Authors: Adrian Levy
The Meadow (11 page)
‘Congratulations!’ announced the Afghani without fear. ‘Today you have gained great success. I am the commander of the Movement.’ The Indian soldiers exchanged glances. ‘But this scholar accompanying me has nothing whatsoever to do with the
mujahideen
. He is a visitor to this country. I kidnapped him. In all likelihood his prayers were answered when you arrested me, otherwise I would have held him until I got a ransom.’
According to his own later account, Masood swivelled to look at the Afghani before the penny dropped: ‘In every era there have lived pious slaves of Allah who have chosen to drink the cup of death in order to save their fellow brothers.’ For the next two days the Afghani was ‘tortured horribly’, but revealed nothing. Yet somehow ‘the Indian Army discovered a hole in the story’.
In fact, according to the Indian interrogation transcripts, when Masood’s turn came he broke down within thirty minutes and blurted out the truth: he had not been kidnapped at all. The Afghani was furious, and this time could not bring himself to forgive Masood. Now, after twelve days in Khundroo, both of them would face long prison sentences. Many months later, when Masood and the Afghani were reunited in Ward One of Tihar jail in New Delhi, where India housed the men it regarded as its most feared terrorists, the commander refused even to acknowledge his General Secretary. ‘Here, for the first time we developed differences,’ Masood later wrote circumspectly. ‘After four months the situation changed; he came to me and asked me to forget everything, as it was harming the freedom movement.’ The Afghani kept silent about their time together in Kashmir, even after Masood began telling other prisoners his life story, concocting a new explanation for his pronounced limp, which he now said was the work of Indian interrogators.
It was quiet in Kausar Colony, Bahawalpur. Two of Masood’s brothers were away in Afghanistan, fighting alongside the emerging Taliban. A sister, Rabiya Bibi, would soon join them, doing welfare work for this force of dour students led by Mullah Omar that would soon capture Afghanistan, while another brother was running the Movement’s Bahawalpur recruiting office.
Master Alvi should have been happy. Most of his family were doing holy work. Apart from Masood. He was desperate to secure the release of his golden child. He travelled to Karachi to see Maulana Khalil, and together they had gone to pay their respects to Brigadier Badam of the ISI. ‘Do what the Afghani did when Langrial was taken,’ the Brigadier told them. ‘Kidnap someone important, preferably foreign. Make it an embarrassment for India. It’s the only sure way to get him back.’ Master Alvi was unsure. What did he know about kidnapping, let alone foreigners? But he was certain of one thing. The Movement owed his son.
‘Paradise on Earth’, declared the sign beside the old Jammu and Kashmir tourist reception centre on Residency Road, a short rickshaw ride from Lal Chowk, Srinagar’s main shopping bazaar, with its cake shops and dressmakers,
kurta
-sellers and papier-mâché emporiums, behind which sprawled alleyways and lanes faced on either side by rickety wooden and stone structures. Plastic-chair depots blended into office supplies, and then came an entire street selling computers shorn of their inner workings, before you reached car parts, bath taps and telephones. Here was a Sikh
gurdwara
and an Islamic welfare association, hotels selling hot buttered toast,
seekh kebabs
and Lipton’s tea, while in the lanes below suited businessmen and Kashmiri housewives picked their way around overloaded handcarts.
But it was the large signboard that attracted Jane and Don’s attention that morning. It might have convinced the increasing number of Indian tourists coming from the cow belt that all was peaceful here, the dark-skinned holidaymakers from the south who were all keen to do their bit to reinforce the government’s writ in Kashmir. But it struck Don and Jane as odd, given what they had seen so far: the occupation of everything by the security forces, including this tourist centre, which was surrounded by razor wire, sentries and bunkers.
Inside, there were no tourists. The deserted corridors smelled of bleach and someone else’s lunch. Asking for information on trekking routes at reception, Jane and Don were half-heartedly directed to a room where they found two Kashmiri officials sipping tea beneath a whirring fan that agitated the curling edges of posters depicting
Kashmir’s many beauty spots. The men seemed delighted and surprised to have visitors. One jumped up, proffered a hand and introduced himself as Naseer Ahmed Jan, ‘of the J&K tourist police’. Immediately he launched into a speech about the dangers of travelling alone in the mountains. It was the first voice of caution Jane and Don had heard since arriving in India, and it immediately grabbed their attention. There was a possibility of thieves, he said, sizing up their reactions, and a real chance of getting lost. They should be clear that the weather up in the mountains was unpredictable. For these reasons – and to ensure that they found the
best
routes and the
right
campsite – it was imperative that they take along a recommended guide.
