Dear Palestine,
Asalam
o alykum!
I’d
start with usual niceties and greetings asking you about your well being and
health but I know better than to sound ignorant of your condition. I know how
you are; bleeding and seething with resistance. I know of your wounds, of your
tears and of your courage. I know how you have been occupied and oppressed in your
own land by the Zionists; by those who came and never left. I can imagine your
pain, of having unknown, foreign people come into your land, take over it and
then treat you as outsiders.
Pardon
me, I seem to have lost the etiquette of speaking; I realise I haven’t
introduced myself as yet. Well then, here we go.
I am
Kashmir. Have you heard of me? Oh, yes you say? Yes I did see some of your
people holding a banner in support of me. But maybe all of your people don’t
and anyway we are more bound together than you think; by a common bond of
resistance. You will often see me portrayed by my oppressor somewhere on the
head of its map (which looks like a woman draping a sari), and call me its
‘atoot ang’, the integral part. There’s nothing integral about me and them,
well there is nothing familiar about a part even in this equation. You see they
came, they occupied and never left. Sounds so familiar, right? They won their
freedom from British and then turned their attention towards occupying me,
oppressing my people (and others as well) all the while labeling them as
‘terrorists’ for wanting to be free of them.
If you were here, I’d probably pour you a cup
of ‘noon chai’ (salt tea) or ‘kehwa’ if you will. My body knows the underside
of the army boots only too well, like you do.
I have seen lakhs of them trample me in their
lust for blood and in their arrogance. I am a green vale, lush with forests,
but sometimes even I wonder if their green uniforms outnumber the trees in my
heart!
You
see that old woman smiling there? Yes, the one in the shabby room, humming a
tune to herself. Her son was killed by those murderers and the other son just
lost his mind with grief. He was picked up in a ‘rakshak’ (that means protector
in Hindi, how funny!) vehicle, and his body found somewhere else, far from his
home, torture marks telling a gruesome story. The woman there, you see, she was
raped by the forces of the occupier, not only her, but two villages; women from
two villages raped in a single night. That man there with no feet and stumps
for hands, he was tortured, forced to eat his own flesh for ‘sympathising’ with
those fighting for freedom. Those children playing in the ground, they are
orphans, their fathers taken by the dark shadows of occupiers to never return.
Their mothers are called ‘half widows’; because they don’t know if they are yet
widowed or not. They live somewhere in between waiting for some news, of death
mostly. And you see vast mounds there, with number plates on them? These are
people who never returned, only their dead bodies did, buried by some unknown
grave digger, waiting to be claimed and given a name.
You
see, I know your pain of being occupied and oppressed. I have wept for you as
Israel bombed Gaza. I have stood up for you as they perpetrated crimes of
unimaginable magnitude against you. My heart has bled along with those innocent
children they killed for fun, the ones playing on the beach. My soul was left
bruised as I saw images of children in pieces, under rubble, in arms of their
loved ones. I have bled with you as one after other the bombs rained from the
night sky. I have clutched my heart in grief as mothers wailed over the dead
body of their sons. I know only too well the loss of young ones. I have been
flooded many times with the warm blood of teenagers and even children. No,
there are no bombs falling from the sky here (ironically, that is the only
difference between you and me) but there are bullets, free, anytime, anywhere.
Indiscriminate. They tell their people that they aim for the legs to ‘control
the crowd’ but in reality they aim at hearts and heads of young children, who
look like flowers in fresh bloom. They are afraid of stones you see, so afraid
of stones that they defend themselves with bullets. I have seen so many small
coffins, too many fathers shouldering the coffins of their sons, yet I have
never given up, quite like you. The mothers smile, sisters singing ‘wanwun’
traditional marriage songs over martyrs, the fathers proudly kiss the dead,
still, face goodbye, and I shed silent tears of pride and grief.
As I
said we are bound by resistance; resistance to oppression and occupation. I
might bleed and cradle young souls in my bosom but I never forget you. You are
there in the sermons of Friday prayers, in the prayers of laylat ul qadr and in
every protest; you never leave us. My people, they learn about Palestine almost
as soon as they learn about Kashmir. There they try to obliterate your existence;
here they try to occupy our history. Occupiers are all the same but little do
they know so are we. Our hearts beat to be free, to live free of occupation and
oppression, to see ‘us’ prevail. One day I know we will both be free; you will
no longer grow flowers in tear gas canisters and I will no longer bury my
young. Till that day, when the song of freedom is carried from Palestine to
Kashmir, till that day, and beyond, let this bond never break. Khodayas hawale.
With
love,
Yours
in grief and happiness
Indian
occupied Kashmir
