“It
was not a dream, my sons had come. I heard my sons outside the door.
They were calling me.....but when I tried to open the door, my knee got
hurt and I fell down," Saida says, while applying ointment to her knee
that has turned blue. Then she murmurs and Shakeela, who sits besides,
says, “No one was there outside last night.”
Shakeela
slowly moves closer to her and in a consoling voice says, “you dreamt
about them again because you don’t take medicines properly these days.”
But,
Saida insists she heard her sons. Shakeela points towards a piece of
land fenced with rusted wire at a few meters distance from their house.
"They have been buried there...... don't you know that?" she questions
her mother. Saida nods and replies, "My sons are resting there, how could I forget they are buried in mounds of mud."
With
an injured knee and a crumbling gait, she walks towards the graveyard.
"All of them were killed by army... some in encounters, and some in
custody," she says and stops at a grave. “Here lays my elder son Bilal.
He was born in 1965, but only after 29 years his father laid him to rest
here. At the extreme left of Bilal's grave, a distance of few feet, is
his younger brother Ayoub’s grave. He was killed by army too,” she says.
Between
the graves of her two sons there is an empty space where she sits. "I
have asked village heads not to bury anyone in between the graves of my
two sons. I want my third son Aazad who has also been killed by army to
be buried here. He was killed at border but police did not handover his
dead body to me,” she says amid sobs. Aazad was seventeen year old when
he was killed, she adds.
From
last sixteen years Saida is in a state of disturbed bereavement - a
mental ailment, her daughter Shakeela informs. "She is under treatment
from past decade but medicines only help in reducing the intensity of
her pain but cannot cure her trauma."
Her
doctor says she is physically fit but psychological she is depressed
and there isn’t much possibility of recovery. “She has reached a stage
now where she is neither ready to forget her past nor she able to accept
the reality of her dead sons,” he says.
Saida,
67, had three sons. At the inception of armed insurgency in Jammu and
Kashmir, her sons Bilal and Ayoub hailing from Bandipora decided to join
militant outfits in 1990. “For
about four years both of them were actively involved in militancy,”
Shakeela says. However, in August 1994, Ayoub was killed in an
encounter at Kursu. “There was around more than ten bullets in his
chest. We received his bullet ridden body from Bandipora police
station,” she says.
That
was the beginning of Saida’s mental illness. After Ayoub’s death, she
forced Bilal to quit the militant ranks. “But he refused and only three
months after Ayoub’s death, army arrested and killed him at Koyal
Muqaam,” says Shakeela.
Saida was distraught; her only hope was her youngest son Aazad. But Aazad at that time was training with the militant ranks in Pakistan administered Kashmir. “My mother after the death of her two sons started spending her days waiting for his third son’s return,” says Shakeela. Her wait ended with the news of Aazad’s death while he was crossing the Line of Control.
Aazad’s
death paralyzed Saida mentally. “My old father was shattered after he
shouldered the coffin of my third brother. There was nobody left in our
house to take responsibility. We were facing the wrath of conflict and
there was no source of income. To earn a living became hard,” says
Shakeela.
In
1995, Saida’s husband Abdullah Bhat sensing the vacuum married Shakeela
to Riyaz Ahmad Lone. Riyaz, a laborer, quickly filled the vacuum and
supported the family for more than a year. “I was pregnant in 1996 and
he also joined a militant outfit and a year later was killed in an
encounter near LoC,” says Shakeela.
Lone’s
death added to their agony. Saida lost the capacity to hear. "My father
developed heart complications but to run the house he started working
again and after five years he died of a cardiac attack,” she says.
The
family since Abdullah’s death has been living in abject poverty. As
Saida leaves the graveyard, she says with a sigh, “I do not know am I
most fortunate mother or most unfortunate mother in the world. Almighty
bestowed me four sons including my son in law but they all got killed. I
am waiting for the moment when I will close my eyes forever and will be
together with my sons in heaven.”(Kashmir Dispatch)