Fatima Akhter (name changed), a middle aged woman, recalls the memories she had kept to herself until now. Sister of a slain Hizbul Mujahidin commander, she smoothed back her silver hair with one hand while holding the hem of her headscarf with the other. A calm and always smiling lady thus spoke of her adventures in the mid-nineties. Then, a young mother of three children: two girls and one boy, a schoolteacher by profession, Fatima recalls with a sigh and a prayer: jannat aesin timan.
Before her brother was martyred, she would act as a courier for the mujahideen. She used to spend half of her salary on raising her brother’s family and half on her own, apart from helping the needy people in their neighbourhood. Her husband, an electrical engineer by profession, would never stop her from so doing; in fact he would always stand by her. “He once saved three mujahideen after a snitch led Indian forces straight to the house where they were having lunch,” recalls Fatima. “He told the army-men that the mujahideen had gone to buy some stuff from a neighbouring shop, thus giving them enough time to escape. As a punishment, he was tortured for more than a week in an army camp at Khanabal, Islamabad.
All her brother’s companions would call her Fatima Didi (sister). The day when her brother was martyred, they approached her one by one and expressed their condolences while proclaiming, “We all lost a brother, but your other brothers are still alive.” Fatima knew what they meant. Everyone wanted to continue the relationship of trust that they had developed through the resistance movement. After his martyrdom, Fatima had to look after her brother’s family and her unmarried sister too. She managed all singlehandedly. Her husband would also help but only intermittently — he was accused of having links with the mujahideen and subsequently suspended from his job. She married off her sister and sent her brother’s children to the same school her own children went to.
After he was martyred, the Indian soldiers, in an act of vengeance, ransacked her brother’s house before reducing it to ashes. While Fatima was still mourning her brother and trying to build a makeshift shelter for his family, the mujahideen sent a little girl to fetch her. She followed the girl’s instructions without telling anyone. Among the mujahideen that had summoned her were Tariq; from Malakhnag, Nazir Shiree; successor of her brother in the area, Shabnam; a student and only son of his parents Muhammad Shafi Khan from Dabran. Like her brother’s house, everyone’s house had been razed to rubble. They asked Fatima to visit one Nazir Ahmad in Badasgoum. Photographer by profession and fearless fighter, Nazir Ahmad’s nom de guerre was Tiger.
Fatima took along her cousin and boarded a bus to Badasgoum. Released from jail a few days earlier, Tiger was at his shop. After exchanging greetings, Fatima told him that they had come to visit his mother, Faz-aap. Tiger immediately understood the reason for their visit. He escorted them to his house. His mother was in the compound roasting the crushed rice for preparing saett, a powder normally poured into salt tea. As soon as her mother saw Fatima, she put coals in the samovar and boiled green tea for them. A small and skinny lady, Faz-aap would talk briskly. After draining the cups, Fatima asked the old lady, who seemed more than 60 years old, whether Shiree Saeb was expecting them to bring him something. Faz-aap stood up and went inside her house. After a while, she returned with a big aluminum pot filled with crushed rice. She dug both hands inside and pulled out four hand-grenades. Fatima was stunned. She felt unqualified for the job of transporting weapons. However, seeing the old lady handle grenades so sedately, courage filled Fatima’s heart. She took the grenades and slipped them inside her baend or undershirt. Withstanding the scorching heat, Fatima, while leaving home, had put on a Pheran. They got up and took leave of Faz-aap, who in turn blessed them with infinite supplications.
While revealing her secret adventure, Fatima’s eyes fell upon her brother’s photograph hanging on the opposite wall. She let out a sigh followed by a resigned smile. She asked her elder daughter to bring her some cold water, drank the whole glass in one gulp and continued. Faz-aap had kissed Fatima and her cousin infinite times while accompanying them to the bus stop. Only when they boarded the bus did Faz-aap turn back. According to Fatima, the bus might have travelled less than three kilometers before the CRPF stopped it on the highway. They were frisking every single passenger, not sparing even children or women. “Quite normal those days,” as Fatima puts it.
After the bus came to a halt, a CRPF trooper came inside and ordered all of them to disembark with their identity cards in hand. Everyone including Fatima’s cousin came hurriedly out of the bus. Fatima, who had preferred to remain standing in the bus, in order to prevent any collision of the metal inside, which could have made others suspicious, sat down on a seat and started rubbing her right leg. A CRPF trooper came and spoke angrily, “Why didn’t you come down when everyone did?” “Sir, I am taken ill and my leg is paining,” replied Fatima with the other hand still inside her pheran –a loose outer garment. She had learned that there were no happy endings or clear-cut choices in war. “You can only imagine what I was going through.” He spoke again but this time not so angrily, “Do you carry any medicine?” Fatima slipped her rubbing hand quickly in her pheran pocket and withdrew a strip of kalpal, or tablets for curing headache. The trooper took it in his hand like an identity card. She said that she was missing her three children but her index finger was still clinging to one of the grenade pins. To her good luck and the trooper’s too, he had nodded in self-assurance and handed back the strip. OK.
Fatima thanked God for saving her that day with Zangpal, as she calls the medicine. After half an hour of parades and frisking, everyone boarded the bus and it drove off to Islamabad. Fatima and her cousin, who couldn’t believe the miracle, disembarked at Breenth. The same little girl who had come with a note in the morning was waiting with another note and a lollypop in her mouth. She went to the walnut orchard mentioned in the note and handed over the package. Back home, no one asked Fatima where she had been. Everyone including the children expressed their silent approval.
Fatima recalls every one of the mujahideen for whom she had carried out this mission. She said that when Shabnam joined the mujahideen he was of the same age her own son is now. She prayed for the former’s place in jannah (paradise) and the latter’s long and healthy life. She remembers every single conversation she has had with her brethren. On that grateful day, when she was narrating the bus incident to the mujahideen, Nazir Shiree had said to her, “If it were not for our hamsher (sisters), moss would have sprouted on our graves already.”
The writer is a freelancer and graduate of the Aligarh Muslim University