LASHKAR (7 page)
‘That’s okay,’ the man replied. ‘I would rather park inside.’
Suit yourself, weirdo. I was just trying to help.
As the guard shrugged and walked away the man at the wheel of the Indica heaved a sigh of relief. Engaging gears, he drove into the basement and headed straight for the parking slot nearest to the huge electricity transformer installed there. ‘Allah be praised!’ The slot was empty.
He had picked out two other suitable alternatives during the dry run earlier, but neither of them was half as effective as this one. He carefully reversed into the slot and locking up the car made his way towards the ticketing window. ‘What are the show timings?’ he asked the youngster manning the counter.
The eager lad handed over a beautifully printed brochure. ‘These are the movies and their timings. You can check out availability on that screen there,’ he pointed at the monitor installed above the counter. Almost all the morning shows had a small green light glowing in front of them, but the afternoon and evening ones mostly had red dots, indicating a full house.
Good! The more the merrier
.
‘Thanks.’ The man spent the next few minutes casually wandering about the multiplex. The crowd had started to build up and the parking lot had a fair number of vehicles in it.
Leaving the multiplex he made his way out to the main road and flagged down a taxi. As the cab pulled away he tossed the movie brochure out of the window. It was irrelevant now. Show-timings were about to be rudely interrupted.
1400 hours, 29 October 2005, behind Savita Nagar Mosque, New Delhi.
‘Surely Allah has bought of the believers their persons and their property for this, that they shall have the garden; they fight in Allah’s way, so they slay and are slain…’
The Maulavi had deliberately chosen verse 9: 111 of the Koran to remind them of the heroic battle against the white Satan. As the prayer drew to a close, the Maulavi looked up and studied the seven men gathered in the small room. They were no different from all the other young men he had personally recruited for the jihad and sent to Salim.
I wonder how many of them are still alive?
The Maulavi smiled at the men.
How many of these boys will be alive today when the sun sets?
He was experienced enough to know that despite the most thorough planning anything could go wrong. There were simply too many variables to be able to factor them all in.
So be it. After all, men must fall in battle. Their sacrifice will not go waste.
The youngest of the men was totally impervious to the tension that hung in the room like a naked wire. The other six men were more seasoned. They were tight-lipped and avoided looking at or talking to each other.
He is too young and inexperienced to know about the fear that comes as a precursor to battle. The fear that keeps men alert and alive.
For a moment the Maulavi thought he should speak to the youngster. Then he decided against it.
This is not the time to raise doubts in his head.
Instead the Maulavi sent up a silent, special prayer for Allah to watch over him. Then he looked at the men clustered before him and nodded. ‘It is time.’
The men left the room in pairs at irregular intervals of five to ten minutes. Only Furkan waited for almost twenty minutes after the third pair had left. Pausing at the door he nodded to the Maulavi and said in a soft undertone, ‘I will keep you informed. Keep your phone on. Khuda Hafiz!’
Life in training camp was the typical bittersweet experience that most military type trainings are – more bitter than sweet, with the sheer buggery of relentless physical exercise ensuring a constantly aching body sweetened by the occasional thrill of weapon-handling and bomb-making that appeals to young male minds as nothing else does.
In the first week itself Omar, Abu Khan and Iqbal got dubbed the ‘English school types’. The instructors took a special delight in what they called ‘sorting out their wrong notions’. ‘We are going to make men out of you, boys,’ the instructors told the recruits gleefully each morning till they began to dread the gruelling pre-dawn runs, the mind-numbing physical training and the forced marches with heavy weights on their backs and dummy rifles in their hands.
The instructors were better tolerated when the recruits moved on to weapon-handling, firing and bomb-making, from the third month of their training. Iqbal loved the thrill and excitement of bomb-making. In fact, he became so adept at it that even the explosives instructor acknowledged his mastery. But this was not much solace when they lay on their cots at night with every bone aching from the rigours of the day.
‘These thick-headed Army clods are complete masochists. They thrive on torturing themselves and us,’ said Abu Khan.
Omar was silent for a moment. ‘You think they are from the Pakistan Army?’
