated all over again when he started talking about autonomy in spite of everything. "Kashmir for the Kashmiris, and everybody else, kindly get out," Abdullah Noman said, echoing his hero. "Because if we get protected by this army for much longer we're going to be ruined for good." or embankment a few feet higher than the fields on either side; and it was lined with poplar trees. Shalimar the clown was waiting for Firdaus near the midway point of her journey home. He had not been in the television tent; in fact, he had been away for several weeks, because the bhands of Pachigam had been hired by the state government's cultural authorities to provide entertainment in one of the world's least entertained areas, the villages and army bases to the immediate south of the de facto border drawn through the broken heart of Kashmir. Abdullah, nursing his damaged hands, had told his talented son to take charge of the troupe. "You'll have to do it eventually," the sarpanch had said in a clipped voice stripped of all emotion, "so you may as well start up right now in that G.o.dforsaken part of the world in front of our brutalized countryfolk and those Indian soldiers for whom I can't find the words without using language I do not care to employ in front of my children." Abdullah's politics were changing like the rest of him. These days he was disillusioned with the Indian government, which kept putting his namesake, the leader Sheikh Abdullah, in jail, then doing secret deals with him, then reinstalling him in power on the condition that he supported the union with India, then getting irritated all over again when he started talking about autonomy in spite of everything. "Kashmir for the Kashmiris, and everybody else, kindly get out," Abdullah Noman said, echoing his hero. "Because if we get protected by this army for much longer we're going to be ruined for good."

It was a moonless night and Shalimar the clown was wearing dark clothes and had been lying low in the fields and he jumped up in front of Firdaus like a poplar coming to life and scared her. "I've been asleep," he said. She understood at once that her son wasn't speaking literally but was telling her that he'd arrived at a turning point in his life, which was why she didn't interrupt him even though he was on fire, speaking to her in the foulmouthed language his father had refused to use, the speech of a man who has started dreaming of death. A cold wind was slicing through her heart. "I've been wasting my time," Shalimar the clown continued. "All I ever learned how to do is walk across a rope and fall over like an idiot and make a few bored people laugh. All that is becoming useless and not just because of the stupid television. I've been looking at bad things for so long that I'd stopped seeing them, but I'm not sleeping now and I see how it is: the real bad dream starts when you wake up, the men in tanks who hide their faces so that we don't know their names and the women torturers who are worse than the men and the people made of barbed wire and the people made of electricity whose hands would fry your b.a.l.l.s if they grabbed them and the people made of bullets and the people made of lies and they are all here to do something important, namely to f.u.c.k us until we're dead. And now that I've woken up there is something important I need to do also and I don't know how to go about it. I need you to tell me how to get in touch with Anees."

Their dark phirans flapped in the night wind like shrouds. "Be glad you're not a mother in these times," she answered him. "Because if you were you would be happy that your two quarreling sons were about to be reunited but at the same time you would be filled with the fear that both children would probably end up dead, and the conflict of that happiness and that terror would be too much to bear."

"Be glad you're not a man," he retorted. "Because once we stop being asleep we can see that there are only enemies for us in this world, the enemies pretending to defend us who stand before us made of guns and khaki and greed and death, and behind them the enemies pretending to rescue us in the name of our own G.o.d except that they're made of death and greed as well, and behind them the enemies who live among us bearing unG.o.dly names, who seduce us and then betray us, enemies for whom death is too lenient a punishment, and behind them the enemies we never see, the ones who pull the strings of our lives. That last enemy, the invisible enemy in the invisible room in the foreign country far away: that's the one I want to face, and if I have to work my way through all the others to get to him then that is what I'll do."

