“He’s right,” said Hashim Karim suddenly, taking his mother by surprise.
“He probably is correct,” his brother Hatim agreed. “That Big Man Misri loved watching TV, and he was always a big man for revenge.”
A carpenter could always find work in Kashmir in the spring, when wooden houses and fences all over the valley needed attention, so Big Man Misri was one of the few citizens of Pachigam to be immune from the general economic depression. He traveled the country roads on a little motor scooter with his sack of tools on his back and often, when he passed a secluded little grove of trees that stood just out of sight of his home village around a bend in the Muskadoon, he parked the scooter, concealed himself in the trees, set down his tool sack and danced.
Big Man had always been of the view that his terpsichorean skills had been too harshly judged by the Pachigam bhands, and that he could leap as high and twirl as effectively as the next man. Abdullah Noman had told him kindly but firmly that the world was not yet ready for a jumping giant, and so Big Man Misri was obliged to practice his art in secret, without hope of an audience, for love alone, and often with his eyes closed, so that he could imagine the rapt faces of the audience he would never be allowed to have. On the last day of his life he was leaping and pirouetting in his army surplus boots when he heard the sound of insincere applause. Opening his eyes, he saw that he was surrounded by the three heavily armed Gegroo brothers on their mountain ponies, and understood that his time had come. There was a knife tucked into each of his boots and so he went down on one knee and begged to be spared in the most pitiful and cowardly voice he could produce, which amused the brothers mightily, as he knew it would. I could have been an actor as well as a dancer, he mused fleetingly, and in the same instant, when the Gegroos were shaking with laughter instead of concentrating on their victim, he reached for both his knives and threw them. Abulkalam Gegroo was hit in the throat and Alauddin Gegroo in the left eye and they fell from their mounts without making any further contribution to events. Aurangzeb Gegroo, distracted by the calamity that had befallen his brothers, delayed his reaction almost long enough to allow the charging carpenter to seize him. Big Man Misri the private dancer made the biggest leap of his life, his hands outstretched toward Aurangzeb Gegroo, but the eldest and only surviving sibling came to his senses just in time and fired both his AK-47s into the soaring Big Man at point-blank range. Big Man Misri was already dead by the time his body hit Aurangzeb, knocking him backward off his pony and breaking his puny neck.
That same night, after the dead body of Big Man Misri was discovered lying on top of Aurangzeb Gegroo as if they were lovers who had made a death pact, with the other two dead Gegroos by their side, Zoon Misri climbed up the hill to the edge of the Khelmarg meadow and hanged herself from a majestic spreading chinar, the only tree of its kind to have taken root and survived at this height, among the evergreens. She was discovered by Boonyi Noman, who understood at once the meaning of this eloquent, final message from her beloved friend. The horror was upon them now and would not be denied.
General Hammirdev Suryavans Kachhwaha realized, as he thought about his approaching fifty-ninth birthday, that the reason he had never married was that for almost thirty years Kashmir had been his wife. For more than half his life he had been wedded to this ungrateful, shrewish mountain state where disloyalty was a badge of honor and insubordination a way of life. It had been a cold marriage. Now things were coming to a head. He wanted to be done with her once and for all. He wanted to tame the shrew. Then he wanted a divorce.
The coming battle against the insurgency, reflected General Hammirdev Suryavans Kachhwaha, would be a conflict that lacked all nobility. The true soldier wanted a noble war, sought out such nobility as might be available. This struggle was a dirty bare-knuckle fight against dirty gutter rats and there was nothing in it to exalt the martial soul. It was not General Kachhwaha’s way to fight dirty but when one faced terrorists any attempt to stay clean was doomed to ignoble defeat. It was not his way to take off his gloves but there was a time and a place for gloves and Kashmir was not a boxing ring and the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules did not apply. This was what he had been saying to the political echelon. He had informed the political echelon that if he were allowed to take his gloves off, if his boys were allowed to stop pussyfooting and namby-pambying and mollycoddling and pitter-pattering around, if they were allowed to crack down on the miscreants by whatever means necessary, then he could clean up this mess, no problem, he could crush the insurgency’s testicles in his fist until it wept blood through the corners of its eyes.
For many years the political echelon had been reluctant. For too long it had said yes and no at the same time. But now at last there was movement. The character of the political echelon had changed. Its new belief system was supported by prominent members of the intellectual tier and the economic stratum and held that the introduction of Islam in the classical period had been uniformly deleterious, a cultural calamity, and that centuries-overdue corrections needed to be made. Heavyweight figures in the intellectual tier spoke of a new awakening of the suppressed cultural energy of the Hindu masses. Prominent inhabitants of the economic stratum invested massively in this glistening new zero-tolerance world. The political echelon responded positively to such encouragement. The introduction of President’s Rule provided security personnel with unrestricted powers. The amended code of criminal procedure immunized all public servants, soldiers included, against prosecution for deeds performed in the line of duty. The definition of such deeds was broad and included destruction of private property, torture, rape and murder.
The political echelon’s decision to declare Kashmir a “disturbed area” was also greatly appreciated. In a disturbed area, search warrants were not required, arrest warrants ditto, and shoot-to-kill treatment of suspects was acceptable. Suspects who remained alive could be arrested and detained for two years, during which period it would not be necessary to charge them or to set a date for their trial. For more dangerous suspects the political echelon permitted more severe responses. Persons who committed the ultimate crime of challenging the territorial integrity of India or in the opinion of the armed forces attempted to disrupt same could be jailed for five years. Interrogation of such suspects would take place behind closed doors and confessions extracted by force during these secret interrogations would be admissible as evidence provided the interrogating officer had reason to believe the statement was being made voluntarily. Confessions made after the suspect was beaten or hung by the feet, or after he had experienced electricity or the crushing of his hands or feet, would be considered as being voluntary. The burden of proof would be shifted and it would be for these persons to prove the falsehood of the automatic presumption of guilt. If they failed so to do the death penalty could be applied.