‘Well, they definitely don’t look like Salvation Army types to me. Of course they are Army. Can’t you tell from their haircuts, the way they walk and talk to each other?’Abu Khan answered.
It was an open secret that the instructors were junior and non-commissioned officers from the regular Pakistan Army. Though no one spoke openly about its support, the Pakistan Army’s involvement was clearly evident in every aspect of the training camp; from the vehicles that ferried them about to the weapons and ammunition the jihadis used; but mostly in the manner in which people from the villages around avoided coming near the camp.
‘I want the camp spotless and shining today,’ they heard Maulana Fazlur Rehman tell the instructors during the morning parade, one day in their fourth month of training. ‘Salim Sahib is going to be visiting us.’
The tall, heavily-bearded Fazlur Rehman was not only the camp commander, but also the founder of the group that sponsored this particular camp. He was a mesmerizing man. His deep commanding tone and bottomless eyes signalled the fire in his belly and the passion that jihad generated in him. He was a much-respected man and his group had the honour of being responsible for the highest number of successful strikes against the Indians, not just in Kashmir Valley but all the way down to the Akshardham Temple in Gujarat and the Indian Parliament in the heart of Delhi itself.
‘Who is Salim Sahib?’ Iqbal heard Omar ask one of the instructors as they were being put to work on cleaning up the camp.
‘Shut up and do what you have been told,’ the man replied irritably as he walked away.
‘Don’t you know better than to ask such dumb questions?’ Abu Khan said to him after the instructor had moved out of earshot. ‘Salim Sahib is Brigadier Murad Salim of the ISI. He is the one who provides our group with the support and money we need.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘My cousin told me.’
‘How does he know?’
‘He trained here a year back. He is the one who motivated me to join.’ Abu Khan paused. ‘He was martyred in the Valley last month.’
Brigadier Salim came to the camp often in the last five or six weeks of their training. He spent most of his time with Fazlur Rehman. A tall, hard-looking man in his early thirties accompanied the Brigadier; he was like Salim’s shadow.
On the last three days that the Brigadier was at the training camp a group of eleven men joined him. They spent all their time closeted in the large hut where radio, tactics and explosives theory classes were taught. The newcomers aroused a lot of curiosity amongst the other trainees, especially when it became clear that Brigadier Salim himself was spending a fair amount of time with them. But despite the endless debates their presence generated, no one was any the wiser about their identity. And then, one afternoon when the trainees returned from the firing range, the men were gone. So was Brigadier Murad Salim.
Their sudden disappearance would have surely led to another round of extensive debate if nature had not stepped in the way.
It was the eighth of October 2005. The twelve recruits were returning from the firing range when suddenly the earth began to move. At first Iqbal thought he was feeling giddy but then there was a deafening roar and the whole world started to buck and sway, shiver and tear up. Just as suddenly as it had started the frenzied shaking stopped and a harsh silence slammed down on the mountains. By the time he understood what was happening the earthquake was over. There was no time to be afraid; that came later.
The trainees ran up to the crest of the last hill overlooking the camp; the horrific sight below took their breath away.
The town of Muzaffarabad had been totalled. It was as if a herd of marauding elephants had trampled it to the ground. Even as they watched, weakened walls and buildings crumpled to the ground in softly billowing clouds of dust and debris. From the distance one could not hear the screams but it was not hard to imagine the death and destruction that had decimated the town.
The camp remained miraculously intact barring the hut that stored the arms and ammunition and the communications hut where the radio set was installed. The other huts had weathered the quake reasonably well, being temporary and lightweight structures.
The next two days were like a surreal nightmare; Fazlur Rehman was kind enough to immediately volunteer the services of the trainees for rescue work. It was obvious that Rehman’s decision was more to do with propaganda than any feeling of goodwill. ‘Double the guard on the camp,’ Rehman ordered the senior instructor after sending out the trainees to Muzaffarabad for rescue work. ‘Make sure no one gets at our supplies.’
Screams of anguish and pain met Iqbal as he and his colleagues walked into the devastated town. Bodies and body parts were everywhere, bleeding bewildered people stumbled about with dazed expressions looking for those they had lost, little kids wounded and traumatized with no one left to console them wailed into the wilderness. Iqbal knew he would carry the memories of this horrific nightmare to his grave.
