Red Maize

By Danesh Rana

'A compelling story that paints a troubled land in magical colours' - Anees Salim                            

'Under the shadow of guns, a terrible beauty is born beside the fields of ripe maize and the gurgling mountain streams ...
Red Maize chronicles the human tragedy that lies at the heart of the Kashmir conflict' - Rakhshanda Jalil

'A gripping novel on the dark days of militancy - blood and cordite, the overhang of terror and the sorrow of mothers' - Keki N. Daruwalla

The old, who had seen peaceful times, rightly predicted, 'So much blood will seep through our land that someday we will have red kernels of maize instead of yellow. The day is not far when the hills will start to grow red maize, season after season.' As gun-toting militants of the Tanzeem swarm the hills of Morha Madana by the river Chenab, the joys of the harvesting season leach out of that once-idyllic village. Terrorists take over in the name of azadi, commanding, in equal measure, respect and fear from the villagers. Drawn by their call to jihad, Shakeel, second of the widow Kausar Jan's three sons, becomes Morha Madana's first mujahid - and, soon enough, the Tanzeem's dreaded area commander. Back in the Indian Army camp in the village, Major Rathore decides that Shakeel's decimation is his ticket back to a peace station and an impending marriage that awaits him in Jaipur. And Kausar Jan, like Kashmir itself, is caught in the crossfire between the militants and the army, even as the maize crops in her backyard are stained with the blood of her sons. Red Maize is a searing chronicle of the relentless siege of Kashmir, of the human cost of war, and of a way of life, forever lost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Oct 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9789351772477

Danesh Rana

Danesh Rana is a servingIndian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Jammu and Kashmir cadre. He iscurrently ADGP – Coordination, PHQ, Jammu and Kashmir. He is the author of Red Maize (2015), which was awarded theTata Literature Live First Book Award, Fiction.

Book preview

One

The Home Coming

Kausar Jan shifts uneasily under her blanket in the middle of the night. She can hear the trail of barking dogs grow louder and louder. Pulling the blanket over her face, she tries to muffle the noise outside. Suddenly the barking stops and an ominous silence wraps itself around her house. The mujahids are at her doorstep.

There is a distinct pattern to the barking of the street dogs these days. If they bark from different directions, the sleeping village of Morha Madana infers it as the movement of the army; the soldiers always move in from multiple directions—in separate bands of straight arrows, single files and sparrow formations. The mujahids, on the other hand, move in smaller groups, at a reasonable distance from each another. They often carry scraps of meat in their gun pouches and toss these at the barking dogs to silence them. In the shadow of the ubiquitous guns, the only creatures to venture out in the night are soldiers, mujahids and dogs.

‘Ya Khudaya, reham kar!’ Oh God, be merciful! Kausar Jan murmurs under her breath as she hears the rapping of knuckles on her front door. She starts to tremble as the knocks grow louder and more insistent. She knows the knuckles have been replaced with the barrel of a gun. She crawls out from under her blanket and adjusts the dupatta on her head. Then, taking cautious, measured steps to the door and half opening it, she peers into the darkness. The door is at once roughly pushed open and two men enter. One of them immediately padlocks it from inside.

‘Aslamwalekum, Ammi,’ a familiar voice resonates in the darkness of the room.

‘Shakeel!’ Kausar Jan exclaims. A mother does not need light to recognize her own son, not even after three long years of agonizing separation. ‘Piece of my heart, where have you been all these years? Did you not care to even know if your mother was alive or dead?’ she cries. Tears well in her eyes as she reaches out to kiss her son’s forehead. As she holds him in a loving embrace, the heaviness of gun magazines and the roundness of grenades stuffed inside Shakeel’s gun pouch press against her chest.

Kausar Jan leads Shakeel and his accomplice to the living room. She lights the kerosene lamp and places it on the mantlepiece. The burning wick glows softly enough not to stream out of the window and arouse suspicion. Next to the lamp, an old black-and-white sepia-toned photograph of Kausar Jan and her late husband comes to life. It had been taken immediately after their marriage; a fact apparent from the shyness on the young woman’s face and the proud karkuli cap donned by her man. Next to the photograph, the holy Quran rests on a walnut wood-stand with Kausar Jan’s rosary lying over it.

