My Mother’s Earrings

By Qadri Inzamam

When you’ve been locked up in an unknown dingy cold room for a time, you realise that the difference between days and nights doesn’t mean much anymore. You don’t notice how the night swallows the bright day and how the day resurrects every morning. The days and nights seem to blend together and you lose the track of time. In here, time seems to move slowly.

It is not the wait or the hope of moving out of this stinky prison cell that slows down time, but the thoughts that I keep losing myself into stretch to an infinite time, like eternity. If it were not for these thoughts, the time would be so devoid of life. The beats of heart would be lifeless. And if it were not for the thoughts about my mother, longing to see her once, I would not be able to keep up with this moving time.

It must be my third day in this prison cell. I can guess by the roughness that my teeth have acquired. When I slide my tongue over them, they feel rough over the top, like they feel on Mondays when I brush them for the first time after Fridays. My mother insists that I brush my teeth on Mondays. In fact, she does so every morning so that my mouth does not smell bad in front of my friends and teachers. In here, I don’t even get to bathe.

Fridays mean half day at school and the rest of it having fun. Last Friday, after I was coming out of the Jamia Masjid, my friend Uzair grabbed my arm at the entrance and whispered in my ear, “Bowling time”. Uzair and I have been going school together ever since we came together in the “bowling team”. I never say no to Uzair; he is someone I confide into.

So I went with him outside Jamia Masjid, on the road, near the fountain that sprinkled cold water to our faces, refreshing us, preparing us for what was coming. Others were already waiting there for us, covering their faces with handkerchiefs and scarves. I had none, so I left my face uncovered. I was in the middle line; on my right was Uzair. He never leaves me alone. On the frontline, Rayees aka Rudy, raised the first slogan, “Hum Kya Chahtey” and the rest of us and the spectators answered in unison, aloud, “Aazadi!”

The first stone hit the bonnet of the police jeep that was racing towards us. We did not run till it was near the left corner of the fencing that enclosed the fountain. We all pelted stones at the vehicle and ran away—some took shelter inside the Jamia Masjid while some ran through the alleys.

I ran through a narrow alley on my right that led to another narrow alley. I halted for a while and held my breath. I looked for Uzair, but he was not there. I came out on the road to check where he was. There, near the fountain, but a little ahead of where we stood earlier, Uzair and other boys were pelting stones at policemen with full zeal. They had gained some ground, pushed the police back by few meters. That was the first victory of the day. I ran towards Uzair and joined him.

 

I was aiming at the CRPF man who held the teargas launcher. Everytime I threw a stone, I made sure it hit his helmet or the gun he was holding. I did not want to hurt him, but make him realise that it was a war we were “playing”. Uzair says that a stone pelted aimlessly lands nowhere and achieves nothing. But none of my stones hit the man on the other end. He was standing too far away.

Suddenly, the police lobbed two or perhaps three teargas shells and I ran away again, this time straight towards Jamia Masjid. As we were running, three police jeeps chased us all away and in the chaos, I stumbled upon a rock and fell on the ground, injuring my right elbow. As I got up to run again, I heard the policemen yelling at me from behind. I ran again, as fast as I could, towards Jamia Masjid, and then suddenly something strong hit my right calf and I fell down. It was a bamboo stick thrown by one of the policemen. As I lay there, staring at them, panting heavily, grabbing my leg, they all came at once and started kicking me everywhere and it was painful. One of them hit my head with the stick and I blacked out.

When I regained my conscious, I was locked up in this room with five other boys, all of them from our team. Shahid, my senior at school, had his hand bleeding, perhaps from the beatings. Akeel, Sahil and Faisal, who had been on the frontline throwing stones, were talking with each other and did not seem to be afraid of anything. They had been here before. Squatting in one of the corners, Amir was sobbing and no one was consoling him or calming him down. I too did not go near him. If sobbing was a way to let him release his fear, then I did not interrupt him to become fearless in here.

Akeel, Sahil and Faisal were soon released. Akeel’s father was a close friend to a journalist who used his connections to get him released sooner than any of us. Sahil’s brother was himself a policeman, stationed in Baramulla. He ensured his release, but Sahil said his brother would give him a harsh beating once he got home. So once he was out, he would go directly to his sister’s house, in Pulwama.