Jane knew a sales pitch when she heard it. She was not surprised when Mr Jan introduced the colleague sitting by his side as being able to arrange a taxi to Pahalgam, as well as find ponies. ‘He tried to give us many reasons why we shouldn’t go on our own, why we should hire someone to go with us. It was inappropriate,’ said Jane. She and Don got up to leave. Looking perturbed to have lost out on an opportunity, Mr Jan handed them his card. ‘Call me,’ he said weakly as the other man followed them out, still talking silkily: ‘
You choose the price. Only pay me what you feel I deserve. The decision is yours …
’ Out in the street, Jane and Don concluded wearily that they would only have to go through the same performance with someone else at the trekking station. Why not get it over with? ‘We were persuaded,’ Jane said. ‘The guide then said he would hire the pony-men.’ Without really thinking it through, they had been hustled into committing to the Pahalgam option.
Seven days earlier, just before midnight on 21 June, Julie and Keith Mangan had lugged their belongings to the Inter State bus stand in New Delhi, where they were to board a coach to Kashmir. After three months in Sri Lanka, the British couple were bronzed, and they had become deaf to the mayhem of the subcontinent, feeling like old Asia hands. As they were settling into their seats on the Srinagar-bound bus Julie spotted two other Westerners, who with their blue-white skin and hassled expressions seemed to be fresh off the plane. Pushing
their way through the crowds, with bags and tickets tumbling around them, the young couple were being trailed by a crowd of coolies, children and
chai-wallahs
who had sniffed out an opportunity. It was Paul Wells and Catherine Moseley, who had survived the experience of staying in the backpacker district of Paharganj and were now heading for Ladakh, having decided to take the cheapest route, by road via Srinagar, after the owner of their guesthouse arranged the tickets for them, taking a healthy commission. ‘Do you need help?’ Julie shouted over the hubbub. The young woman surrounded by beggars whipped around at hearing the English voice, and seeing Julie standing on the steps of the bus waving, burst out laughing. Cath was finding the whole India thing mind-boggling.
Once they were safely aboard, Julie introduced herself and Keith, and made a gentle jibe about Cath and Paul’s lack of experience. More than twenty-four hours on an Indian bus would see to that, she joked. Had they come prepared, Keith asked, listing the necessary provisions for the trip: toilet roll, Imodium, real mineral water. ‘Test the seals before you buy, or face a lifetime on the shitter’ was the mantra of the travelling Westerner in those days, since so many water bottles were actually filled from the nearest unfiltered tap. Cath told them she and Paul had signed up to another forty-eight hours of travelling beyond Srinagar. As the bus roared out of New Delhi, passing pavements where homeless children slept beneath the fierce glow of halogen lights, Cath and Paul began to relax.
Despite the age difference, the Mangans chatted easily with the young backpackers. Keith, Julie and Paul discovered that they were all from the north of England, and they swapped stories from home and away. Having been in South Asia for so many weeks, Julie and Keith were familiar with the road trick of building casual relationships with other travellers. Leaving the hot colours of the Indian plains behind, the bus, keeling ominously, headed into the Pir Panjal, a mountain range in the lower Himalayas that separated the Kashmir Valley from the rest of India. By that afternoon, 22 June, they were in the foothills and the two couples knew pretty much everything there was to know about each other.
That night, as the last light faded, they headed through the dank Banihal Tunnel, the only road route connecting Kashmir to the rest of India. At times of heightened tension this road would be blocked by the army, sealing Kashmiris in, but just now it was open, although at its end an army checkpoint loomed like a giant mousetrap. Welcome to Paradise, the couples thought to themselves as the waiting Indian soldiers waved flashlights in the gloom. The bus came to a halt, and all the passengers were ordered off and made to stand in line with their passports and identity documents to hand. As the only Westerners on board, Keith, Julie, Paul and Cath were taken over to a small cabin that served as the local office of the J&K tourist police. There they were asked seemingly endless questions, their details noted down in longhand in lined ledgers, the pages bookmarked with elastic bands. Keith wondered if anyone ever read them afterwards.