Firdaus wanted to beg and plead, to ask him to forget about the monsters in his waking dream, to set aside thoughts of the vanished American, and to forgive his wife and take her back and be happy with life's blessings, such as they were. But that would make her an enemy too and she didn't want that. So she agreed to do what Shalimar the clown required, and the next evening after working all day in the fruit orchards she walked to s.h.i.+rmal again and this time when the news bulletin began she got up and followed Hasina Yambarzal outside, tugging at her shawl to indicate that she wanted a private word. At first, when Firdaus told the waza's wife what she wanted, Hasina feigned bewilderment, but Firdaus raised the palm of her right hand to indicate that the time for subterfuge was past. "Harud, excuse me," she said, "but stop, please, your bulls.h.i.+t. I don't know you as well as I should, but I already know you better than your husband does, who is too besotted with love to see you straight. I recognize the pain in your eyes because I have the same pain in mine. So tell your sons the secretive electricians that when next they run into my son the wood-whittler, my boy who was always so clever with his hands, they should mention that his brother wants to be friends with him again." The other women were gathered around a brazier of hot coals and began to throw curious glances in their direction, so they started laughing and giggling as if they were sharing risque confidences about their husbands the waza and the sarpanch. Hasina Yambarzal's eyes were not laughing, however. "The resistance isn't a social club," she giggled, putting her hands over her mouth and widening those calculating eyes as if she had just been told something really awful. "I'm not a fool, madam," chuckled Firdaus severely. "And Anees will surely understand what I mean." One of her eyes was lazy but the brightness in it was unmistakably energetic. Hasina shut up fast, nodded and went back into the tent to watch TV.

The next morning Firdaus demanded that Abdullah accompany her into the saffron field where, many years earlier, she had disported herself with the young Pamposh Kaul. Here, far from imprudent ears, she told her husband that an evil demon had gotten into their son Shalimar the clown up there in the frozen north, near the Line of Control. "He just wants to kill everyone now," she told Abdullah Noman. "His wife, okay, that was a problem before, but now it's also the philandering amba.s.sador, and the whole army, and I don't know who else. So either a djinni has taken him over or else it has been hiding inside him all this time, as if he was a bottle waiting for someone to uncork him, and either that's what Boonyi did when she came back from the American or something happened to him when he was far from home. Hai-hai, Hai-hai," she wailed. "What did my son ever do wrong, to be captured by the devil?"

"That's not a devil talking, it's his manhood," Abdullah Noman told her, without tenderness. "He's still young enough to have the idea that he can change history, whereas I am getting accustomed to the idea of being useless, and a man who feels useless stops feeling like a man. So if he is fired up by the possibility of being useful, don't put out that flame. Maybe killing b.a.s.t.a.r.ds is what the times require. Maybe if my hands still worked I would strangle a few myself."

Discord had entered Pachigam, never to depart. Abdullah Noman did not tell his wife that relations between himself and Shalimar the clown were at a low ebb, partly because the sarpanch hadn't liked the look of eagerness in his son's eyes when the opportunity to replace his father as leader of the bhands had presented itself, but mostly because of the creepy feeling that Shalimar the clown was waiting for Abdullah and Pyarelal Kaul to die, so that he could be released from his oath. These days the two s.e.xagenarians didn't speak much. Abdullah had started mentioning the word azadi, azadi, but to Pyarelal the word didn't mean freedom but something more like danger, and it made a difficulty between the two old friends. They did their work and thought their thoughts and came together for panchayat meetings, after which Pyarelal went back to his home at the far end of the village and stayed there staring at the burning pinecones in the fire. But Abdullah Noman knew that the pandit had the same problem as himself with the watchful stare of Shalimar the clown; it was like being watched by a vulture or a carrion crow. It was like being watched by Death himself. So if Shalimar the clown wanted to go off into the mountains with Anees and the liberation front fighters, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing on the whole, let the fellow go and do what he had to do, even if the liberation front was still a bunch of comedians trying to find out how to live up to their name. but to Pyarelal the word didn't mean freedom but something more like danger, and it made a difficulty between the two old friends. They did their work and thought their thoughts and came together for panchayat meetings, after which Pyarelal went back to his home at the far end of the village and stayed there staring at the burning pinecones in the fire. But Abdullah Noman knew that the pandit had the same problem as himself with the watchful stare of Shalimar the clown; it was like being watched by a vulture or a carrion crow. It was like being watched by Death himself. So if Shalimar the clown wanted to go off into the mountains with Anees and the liberation front fighters, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing on the whole, let the fellow go and do what he had to do, even if the liberation front was still a bunch of comedians trying to find out how to live up to their name.