Shakeel sits on a crumpled blanket with the Kalashnikov resting in his lap. Kausar Jan notices him furtively appraise the room. She watches him stare at the wall where a picture of the grand mosque of Mecca hangs. ‘In your absence, I was unable to take care of the house,’ she says regretfully, looking at the green paint peeling off the walls and the tattered carpet on the floor. She watches Shakeel register the row of colourful bolsters resting against the side wall, the only new addition to the room. In a corner, three tin boxes are stacked one over the other. They have always been placed like that, for as long as Shakeel can remember.

‘This is Abu Hamza, a new soldier of Islam,’ Shakeel introduces his accomplice to his mother.

The stranger sits with an emotionless, inscrutable face under his Afghan pakol cap. Abu Hamza has a cherubic face that has not seen more than sixteen summers. The sparse beard on his chin looks as if it has never been touched by a razor. His green Khan suit looks darker with the layer of grime on it. A leather bandolier sashay, strung with fierce looking bullets, shines in all its metallic magnificence across his chest. In his front pocket, he carries a Motorola wireless set with a long antenna. A water bottle hangs from the web belt slung around his midriff.

‘He is your fourth son, Ammi,’ Shakeel says seriously.

Kausar Jan reaches out to tousle Hamza’s head and gives him all her heartfelt blessings: ‘Allah will give you a long life, my son.’ She tries to ignore the ineffable fear that gnaws at her soul as she looks at the dreadful Pika gun with its drum magazine resting by his side.

She wills herself to change her train of thought and focus on her son. Kausar Jan scans his rugged face, now obscured by a fist-length beard hanging from his chin. The pajama of his Khan suit has been fastened above his belly button, exposing his bare ankles. His fake Nike shoes are crusted with slush and mud, telling the silent tale of his journeys through inhospitable terrains. His eyes glow bright under his bushy brows and her eyes rest on the familiar black mole under his right eyelid.

‘Abu Hamza is from Multan; the brave mothers of Pakistan who don’t hesitate to give up their sons for jihad have already earned their deserved place in jannat,’ Shakeel says proudly.

‘Aameen,’ Kausar Jan nods in approval. So be it!

Kausar Jan has seen mujahids before. She has seen them cradling their guns in their laps, and she has also seen them dead, their thinly-attended corteges sombrely walking to the village graveyard. She had always thought that mujahids were the sons of mothers she was not acquainted with. Now, after seeing her own son with a gun, a feeling of great guilt rises in her heart. ‘Somewhere, I must have failed in my duties in raising my son,’ she thinks.

She rouses herself from her quiet grief and vanishes behind a floral curtain hanging over a narrow door. Slowly climbing the wooden steps leading to the attic, she wakes up her eldest son, Khalid.

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Khalid stumbles down from the attic and follows his mother into the living room, rubbing his eyes with disbelief. When he comes face to face with his lost brother, she can tell he is trying to imagine him as he once was. He is not visibly overawed by his brother’s Kalashnikov; it is his beard that surprises him. None of the men in their family has ever worn a beard. Their father had looked handsome clean-shaven, and his sons, naturally, were not expected to be any different.

After an uneasy silence of a few minutes, Shakeel breaks the ice. ‘Meet Hamza—Abu Hamza from Pakistan, he is my bodyguard; look at his Pika gun! Now, this will make the Indian dogs run with their tails between their legs, pissing in their camouflage pants!’ Shakeel smirks.

Abu Hamza looks at Khalid and smiles wanly. He runs his hand over the barrel of his Pika gun. The metal feels cold against the skin of his callused palm.

‘Abu Hamza, hmm and what are you called—Abu Jindal, Abu Qari, Bomber Khan or Tiger Mujahid?’ Khalid refers mockingly to the various aliases the mujahids were known to adopt. ‘Ghazi Baba, Jaanbaaz Bhai or Crush India?’

Shakeel slips into silence and fidgets with his gun, a little sheepishly. He was expecting a better reception from his older brother after all these years.

‘Brother, sit with us, we are not going to be here for long,’ Shakeel smiles and tries to placate Khalid.

‘Mujahids are not destined to survive for long anyway,’ Khalid retorts acidly.