Most of the other passengers on the bus were Kashmiri, born broke and destined to spend their lives trapped in the valley; or if they could get the papers, compelled to be permanently in transit, travelling the vast subcontinent the cheapest way possible, carrying plastic suitcases full of shawls, business cards and trinkets. It was thirty-four hours to Calcutta from here, and forty-two to Goa. More than two thousand miles lay between Kashmir and Pondicherry, in India’s deep south-east. They were willing to ply even these far corners of the subcontinent, eking out every opportunity to make a small profit. Behind the hut where Paul, Cath, Keith and Julie were being questioned, they glimpsed Indian soldiers trampling on the Kashmiris’ possessions. They were probably checking for contraband, weapons or explosives, someone murmured. After all, a nation had every right to protect itself.
Half an hour later they were back on board, rumbling north along National Highway 1A in the dark. From here on they would be in the bowel of Kashmir, as locals called it, the valley cupped by a sinewy lining of mountains. The road was quiet, but every couple of miles they passed sleeping army encampments, their whitewashed gates and watchtowers rising above walnut orchards and saffron fields. Along the camp perimeters, the bus’s headlights lit up chain-linked fences
strung with empty whisky bottles, a crude intruder alarm designed to give the sentries a few minutes’ warning of a guerrilla attack. Quite a party the soldiers must have had, someone joked.
Finally disgorged at Srinagar bus station in the early hours of 23 June, the two British couples were glad to be stationary at last, and gulped in the cool air. Around them brightly painted buses revved and rattled into life, while local women jostled to board them for distant towns and villages – Kupwara, Handwara, Baramulla, Pulwama – their arms overflowing with children, shopping bags and live poultry. A few of the women wore black
abayas
or pale-blue
burqas
, but most only covered their heads with scarves. ‘Good Luck’, the hand-drawn signs above the bus drivers’ cabins read. It all felt very foreign, but Keith, Julie, Paul and Cath were soon distracted by the breathtaking mountains that ringed the city, the crest of peaks clear in the crystalline early-morning light, a delicate, craggy line of snow-tipped summits meeting a sapphire sky.
However tense they felt about being in the much-talked-about hotbed of Srinagar, Paul and Cath had already decided they were going nowhere in a hurry. Over the course of the journey, Julie and Keith had talked them into staying a night or two, and as they collected their luggage from the belly of the bus, a heckling crowd of houseboat owners massed. There were so few tourists and too many berths. Soon they were surrounded by jabbering touts, who pressed laminated photos and testimonials into their hands. Eventually the British tourists plumped for the
Holiday Inn
, an intricately carved wooden houseboat on Dal Lake. The name raised a laugh, and the owner, a middle-aged man called Bashir, had a friendly face and promised electricity
and
hot water.
Bashir led them to his friend’s waiting taxi, and as they drove through the city the houseboat owner pointed out the centuries-old wooden houses owned by Pandits, the valley’s indigenous Hindu inhabitants, who claimed to trace their history back thousands of years. These days their homes were locked, deserted and collapsing, the owners having fled Kashmir as the local war had become tinged with sectarian savagery. Could they stop? Bashir said he’d explain
about the Pandits later. In the old city quarter of Nowhatta they passed the minarets of Jamia Masjid, built by Sultan Sikander in the fifteenth century, one of Srinagar’s most significant mosques, that could hold thirty thousand worshippers. Was it worth visiting? Bashir said he could not stop. Now was not good. He would show them its magnificent courtyard and hall of 370 wooden pillars ‘another time’. Wrestling their way through the back streets of Maisuma to Lal Chowk, he pointed to the ancient, delicately carved fretwork of the wooden shrine to Shah-e-Hamden, which he said contained ‘the secrets of all Islam’, and which would be wonderful to visit another year, for reasons he would tell them later. Bashir was finding it difficult to disguise his nervousness at having foreigners in the car, although outside the market hawkers, mothers with young children shopping for cheap Chinese blankets, old men reading newspapers pegged outside a shop, seemed oblivious to the heavily armed Indian soldiers milling all around them.