Aleph Se Azadi

How does one contest an abyssal longing drenched in blood and sweat, asks Uzma Falak.

How does one begin a fragmented lingering story?

I am unborn. Mother’s gaze pierces the dark skies as she stands at the window.  I hear her heart’s pulsation. A mujahid has been martyred. Rain clouds gather. A funeral procession passes us—Ro rahe hai ye zameen. Ro raha hai asmaan[1].  Rain flecks her young face. With I, in her womb and a song on her lips, a longing is born. Hai waada hamara[2].

How does one begin a fragmented lingering story?

I am walking home from school. A boy wants to walk home too. But he is precious, for many shoulders carry him. I have just my feet. Women sing lullabies. I fasten my pace to keep up with him. We are both showered by almonds and roses. Crushed roses stain the roads crimson. Later, grandmother tells me he too was a rose—adde phol goulaab, a blossoming rosebud. At night when it rained I imagined many more roses blossoming in the dark. Woh mehkee mehkee.

How does one begin a fragmented lingering story?

20 years have passed. Sameer—the companion of night, passes by my window. There is no coffin. The mourners are whirling as if in a Zikr. Sameer Rah, the nine-year-old boy beaten to death. “Allegedly”. 307, 147, 146, 149, 188, 332, 427 RPC. Sameer, tere khoon se inquilab aayega[3], his friend cries out from the mosque loudspeaker. It is a long night. Hai jaan se pyari.

I am walking home from school. A boy wants to walk home too. But he is precious, for many shoulders carry him. I have just my feet. Women sing lullabies. I fasten my pace to keep up with him.

How does one begin a fragmented lingering story? Perhaps from the fragment which refuses to erode? Perhaps from a banal declaration, a scream, or a desire which keeps us alive? Let me begin from the cliché then, the one I inherited from my ancestors—Hum Kya Chatey? Azadi.

Jism ki rounak, Azadi.  Ruh ki zeenat, Azadi [The alcohol bottles dangle on the concertina, swaying in wind. Tolling. Young protestors, with their weathered faces of love, march. Weight of dead on their shoulders. Wings of death in their hearts]

Ankhun ke thandak, Azadi [A boy perched on his father’s shoulders, the scarlet of his heart showing on his face]

Hai Haqq Hamara, Azadi [A little girl in Maqbool’s village embracing the void of an empty house. A museum of annihilation. Her voice cutting through the heart of mountains]

Aies lakchaar det na, ghamkhaar det na, dildaar det na, teli kyazi yeni? (Didn’t we sacrifice our childhood, our companions, our beloved for Azaadi? Then why won’t it arrive?)

~

1500s; the Emperor plunders our toil, woven into silken rugs. The light of our eyes stitched into teardrop paisleys. Longing crystallised in the blue of our sapphires. The Emperor celebrates; a procession carrying “His Majesty” in a two-storeyed boat, carved by our hands, sets out on the river Jhelum. On the river banks people gather. Witness. Commit to memory this parade of power. Rejecting the royal decree, they cry out (Persian): Ma Azadi Mee Khauheym[4] (We Want Freedom). Grassroots history remembered them forever as Dilawar—the bravehearts.

The Emperor celebrates; a procession carrying “His Majesty” in a two-storeyed boat, carved by our hands, sets out on the river Jhelum. On the river banks people gather. Witness. Commit to memory this parade of power. Rejecting the royal decree, they cry out (Persian): Ma Azadi Mee Khauheym (We Want Freedom).

151years ago, the shawl weavers march, the farmers march. Some are stabbed to death with spears, others jump into the river and are drowned. We weave the bright threads of their sacrifice into our memory. 1924: silk factory workers march, reclaiming their hands, their feet, their journeys, their labour. 1931: Srinagar witnesses an intense storm. Dark clouds gather. The elegant Arabic letters, resembling an alchemist’s jars and utensils, lie scattered like leaves of fall—the story of the Cave, The Fig Tree, Ants, The mystic Ya, the graceful Seen. Bearing all our historical wounds, we march again. Men, women, children in wombs. We die. We live.

1949: A procession led by Nehru, Maulana Azad, Indira Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, embarks on a “colourful” boat over our porcelain rivers. We gather again. At the riversides, on the bridges, at the windows. Rejecting the gaudy promises of sovereignty, we stand armed with our bare selves. We hurl worn-out shoes, our sighs and fears. The brick-kiln workers fling their day’s residue. The river quivers, testifies, as we sing Azadi.

Our rivers embody us. We embody them. Enduring. Flowing—1500s, 1600s, 1700s 1800s, 1900s, 2000s—each century, every moment. Oscillating like a pendulum. Subjugation. Insurrection. Repeated like breathing.

Having exhausted all its apparels, death stands bare now like us. We stare at each other unblinkingly, listening to screams resonating from the unwritten pages of our histories. Reiterating the poets’ prescription: tchalun chu[5]—we must bear. In Kashur, Persian, Urdu, Pahari. Or a limitless howl. A sigh. A language-less metaphor. Impervious to sacrilege.

~

How does one contest an abyssal longing drenched in blood and sweat? Are they scared of our poems like our children? They, who contest our songs like our existence debating the origin?

What will they do now? Will they seek a surgical intervention separating, with scalpels, the rhythms from our pulses, the verses from the coarseness of our throats, the chorus from our veins? Will they take our songs to forensic labs? Conduct DNA tests? How will they collect the samples? How many subjects?

Will they send sniffer dogs to my grandmother to detect if she still clutches the fragrance of azadi in her furrowed fists, to see if her spinning still weaves dreams?

