CROSS ROADS
Anxiety takes hold of me. Sleepless nights and tossing and turning all night in bed. Sweating and worrying. Whenever Eid is near, my loneliness exacerbates. My patience shrinks, the wrinkles on my face deepen and my limbs go numb.
On this otherwise joyous festival, for me, crying becomes easier.
I despise Eid.
It was around this time of Ramzan, twenty-three years ago. I hadn’t seen him for over a year.
That 26th day of Ramzan in the last week of November was one of the coldest days in decades, on the eve of Laylatul Qadr, when along with all other mortals, my destiny too was determined by Allah. There was heavy snowfall that day in our village, Devepora in Shopian. Dilshad, my four-year old daughter was playing hide and seek with my faded dark grey Pheran while Daneen, my youngest daughter of two years old, was sitting at my feet toying with her broken doll and some old utensils.
It was perhaps an hour after Iftar when I heard people shouting in the distance. The cacophony of people yelling slogans slowly came closer. I ran outside and froze in front of the veranda of our modest house when I saw a sea of people flooding our entrance.
My worst fears were realized.
I had vehemently opposed the decision of my parents who did not think of Abid as a suitable groom for me. However, I was in love with Abid. In awe of his jet-black shoulder-length curly hair. His rugged well-kept Garibaldi beard. His presence, which was always complimented by his indescribable yet undeniable aura. I idolized his stature, his power. And, his Kalashnikov.
He was my hero.
At that time, I did not understand that my parents opposed my marriage with Abid because they cared for me and my future. They wanted me to have a simple life of certainty. The shadow of a husband, the joy of children, a roof over my head and respect in society. Who would want their daughter to get married to a militant? A militant whose early death was as certain as uncertain his short life was.
They tried everything to change my mind. My father forbade me from going out of the house. My uncle stubbed out his cigarettes on my slender arms every day. My mother pulled me by my hair and hit me with a stick every evening. I was locked up in my room for weeks and months. Food was given to me like I was a caged animal in a zoo.
But I remained adamant.
I tried committing suicide twice, once by drinking Lizol and once by cutting my wrists with a sharp blade. Both times, I survived. Eventually, my desire to spend the rest of my life with Abid turned out to be stronger than the objections of my family. Despite the restrictions imposed on me by my family, I kept fighting.
And, I won.
I was young and stupid. Victim of a cursed infatuation. Merely fifteen years old when I hero-worshipped Abid and his Kalashnikov, and seventeen when I married him in 1998.
And here I stood in front of our little veranda on the eve of Laylatul Qadr on this cold November evening. Twenty-two years old, married for just five years and with two little daughters, when our entrance was thronged with people who were carrying his body. There were hundreds of them shouting slogans and waving some green-coloured flags. Some from the crowd offered me copies of the Holy Quran along with an abundance of advices to wilfully accept my fate as the will of the Almighty.
One elderly person put a hand on my head and looked at me with something on his face which resembled a cunning smile and told me to not cry. He instructed me to be strong and in spite of my uncontrollable weeping and screeching, persisted that I should celebrate my husband’s martyrdom.
I was confused. I did not know how I should celebrate the death of the father of my daughters. I had also no one to celebrate with, as everyone had left soon after he was buried.
No one had remained to mourn with me as well. Everything seemed so empty and silent. The thousands who screamed slogans and the few who gave speeches at his burial had vanished hastily as if they had never existed.
Vanished into thin air.
Abid used to carry a gun and was eventually met by a gun. Perhaps, that was his inevitable destiny. In the end, Abid had to pay for his sins.
He was killed by the security forces in a fierce gun battle in the dense forests of Udhampur. It was later confirmed that one of his own comrades informed on him for a small bounty and had led the forces to his hide-out.
Abid’s death did not only turn me into a widow. I became an emotionless manifestation of compulsions with my body transforming into the coffin of my soul.
I was compelled to beg my in-laws to grant my daughters a share of their inheritance. It took me three years to comprehend that from being a daughter-in-law, I had turned into a domestic slave, while my condition was being exploited under the pretext of false promises.
Eventually, I was thrown out of my husband’s house along with my daughters. I had no option left then to become a daughter of my own father again. A father who used to have one daughter and was now burdened with three.
That is all I remember of those days. Perhaps, that is all I want to remember. I want to omit those dark nights when I used to cry alone. I want to forget how I was abused by the mother, brothers and sisters of Abid and how they accused me of bringing about misfortune and annihilating my own husband. I do not want to remember how they grabbed our belongings and stole our land by corrupting corrupt Patwaris and Tehsildars.
