Abdurajak Janjalani had gone home and started up a new group of his own, the “Sword Bearers,” or Abu Sayyaf faction. He had often talked about doing this, and more than once tried to recruit Shalimar the clown to help him. “Brothers from everywhere gathering,” he had said. “You see. It will be triumph for our international.” Seeing that Shalimar the clown had other things on his mind, Janjalani had not pressed him, but had assured him that there would always be a place for him in the struggle. “If you want to come to Basilan,” he said, “this person, call him. All fixed very quick and well. Brother Ramzi coming. There are so-much funds.” The name on the piece of paper meant nothing to Shalimar the clown but when the Sword Bearers hit the news fast with a campaign of bombings and kidnappings for ransom, the world’s visible and invisible networks began to buzz and various names did begin to crop up, such as Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a cousin of Sheikh Usama’s who ran a large number of Islamic charities in the southern Philippines and was spoken of as a major financier of the new group. President Qadhafi of Libya condemned Abu Sayyaf but Libyan charities in the southern Philippines also came under suspicion as possible channels for Libyan state cash. Likewise, the names of certain prominent Malaysian figures began to occur in the same sentence as the words Abu Sayyaf. The name and telephone number on Shalimar the clown’s piece of paper were both Malaysian, but neither ever appeared in the press. Of course the piece of paper had existed for less than an hour. Shalimar the clown had fixed the name and the number in his head and burned the paper as soon as the work of memorization was done.
The Gegroo brothers had gone, too. The secular nationalist ideas of the JKLF militants had never been to their liking, and Talib the instructor had steered them (before he also left) in the direction of the most “Afghan” of the newer groups, the Lashkar-e-Pak or Army of the Pure. The LeP had moral as well as political aims. A month before Shalimar the clown’s return to FC-22, the Gegroos had taken part in an LeP raid on the village of Hast in Jammu & Kashmir Rajouri district. LeP posters had appeared in the village ordering all Muslim women to don the burqa and adhere to the dress and behavioral principles laid down by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Kashmiri women were mostly unaccustomed to the veil and ignored the posters. On the night in question the LeP group, including the Gegroos, took reprisals. They entered the home of Mohammed Sadiq and killed his twenty-year-old daughter, Nosen Kausar. In the home of Khalid Ahmed they beheaded twenty-two-year-old Tahira Parveen. In the home of Mohammed Rafiq they killed young Shehnaaz Akhtar. And they beheaded forty-three-year-old Jan Begam in her own home.
In the months that followed the LeP grew bolder and moved its activities into Srinagar itself. Women teachers were doused with acid for failing to adhere to the Islamic dress code. Threats were made and deadlines issued and many Kashmiri women put on, for the first time, the shroud their mothers and grandmothers had always proudly refused. Then, in the summer of 1987, the LeP posters appeared in Shirmal. Men and women were not to sit together and watch television anymore. That was a licentious and obscene practice. Hindus were not to sit among Muslims. And of course all women must instantly put on the veil. Hasina Yambarzal was outraged. “Tear all those posters down and announce business as usual,” she ordered her sons. “I don’t intend to watch my TV programs through a hole in a one-woman tent, nor do I plan to be liberated into a different kind of jail.”
8
The last performance ever given by the bhands of Pachigam took place early the next year, at the start of the tourist season, on the day the national insurrection began. Abdullah Noman at the great age of seventy-six brought his troupe of players to an auditorium in Srinagar to perform for the valley’s Indian and foreign visitors, on whom the economy depended. His great stars were gone. There was no Boonyi to dance her Anarkali and devastate audiences with her beauty, no Shalimar to clown with dizzying skill on a high wire without a net, and he himself found it extremely painful to draw and brandish a kingly sword with his aging, crippled hands. The youngsters of today had other interests and had to be coerced into performing. The sullen woodenness of these younger actors was an insult to the ancient art. Abdullah mourned inwardly as he watched them at rehearsal. They were broken bits of matchstick pretending to be mighty trees. Who will watch such clumsy rubbish? he wondered sadly. They will pelt us with fruit and two veg and boo us off the stage.
He apologized in advance to his septuagenarian friend and longtime ally, the retired Sikh cultural administrator and celebrated horticulturalist Sardar Harbans Singh, who had supported the bhand pather throughout his career and, in retirement, had persuaded his young successors-who were as impatient with the old crafts as the youth of Pachigam-to give the old stagers the occasional break. “After tonight, Sardarji,” Abdullah Noman told the elegant old gent, “the organizers will probably want to give us not breaks but broken heads.” “Don’t worry about it, old man,” Harbans replied dryly. “The tourists have been fleeing the valley in droves this past week, and most of them never showed up in the first place anyway. It’s a catastrophe, a shipwreck, and I’m afraid it’s your job to provide the entertainment while we go down with all hands.”
Firdaus had not come to Srinagar with the company. Abdullah knew she was unhappy, because she had started muttering about snake omens. When his wife started seeing snake-shapes in the clouds, in the branches of trees, in water, it invariably meant she was brooding about the miseries of life. Recently she claimed that actual snakes had been coming into the village, that she saw them wherever she went, in animal feeding barns and fruit orchards and produce stalls and homes. They had not started biting yet, no snake-deaths of livestock or human beings had been reported, but they were gathering, Firdaus said, like an army of invasion they were massing ranks and unless something was done about it they would attack at a moment of their choosing and that would be that. Once upon a time Abdullah Noman would have roared his disbelief and the village would have gathered delightedly outside his house to listen to the quarrel, but Abdullah didn’t roar anymore, even though he knew she would prefer it if he did. He had retreated into himself, old age and disappointment had pushed him into a cold place and he didn’t know how to get out of it. He saw his wife looking at him sometimes, fixing him with an unhappy questioning stare that asked where did you go, what happened to the man I loved, and he wanted to shout out to her, I’m still in here, save me, I’m trapped inside myself, but there was a coating of ice around him and the words couldn’t get through.