Two weeks later, Shalimar the clown went to s.h.i.+rmal to watch television and during the news-bulletin cigarette break he stood by a coal brazier with his back to the secretive electricians and got the instructions he had been waiting for. Hatim and Has.h.i.+m pretended to be talking to each other about the beauties of the high pine meadow of Tragbal, located at twelve and a half thousand feet above sea level and looking down on the Wular Lake, and agreeing that it would be at its loveliest soon after midnight tomorrow. Shalimar the clown walked away from them without commenting, and went into Bombur Yambarzal's tent to join in the furious argument that had broken out in there on account of Hasina Yambarzal's announcement that from now on an admission fee would be charged, a small fee, the merest token, because life was not a charity, after all. People should respect what the Yambarzals were doing for them, and the tickets would be a sign of that respect. After she said this people began shouting in a way that didn't sound respectful at all, whereupon that incisive and pragmatic lady bent down, picked up the electric cord and broke the connection. That shut everyone up at once, as if she had pulled out their plugs as well, and her very sensible sons came in with bra.s.s bowls and went around the audience gathering low-denomination coins. Shalimar the clown paid up, but when the soap opera returned to the screen he left without watching what happened to the weeping heroine in the clutches of her wicked uncle. He was all done with weeping heroines. He was going to the Wular Lake to enter the world of men.

Shalimar the clown left Pachigam the next morning carrying nothing but the clothes he stood up in and the knife in his waistband and was not seen again in the village for fifteen years. Above the s.h.i.+ning s.h.i.+eld of the Wular Lake and just below the Tragbal field he met his future on a hillside strewn with boulders. His future took the shape of a pair of men with woollen hats pulled low over their eyes and scarves wrapped around the lower parts of their faces. One of these men was whittling a wooden bird. Another was Bombur Yambarzal's stepson, Has.h.i.+m Karim. There was a third man standing behind a rock, and that was the man who mattered. "You wished to see your brother," the man behind the rock said. "Your brother is here." Anees's knife went on whittling wood without pausing. "This would be touching," said the man behind the rock, "if we were in the business of being touched. Or maybe it would be funny, if we were in the laughing business. Why don't you tell me what I'm doing here listening to a crummy play-actor who wants to play an action hero for real, and maybe a martyr as well." Shalimar the clown remained calm. "I need to learn a new trade," he said. "And you're going to need people with those skills as time goes by." The man behind the rock thought about this. "What I hear," he said, "is that you've been talking big to anyone who'll listen about all the people you intend to wipe out, including the former American amba.s.sador. That sounds like clown behavior to me." Shalimar's face tightened. "For now and until freedom comes I'll kill anyone you want me to," he said, "but yes, one of these days I want the American amba.s.sador at my mercy."

There was a grunt from behind the rock. "And I want to be the king of England," the invisible man said. Then there was a long silence. "Okay," said the man behind the rock. A longer silence followed. Shalimar the clown turned to his brother, who shook his head. "In some minutes," said Anees Noman, "it will be our turn to leave." "Am I coming with you?" asked Shalimar the clown. His brother's whittling knife paused for one brief beat.

"Yes," he said. "You're coming."

Before they left that hillside Shalimar the clown went behind a boulder to relieve himself. Only after the hot stream died away did he look down and see the enormous snake, the king cobra, lying coiled under the rock, an inch away from the puddle. During his exploits with the liberation front he often thought about that sleeping serpent, which reminded him of his mother Firdaus's superst.i.tions. "Snake luck," he said one day to his brother as they crouched behind a rock near Tangmarg waiting for an army troop convoy to pa.s.s over the mines they had laid in the steeply ascending road. "I must have snake luck on my side. It's a good sign." Anees Noman's habitual melancholy was deepened by this excavated memory of a mother he feared he might never see again, but he disguised his sadness and twisted his face into a rueful smile. "Anyway," Shalimar the clown whispered further, "it's what we do. I mean, p.i.s.sing on a snake. If that snake had woken up that night, I'd be a dead man now. But this snake, the one we keep p.i.s.sing on, it's awake all right, awake and wet and mad."

Anees chewed the end of a beedi gloomily. "Just aim for its motherf.u.c.king eyes," he said. His vocabulary had been coa.r.s.ened by the years. "If you p.i.s.s hard enough maybe you'll drill a hole in its sisterf.u.c.king head."