Faisal’s family did not have any such connections. The last time he’d been arrested, his father had bribed the SHO and got him released. Seven thousand rupees, Faisal told me, his father had had to pay. This time, his father took some time to get him released. When a policeman came to take Sahil, he taunted him saying that he was not worth the Rs 10,000 his father had paid.

Amir soon got out because he would not stop crying and did not eat anything for days. He fainted many times. When he was taken to the doctor, they told the police that he might suffer minor cardiac arrests if kept in the lockup again. To save themselves from any trouble, the police had him released. He was lucky for he had to pay nothing except an affidavit pledging he would not be part of stone pelting ever again. The team was now short one member.

 

Once—I don’t know if it was a day or night—I had a dream. I saw my mother, in her maroon velvet embroidered pheran, sitting on the veranda at my maternal home. I went to her and she hugged me tightly. I rested my head on her shoulder. Her earrings—the only golden jewellery she possesses—brushed my ear. Whenever mother hugs me, her earrings brush against my ears. I like that tickling sensation.

These earrings initially belonged to my grandmother who, in her final years, had given it to my mother. My mother never took them off. She never said much about the earrings but the way she kept them safe, it was obvious how much she valued them. She says her mother-in-law treated her like her own daughter.

When my father fell from the roof of a two-storey house where he worked as a carpenter, his spinal cord, shoulders and legs were severely damaged. During the 65 days he was hospitalised in Srinagar’s Bone and Joint Hospital, my mother had to take all the responsibility of arranging money for his treatment.

First, she sold the patch of land my father had inherited. That paid for the multiple surgeries. But the medicines and various tests were very costly, so mother had to sell her jewellery too. But even during that time, my father had not let her sell the earrings. Perhaps he knew by then that his life could not be saved by gold anymore.

With his death we lost everything we possessed, except a small house and few household items. Since then my mother has been working hard to build what we lost. She got a sweeper’s job in a private school, few miles from home. But there is no consolation for the loss of her husband and my father.

 

I wake up to the sound of opening door. Only Shahid and I are left now in this prison cell. Two policemen who enter in a rush are carrying large bamboo sticks, and without saying a word, they start beating us. They don’t seem to care where they hit, so I bury my head in my arms. After they are tired, they kick us and we roll aside, against the wall. They leave, banging the door shut.

I don’t understand the purpose of it. Shahid has been here before. He says that he has been beaten worse than what we went through. He shows me his back: there are countless black spots all over, like some decay on a fruit. The skin over these spots seems dead. He says he got these marks when he was arrested for the first time a year ago during a stone pelting outside Jamia Masjid. When he was in prison, they had put him beneath a burning tyre that hung to the ceiling, and the drippings fell on his back. That pain must have been unimaginable. In here I don’t go through all that. But the beatings like today happen quite often, so I have started to bear it. The only unbearable thing now is the longing to see my mother.

I don’t remember how many hours—or days maybe—have passed since I ate anything. But I don’t have an appetite anymore. The wait, hope, confinement and longings become a lump in my throat and burn my stomach. All I want to do is sleep and dream something that takes away me from this seclusion—to my mother. I try hard to sleep but as the eye lids close, a frightening thought shakes me up: What if I never make it out from here? What if I never get to see mother again?

A few hours later, the door opens again. This time only one policeman enters, without any haste, and asks me to stand. He asks me if my mother worked in a school. I reply yes but I don’t tell him that she is a sweeper there. He leads me to another room: for the first time I leave the prison cell to see sunlight. But I can’t figure out which part of the day it is.

I enter a small room, the walls of which bear no paint, where two desks are placed in two corners facing the door. Sitting behind the desk, one policeman is jotting down something on a big file while the other one is talking over the phone to someone. In front of him, my mother stands holding her hands together, her eyes wet and her temples twitching. Without saying anything, she grabs me and hugs me with all the strength she is left with and sobs and then breaks down. I bury my head in her chest and let go off all my worries, fears and loneliness.

The policemen let us go after a few minutes but I don’t understand how my mother managed to get me released. She does not have enough money to bribe the policemen. She does not know any politician or someone with connections in police. I do not ask and she does not tell.

Outside the police station, she stops an autorickshaw and we get into it. As we travel towards home, I rest my head on her shoulder, trying to make myself feel comfortable and home. But I realize something strangely missing: Her earrings do not brush my ears now.

I look at her ears. They don’t hold any earrings now. They look abandoned. She looks at me, then hugs me again and says, “You will get me new ones, won’t you?”