The Story of Kashmir by David Devadas

Author:David Devadas
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: David Devadas
Published: 2019-02-07T05:00:00+00:00

[16]

Discovering Jihad

Aftab missed the peak of Kashmir’s uprising through that winter of 1989-90. Quite soon after Guga returned from Muzaffarabad, having failed to get the ISI to accept Hizbullah, Aftab persuaded Guga to let him try. So he crossed the Line of Control in November 1989, just as a new government was taking charge in New Delhi and Ishfaq and his band were desperately looking for a way to get Hamid Sheikh released.

Guga had taken the name Mushtaq-ul Islam. So, Aftab decided to call himself Shahid-ul Islam—witness of Islam in Kashmir’s battlefield. The name stuck and, quite soon, nobody remembered that Shahid was not his original name. So we too shall call him Shahid now. He wound his way cautiously through the countryside to the edge of the valley, where four boys who had fallen behind their groups joined him. Two were from Hilal’s outfit and two from Zargar’s, but Shahid liked the thought that he was their leader for the crossing.

He looked for the most experienced guides to take them across the mountains. The guides confidently promised to get them across in a day. They knew routes that were never patrolled. Indeed few were in 1989. But Shahid was supercilious. A city slick with Syed airs, he talked down to the Gujjars, the traditional goatherds on Kashmir’s peripheries who functioned as guides. What could they know of how important he was— deputy chief commander of the army of God. So he decreed that they would move only at night.

The climb was steep and, as they wound through the forests of pines and conifers, it began to rain. They slipped and stumbled in the dark. There were no trees the second night and the rain turned to sleet and the mud and pebbles on the tracks to slush. There were no streams either and punctilious Shahid would not drink from the muddy pools. Gritting his teeth, he kept his mind on thoughts of God and victory, to keep it off the thirst and the blisters on his soft feet. He would not complain in front of his companions; the pain never dulled his sense of importance.

That night, he stumbled so often and so badly that it was all he could do to keep going, grabbing desperately, breathless from terror as he slipped on the wet mud under his boots. When he was about to plummet into the abyss at one point, every fibre of his being plugged into his tearing fingers, scrabbling for a hold on jagged edges of rock. By the third night, the rain stopped but by then Shahid’s pride was no match for exhaustion. He fainted. His companions muttered disgustedly about his fear of daylight as they quickly lit a little fire and rubbed his hands and legs beside it until he revived. That fire put them at far greater risk of being spotted than sunlight could. Finally, all the tension and some of the exhaustion melted away after they crossed the Line of Control.

They were welcomed

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