In those days before the crazies got into the act the liberation front was reasonably popular and azadi azadi was the universal cry. Freedom! A tiny valley of no more than five million souls, landlocked, preindustrial, resource rich but cash poor, perched thousands of feet up in the mountains like a tasty green sweetmeat caught in a giant's teeth, wanted to be free. Its inhabitants had come to the conclusion that they didn't much like India and didn't care for the sound of Pakistan. So: freedom! Freedom to be meat-eating Brahmins or saint-wors.h.i.+pping Muslims, to make pilgrimages to the ice-lingam high in the unmelting snows or to bow down before the prophet's hair in a lakeside mosque, to listen to the santoor and drink salty tea, to dream of Alexander's army and to choose never to see an army again, to make honey and carve walnut into animal and boat shapes and to watch the mountains push their way, inch by inch, century by century, further up into the sky. Freedom to choose folly over greatness but to be n.o.body's fools. was the universal cry. Freedom! A tiny valley of no more than five million souls, landlocked, preindustrial, resource rich but cash poor, perched thousands of feet up in the mountains like a tasty green sweetmeat caught in a giant's teeth, wanted to be free. Its inhabitants had come to the conclusion that they didn't much like India and didn't care for the sound of Pakistan. So: freedom! Freedom to be meat-eating Brahmins or saint-wors.h.i.+pping Muslims, to make pilgrimages to the ice-lingam high in the unmelting snows or to bow down before the prophet's hair in a lakeside mosque, to listen to the santoor and drink salty tea, to dream of Alexander's army and to choose never to see an army again, to make honey and carve walnut into animal and boat shapes and to watch the mountains push their way, inch by inch, century by century, further up into the sky. Freedom to choose folly over greatness but to be n.o.body's fools. Azadi! Azadi! Paradise wanted to be free. Paradise wanted to be free.

"But free isn't free of charge," Anees Noman told his brother in his sad-sack way. "The only paradise that's free that way is a fairy-tale place full of dead people. Here among the living, free costs money. Collections must be made." Though he didn't know it, he sounded exactly like Hasina Yambarzal announcing to the villagers of s.h.i.+rmal and Pachigam that they needed to start paying to watch TV.

The first phase of Shalimar the clown's initiation into the world of the liberation front involved him in the group's fund-raising activities. The first principle of this work was that operatives working in the financial field could not be sent back to their own localities, because fund-raising was sometimes no joke and such humorlessness never went down well with one's own folks. The second principle was that as it was a well-established fact that the poor were more generous than the rich it was proper to be more so to speak persuasive when dealing with the rich. It was not necessary to spell out the precise nature of such persuasion. Each operative could be trusted to devise the tactics best suited to the situation. Shalimar the clown, a member of his brother's financial team, a man newly awakened to rage and ready for extreme measures, prepared himself to threaten, slash and burn.

However, Abdullah and Firdaus Noman had raised their sons to be courteous at all times, and even though Shalimar the clown had been possessed by a devil his brother Anees had not. When they arrived, at twilight, at a large lakeside mansion at the edge of Srinagar whose gloomy look perfectly matched Anees's own, the lady of the house, a certain Mrs. Ghani, informed them that her husband the affluent landowner was not at home; whereupon Anees decided it would be improper for half-a-dozen armed men to enter a decent lady's home when the man of the house was absent, and announced that he and his colleagues would wait for her husband Mr. Ataullah Ghani outside. They waited for four hours, hunkered down outside the servants' entrance with their rifles rolled up inside scarves, and Mrs. Ghani sent out hot tea and snacks. At length Shalimar the clown insubordinately expressed his anxiety. "The level of risk is unacceptable," he said. "The lady could have telephoned the security forces many times by now." Anees Noman stopped whittling wood into owl shapes and raised an admonitory finger. "If it is our time to die, then we shall die," he replied. "But we will die as men of culture, not barbarians." Shalimar the clown subsided into sullen silence, fingering the edge of his blade inside the folds of his cloak. One of the hardest things about becoming a freedom fighter was having to accept his brother's seniority in the organization.

After four and a half hours Mr. Ghani returned and came out to smoke a pensive cigarette with the financial committee on the back stoop. "This house," he said, "belonged to my late paternal Ghani-uncle, the well-known Andha Sahib, the blind philanthropist who lived to the great age of one hundred and one, G.o.d be praised, and died only three years back. Perhaps you have heard about him? His personal life was a great tragedy, a poor reward for all his generosity, because he lost his beloved daughter, his only child, who moved to Pakistan and then died there in '65 in consequence of Indian aerial bombing during that foolish war. Before Andha Sahib this was the residence of other eminent members of my family for a hundred and one years more. There is a collection of European paintings of quality. There is a picture of Diana the Huntress that is particularly fine. If you care to see it I will gladly conduct a tour. Also naturally there is my wife and there are my daughters. I thank you for respecting the sanct.i.ty of the house and the honor of my womenfolk. To express my grat.i.tude, and in the blessed memory of Naseem Ghani, the child of this house and my personal cousin whom the Indian air force bombed to death in her own kitchen in Rawalpindi on September 22, 1965, I will a.s.sure you of the following sum, to be paid at quarterly intervals."