Will they send sniffer dogs to my grandmother to detect if she still clutches the fragrance of azadi in her furrowed fists, to see if her spinning still weaves dreams? Will they send an investigation team to find out if Ashfaq’s mother still interlaces promises and possibilities into her braids?

Will they look for potential evidence: a martyr’s pair of socks treasured for 22 years? A bullet-ridden pheran still wet from yesteryear’s rain? A grave flower refusing to wither?

A vivid color photograph in a blue-walled room—women donning black burqas, white butter crepe veils, colored scarves, revolting hair, standing together in a cluster; young Naseem in the middle, her arms defiantly stretched in both directions, her lips slightly parted, ready to pierce the air with a freedom slogan.

Will Ashraf’s mulberry-stained palms make for strong evidence? The dust on Sumaira’s scarf with which cleaned her brother’s Kalashankov for a decade? The calm on Irshad’s face as he was lowered into the grave? The emptiness of Tufail’s room conversing with his mother’s silence?

A fistful of grass, A five rupee coin? The stubborn ivy growing on the walls of graveyards bearing our screams? Rue turning ash as a martyr’s mourning turns into celebration, as tears and laughter merge like ash and fragrance? In the quiver of our throats and tremble of our knuckles, the gusts in our hearts? The lingering fragrance on a worn-out prayer rug?

The gravedigger’s sweat shining like a pearl on his brow? The dandelion flower Humaira blew after she burnt her poems on her martyr mother? The flight of moths circling the hearth where Mogal Maas used to sing? The rain drops lashing against the window, trembling on the window sill, where Sartaj’s sisters sing elegies? Around the street corner where Hamid embracing his mother, said: Oh Mother dear, hug gently for my heart might explode.

Will they know if our dead children whisper lullabies from heavens and lull their mothers to sleep? Will they claim these lullabies as their integral part?

Will they know if our dead children whisper lullabies from heavens and lull their mothers to sleep? Will they claim these lullabies as their integral part?

Will they conduct a hundred probes, a thousand inquiries like they do each time they try to annihilate us? Will our songs be tried in the courtrooms, sent to the gallows? Will they interrogate our verses in their prime time highlights under their tri-colored camera-spotlights? Or will they reduce them to a few hasty footnotes?

How does one contest an abyssal longing drenched in blood and sweat?

~

We know the pain of erasure. We, the poets of persistence. We, who outran our destiny. We, who cradle the ache of an unsung longing, a lingering history. We, who bear the burden of outliving our children. We, who survived a genocide of colours, a massacre of language. We, who enwomb within us evanescence. We, who have tricked forgetting.

We, within whom, flows a dark river of impossible love.

We, the wandering minstrels of hope. We the balladeers of dawn. We the elegists of night. We the bards of loss. We hear you. Do you?

You may embrace our poems. Sing our songs. But do not asphyxiate them like bodies in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek. Like tear gas smoke choking our uteri. Do not disfigure our elegies like the pellet-ridden faces and backs of our boys.

You may embrace our poems. Sing our songs. But do not asphyxiate them like bodies in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek. Like tear gas smoke choking our uteri. Do not disfigure our elegies like the pellet-ridden faces and backs of our boys. Like barrels shoved into our wombs. Do not electrocute our beats like our bodies in Papa II, Hari Niwas. Do not torture them by strappado. Do not crush them under rollers. Do not waterboard them.  Do not sear them in secret torture chambers. Do not violate our rhythms like vanguards of your peace violate our landscapes. Do not lay siege on them like our cities. Do not our desecrate poems like you desecrate our dead.

Stand upright like Aleph, the first letter of Azadi.  Sing fearlessly. Do not exorcise us out of our songs. Our songs are not just our protest songs. These are our birth songs. Our death songs. Our wedding songs. Our funeral songs. Our lullabies. Our mourning. Our celebration. Our screams. Our silence. Our malady. Our panacea. Our unwritten history. Our militant memory.

Otherwise history will never forgive you. Neither will our roses. Our screams will haunt you, your children and their children. The smoke from our incinerated poems will choke you for a hundred years. Break your TV sets. Burn your newspapers. Read the writing on the wall. Hear the voices on the streets. Will you still ask us, Azadi ka matlab kya?

~

As I recall the faces of dead, funerals of children, furrowed faces in wait, as I invoke the ghosts, as I evoke the longing, as I write Azaadi, leaves shimmer in the distance (against an unfamiliar sky). Rain brims my tea cup. My toes converse with the wet blades of grass and clovers. In the garden, a child learns to walk. A butterfly rests on my knee. I have not known anything as intimate as this. No, I won’t break down.

 

—

[1] The earth is wailing, the sky is wailing
[2] Azaadi slogans (Translations from the documentary film “till then the roads carry her…”)
Hum Kya Chatey? Azaadi: What do we want? Freedom.
Woh mehkee mehkee, Azaadi: Sweet scent— Freedom
Hai jaan se pyari, Azaadi: Dearer than life— Freedom
Ankhun ke thandak, Azaadi:  The balm of eyes,
Jism ki rounak, Azaadi: The incandescence of bodies.
Ruh ki zeenat, Azaadi: The beauty of soul— Freedom
Hai Haqq Hamara, Azaad: Our right—Freedom
Hai waada hamara: The promise we make— Freedom

[3] Sameer, your blood will bring revolution.

[4]From  a phone conversation with Kashmir’s poet-historian Zareef Ahmed Zareef.

[5] From Sheikh ul Alam’s poetry. Sheikh ul Alam (1377-1440) is Kashmir’s mystic poet, philosopher, environmentalist, and revolutionary.