I have voluntarily lost count of those desultory days and scattered nights when I used to weigh the shattered pieces of my wishes.
I had very small wishes.
The wish to be embraced by him. To break the fast with him while he would offer me food with his own hands. The longing to see him bringing home some fresh fruits during Ramzan. To feel the difference between starting the fast and breaking the fast by replacing the lentils and rice at Sehri with just one or two pieces of chicken or meat at Iftar. The urge to wear new clothes on Eid. The wish to see him return from Eid prayers while I would be ready to welcome him with sweet Seviyan. The wish to nag him for 100 Rupees more of Eidi. To annoy him by complaining that he loved Dilshad and Daneen more than me.
The simple, yet so intense longing of just having a partner.
A companion.
Four days later, on Eid, reluctantly and slowly I started accepting that I was a widow. The militant group he was affiliated to and the Machiavellis who danced the naked tango of politics besides Abid’s dead body were unconcerned to the fact that he had left behind a wife and two children.
From that day, everything changed.
My helplessness, my grief, my loneliness and my questions made way for an unexplainable anger. Anger towards my husband, towards his bloody militant group, his damned Kalashnikov, this hypocritical society, towards my in-laws, my destiny, towards Ramzan, Eid and even towards Almighty.
Since then, I loathe Eid.
I hate, detest, abhor and despise Eid.
To the core.
I hate it so much that whenever I think about it, it makes my blood boil.
For me, the day of Eid has transformed into a stark depiction of exploitation. A day when this society brazenly displays its hypocrisy and shamelessly enjoys gratification from it.
On Eid, widows and orphans like me and my daughters are presented with second hand clothes, old books, used stationary sets and, if lucky, sometimes with some money.
During Ramzan and on Eid, this rotten society duplicitously displays its sudden unfaithful fear for His wrath and fake concern for people like me and my daughters. Only during Ramzan and Eid, people feel the need to call upon the community to think of widows like me and orphans like Dilshad and Daneen because everyone who takes good care of the unfortunate ones will pave his way to Paradise with solid concrete.
Sermons are held during Ramzan and on Eid in Mosques and people are reminded of the faith of orphans and widows. At times Iftars are organized by the wealthy where my pain and emotions are exhibited in the utmost cheapest manner. Every grain of rice which I and my daughters eat and every sip of Rooh-Afza we drink, is photographed ten times from twenty different sides. Widows like me and orphans like my daughters are humiliated and degraded to marionettes whose strings are being held by those who have spent lakhs on the publicity of the event. The spectacle of our helpless souls is filmed and photographed continuously.
Each and everything we accept is photographed from different angles in case the Angel at the gates of Heaven might ask for some visual evidence from these saints.
In the past twenty-three years, nobody has had the courage to take my hand in marriage. My wishes and dreams to have a respectable life were strangulated by the vicious hands of society supported by its evil demons called traditions, culture, customs and religion.
However, whenever I am presented with alms on Eid, the same traditions, culture, customs and religion are unable to hide the filthy audacity in the eyes of the many vultures from this very same society who want to make me a bride for one night in return for the charity they are bestowing upon me in the name of God.
Today, I am an aging woman of 45 years old. Dilshad is 27 years old and Daneen has just turned 25. Both are unmarried and both have only done their matriculation. Both resemble him and both of them compel me to think how our lives would have been, had he been alive.
It is not easy.
In this cruelly nasty society of ours, men are not man enough to assume ownership of the miseries of their actions. No matter how hard a woman tries, this world will always judge her without the shadow of a man.
Every evening, I ask myself whether Allah will judge him and this sadistic society.
I pray every night, on my knees, with my eyes brimming with tears, begging God to forgive him for betraying me and my children.
While praying for everything you wish for on this Eid, please pray for me and my daughters as well.
Pray that the Creator may bestow you with true faith and humanity. Pray that Allah may grant you the courage to introspect and redeem this rotten, stenchy society which you keep defending with your own perverted, pretentious erected walls of respect, reverence, culture and religion.
Beg Allah for forgiveness for the inexcusable sin of creating tens of thousands of widows and orphans and making them disappear into oblivion after every Ramzan and Eid.
Eid Mubarak.
(Author is the Director of European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) and can be reached at: [email protected])