The sum named was large enough to make it difficult for the liberation fighters to continue to look impa.s.sive. There were m.u.f.fled gasps behind their woollen hoods. Afterwards, as they retreated into the shadows, Shalimar the clown looked shamefaced about his earlier fears, but Anees Noman had the grace not to rub it in. "Srinagar isn't like back home," he said. "It takes time to acquire local knowledge. Where the backing is, where it isn't, where it needs a little encouragement of the type you're itching to provide. You'll get the hang of it soon enough."

It was not possible to go home. A system of billets was in operation. The brothers Noman were a.s.signed a series of temporary lodgings with families who sometimes welcomed them, at other times had to be coerced into housing such potentially dangerous guests and treated them with a mixture of anger and fear, barely speaking to them except when absolutely necessary, locking up their marriageable daughters, and sending the younger children to live elsewhere until the peril had pa.s.sed. Anees and Shalimar the clown stayed with a friendly family working in the trout hatcheries of Harwan, and with pa.s.sionate supporters in the Srinagar silk industry; in a hostile household of pony-wallahs and farmhands near the famous spring of Bawan, sacred to Vishnu, with its holy tank bursting with hungry fish, and in an even more threatening encampment of limestone miners near the Manasbal quarry, a billet they abandoned after a single night because they both dreamed the same dream, a nightmare of being killed in their sleep, of having their skulls crushed by angry men with rocks in their fists. They slept for a season in an attic room in the home of a terrified truck driver's family in Bijbehara near the tourist village of Pahalgam. This was the neighborhood in which the spy Gopinath Razdan had been murdered some years earlier, after leaking the news of Boonyi's liaison with Shalimar the clown. It was therefore a region of which the Nomans had some prior knowledge. Shalimar the clown felt oddly homesick here. The fast-flowing Liddar reminded him of the smaller Muskadoon, and the lovely mountain meadow of Baisaran above Pahalgam, where Razdan had actually been killed, called to mind flower-carpeted Khelmarg, where his great and lethal love had been consummated. The devil inside him was aroused by the memory of his faithless wife, and murder again filled all his thoughts.

Another summer the brothers stayed among kindly people, the Hanji and Manji tribal boatmen who rowed and punted their craft down the myriad waterways of the valley, gathering singhare, singhare, water chestnuts, on the Wular Lake, or working market gardens on Lake Dal, or fis.h.i.+ng, or dredging for driftwood in the rivers. When a boatman ferried pa.s.sengers on his craft the brothers Noman sat huddled up at the back of the vessel with their faces wrapped up in shawls. At other times, on the big boats, they pitched in and worked as hard as their hosts. Poling a boat carrying seven thousand pounds of grain from lake to lake was a hard day's work. By night, after so effortful a day, the brothers gathered with the boating families at the kitchen end of one of the giant covered boats with its barrel-thatched roof and ate meals of highly spiced fish and lotus root. The boatman with whom they stayed longest was the unofficial patriarch of the Hanji tribe, Ahmed Hanji, who not only resembled an Old Testament prophet but believed that his people were the descendants of Noah, and that their boats were the pygmy children of the ark. "Boat's the best place to be right now," he philosophized. "Another flood's coming, and G.o.d knows how many of us will be drowned this time." "That's the trouble with this d.a.m.n country of ours," Anees Noman muttered to his brother when they lay down to sleep that night. "Everyone's a prophet." water chestnuts, on the Wular Lake, or working market gardens on Lake Dal, or fis.h.i.+ng, or dredging for driftwood in the rivers. When a boatman ferried pa.s.sengers on his craft the brothers Noman sat huddled up at the back of the vessel with their faces wrapped up in shawls. At other times, on the big boats, they pitched in and worked as hard as their hosts. Poling a boat carrying seven thousand pounds of grain from lake to lake was a hard day's work. By night, after so effortful a day, the brothers gathered with the boating families at the kitchen end of one of the giant covered boats with its barrel-thatched roof and ate meals of highly spiced fish and lotus root. The boatman with whom they stayed longest was the unofficial patriarch of the Hanji tribe, Ahmed Hanji, who not only resembled an Old Testament prophet but believed that his people were the descendants of Noah, and that their boats were the pygmy children of the ark. "Boat's the best place to be right now," he philosophized. "Another flood's coming, and G.o.d knows how many of us will be drowned this time." "That's the trouble with this d.a.m.n country of ours," Anees Noman muttered to his brother when they lay down to sleep that night. "Everyone's a prophet."