‘Allah is merciful!’ Omar whispered as they started digging through the rubble. ‘Had it been snowing who knows how many more would have died?’
Iqbal himself was witness to five huge heaps of mangled bodies that they recovered from the debris on the first day. By evening their minds and bodies had been pushed to the threshold. Stomachs and throats ached horribly from the constant retching and throwing up.
When darkness finally forced rescue efforts to a halt, the tired beaten men who stumbled back to camp that night had nothing in common with the enthusiastic young boys in search of adventure and a cause to believe in. The thrill and excitement of bombs and beliefs receded into the gaunt futility of death.
If this is how life can be brought to a sudden wrenching halt then what is the point of it all? What meaning does the jihad have…does anything have?
The next morning again found them headed for the devastated town, sombrely shouldering their picks and shovels. The pieces of cloth tied around their mouths and noses did not smother the stink of death. They split up in pairs as they entered the town and reluctantly began to make their way into the desolation. Iqbal and Omar came up to the ruins of a small settlement. The silence was deathly. Suddenly Iqbal heard a dull thud and a muffled cry. Quickening his pace he walked around the collapsed wall of the hut.
A plump, thickset woman in her early forties lay in the rubble of what was once her home. Iqbal’s heart lurched when he saw her. It was as if Hamida, his mother, was lying before him. The same kindly face, the same hennaed hair. The right side of her face was badly bloodied. The lower half of her body was buried in the debris. A thick wooden log lying across her body pinned her down. Iqbal could see her straining to raise the log and free herself.
Frantic hope flooded the woman’s face when she saw Iqbal. ‘My daughter is still buried under,’ she flailed a hand. ‘Please get her out of there. She is terrified of the dark.’ The women’s voice broke: ‘Please, son …please…my little girl.’
‘Don’t worry, Ammi.’ The word eluded Iqbal’s control; he looked away. ‘We will, but let us get you out first.’
‘Please!’ she begged. ‘Get her out first. She has been calling out to me and crying the whole night.’ The woman’s voice broke into a crazed sob. ‘I have not heard her crying for sometime now,’ she whispered after a long pause. ‘She must be hurt.’ There was a dogged hope in her words; words that resolutely denied the other reason for her daughter’s silence.
‘We will help you first.’ Raising his voice Iqbal hailed Omar. Together the two of them managed to move the log away. And then he wished they hadn’t. The lower half of the woman was pulp. Blood surged out as the pressure of the log lifted away. ‘How is she still alive?’ Omar whispered harshly. He too was struggling to retain control over himself.
‘Zeenat…my daughter…’ the woman seemed oblivious to her own pain. Or maybe the hurt in her heart overrode everything else. ‘Please get her out.’
She pointed again towards the huge heap in the centre of the hut.
Omar and Iqbal exchanged a long look. Then they both went to work with their shovels. Minutes bled away. As did life from the lady lying on the hard cold floor of the place that had once been her home. She watched them with an unblinking gaze; the hope in her eyes glazing over into death as Iqbal and Omar pulled out the lifeless corpse of her daughter from the rubble. It was as though she had willed herself to stay alive only for her daughter.
Iqbal could not bring himself to abandon the dead woman and her teenage daughter. ‘I want to bury them,’ he finally told Omar.
‘Let’s get them to the…to where the other bodies are…’
‘No, Omar, I want to bury them here…where they lived…’ He looked away. ‘She looks like my mother,’ he finally whispered softly…reluctantly.
The two men began to dig. Iqbal felt his head explode with pain as he gently lowered the woman who reminded him of his mother into the shallow grave they had dug. He then placed her beloved daughter in her arms.
Religion? War? Guns? Bombs? Jihad? Was there any point to it all? How much more futile can Man make life?
Iqbal wished he could close his eyes and then open them and find himself home with his family. By the side of his near and dear ones to whom his life was precious. Nature kills so ruthlessly, without a thought to the suffering she inflicts. Nature had made her callousness clear. To her life was of little consequence.