All the men in the liberation front were afraid almost all the time. There were not enough of them, the security forces were hunting them down, and in every village there were stories of families shot to death on suspicion of having harbored insurrectionists, stories that made it harder to recruit new members or to gain the support and a.s.sistance of the frightened and downtrodden population. Azadi! Azadi! The word sounded like a fantasy, a children's fable. Even the freedom fighters sometimes failed to believe in the future. How could the future begin when the present had such a stranglehold on everyone and everything? They feared betrayal, capture, torture, their own cowardice, the fabled insanity of the new officer in charge of all internal security in the Kashmir sector, General Hammirdev Kachhwaha, failure and death. They feared the killing of their loved ones in reprisal for their few successes, a bridge bombed, an army convoy hit, a notorious security officer laid low. They feared, almost above all things, the winter, when their high-ground encampments became unusable, when the Aru route over the mountains became impa.s.sable, when their access to arms and combat supplies dwindled, when there was nothing to do but wait to be arrested, to sit s.h.i.+vering in loveless garrets and dream of the unattainable: women, power and wealth. When Maqbool b.u.t.t himself was arrested and jailed, morale hit an all-time low. b.u.t.t's old a.s.sociate Amanullah Khan ended up in exile in England. The word sounded like a fantasy, a children's fable. Even the freedom fighters sometimes failed to believe in the future. How could the future begin when the present had such a stranglehold on everyone and everything? They feared betrayal, capture, torture, their own cowardice, the fabled insanity of the new officer in charge of all internal security in the Kashmir sector, General Hammirdev Kachhwaha, failure and death. They feared the killing of their loved ones in reprisal for their few successes, a bridge bombed, an army convoy hit, a notorious security officer laid low. They feared, almost above all things, the winter, when their high-ground encampments became unusable, when the Aru route over the mountains became impa.s.sable, when their access to arms and combat supplies dwindled, when there was nothing to do but wait to be arrested, to sit s.h.i.+vering in loveless garrets and dream of the unattainable: women, power and wealth. When Maqbool b.u.t.t himself was arrested and jailed, morale hit an all-time low. b.u.t.t's old a.s.sociate Amanullah Khan ended up in exile in England.

The resistance changed its name and became the JKLF, four initials instead of five, "Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front" without the "National," but it made no difference. The Kashmiris of England, in Birmingham and Manchester and London, could dream on about freedom. The Kashmiris of Kashmir were s.h.i.+vering, leaderless and very close to defeat.

In the old stories, love made possible a kind of spiritual contact between lovers long separated by necessity or chance. In the days before telecommunications, true love itself was enough. A woman left at home would close her eyes and the power of her need would enable her to see her man on his ocean s.h.i.+p battling pirates with cutla.s.s and pistol, her man in the battle's fray with his sword and s.h.i.+eld, standing victorious among the corpses on some foreign field, her man crossing a distant desert whose sands were on fire, her man amid mountain peaks, drinking the driven snow. So long as he lived she would follow his journey, she would know the day-by-day of it, the hour-by-hour, would feel his elation and his grief, would fight temptation with him and with him rejoice in the beauty of the world; and if he died a spear of love would fly back across the world to pierce her waiting, omniscient heart. It would be the same for him. In the midst of the desert's fire he would feel her cool hand on his cheek and in the heat of battle she would murmur words of love into his ear: live, live. live, live. And more: he would know her dailiness too, her moods, her illnesses, her labors, her loneliness, her thoughts. The bond of their communion would never break. That was what the stories said about love. That was what human beings knew love to be. And more: he would know her dailiness too, her moods, her illnesses, her labors, her loneliness, her thoughts. The bond of their communion would never break. That was what the stories said about love. That was what human beings knew love to be.

When Boonyi Kaul and Shalimar the clown first fell in love they didn't need to read books to find out what it was. They could see each other with their eyes closed, touch each other without making physical contact, hear each other's endearments even when no word was spoken aloud, and each would always know what the other was doing and feeling, even when they were at opposite ends of Pachigam, or dancing or cooking or acting away from each other in distant no-account towns. A channel of communication had been opened then, and though their love had died the channel was still functioning, held open now by a kind of ant