Shakeel is not used to listening to such jibes. As the area commander of the tanzeem (terrorist outfit), he gives orders that no one dare refuse. ‘It is better to die one death of a shaheed than die every day trying to live,’ Shakeel says in a slightly raised voice.

‘We live a life of dignity and your guns do not intimidate me, we get to see those toys every day,’ Khalid retaliates and moves towards the door to leave the room.

Kausar Jan immediately gets up and grabs Khalid by his arm. ‘There cannot be a worse sight for a mother than to see her sons argue like this,’ she says. Though her eyes dance with the happiness of seeing her lost son after three years, she is saddened to see the brothers spar. Unlike in their childhood, when she could dispense justice to her squabbling sons, tonight she cannot arbitrate.

‘The army camp is just a mile away from here,’ Khalid provokes his brother further, warning him of the imminent danger.

‘Now that is what I have come here for. My brother trekking up the hill to inform the army about my presence in my house,’ Shakeel says angrily.

‘For Allah’s sake, don’t fill your mother’s heart with pain. Where has all the love between you brothers gone?’ Kausar Jan laments. She is reminded of the army camp and suddenly starts to fear for the security of her son and his accomplice. She gets up to ensure that the door has been firmly padlocked. She lowers the glow of the lantern, as if trying to hide her mujahid son from all possible danger. A little later, she orders Khalid to follow her into the kitchen.

Shakeel’s anxiety is apparent after his brother’s insinuations about the army camp. He gets up from the blanket and steps towards the only window in the room. Parting the curtain slightly, he peers outside. Up in the sky, he sees the moon lurking behind the wandering clouds, and around the house, the maize crop sways gently in the breeze. He makes a mental map of the escape routes from the house in case of a raid or a cordon.

Kausar Jan and Khalid then emerge from the kitchen. In her hands, she balances three plates and a bowl of butter. Khalid carries the steaming samovar and porcelain cups.

‘Had I known you and Abu Hamza were to come tonight, I would have slaughtered a goat,’ Kausar Jan says happily, placing the plates in front of them. She spoons out butter from the bowl and spreads it over the maize bread. Shakeel and Abu Hamza eat gladly, as if they have been hungry for years. Khalid eats a few morsels reluctantly and continues to look restless. The two brothers don’t talk for a while.

‘How is Firdous? Does he still cry in the dark?’ Shakeel asks about his younger brother, helping himself to some more butter from the bowl.

‘Aha! Firdous, the noor of my eye, he is in the tenth standard now, he is a big boy,’ Kausar Jan smiles benignly.

‘Firdous studies in Doda and does not hide in caves and forests with death hovering over his head all the time,’ Khalid interjects.

The word ‘death’ ushers a great melancholy into the dimly lit room, which smells of butter and ammunition. It’s true; death can come to anyone, anytime and anywhere—uninvited, untimely, uncalled-for.

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After the untimely death of her husband, Kausar Jan had resolved to raise her sons to become loving brothers and good Muslims. Firdous was still a toddler and little Shakeel had soon forgotten that he had ever been cuddled in the strong arms of his father. However, the memory of his father’s dead body being carried to the village graveyard had stayed with Khalid for a long time.

The three-tiered terrace field, lined with pomegranate trees, had become Kausar Jan’s lifeline. Year after year, she would tend to the maize crop as if she were raising another child. When the summer rains heralded the maize season, she would meticulously plough the wet earth and smoothen it with a wooden plank. After sowing the seeds, she would eagerly wait for the tender saplings to sprout. As the days passed, and the first green tassels appeared, she would have a tough time running after her sons to stop them from plucking the white flowers. ‘Maize is all that we have,’ she would reprimand them.

At the end of four months, the grain ripened and the maize plants were cut down with sickles. After a few days, the ears of maize were cut from their stalks and stacked in the verandah in small heaps for threshing. Kausar Jan would beat the heaps with a long stick. Her sons would join in with their cricket bats amidst a lot of laughter and tomfoolery. They would then separate the last few kernels of grain with their thumbs. The maize was then collected in sacks and carried to the watermill for grinding. The watermill, housed in a small room, stood on the banks of a small brook that ran along the periphery of the village.

Alongside the thriving maize crop in Kausar Jan’s compound, her three sons too grew into strapping lads. She would watch her older boys go to the village school, climbing up the hill with their satchels swinging from their arms. While doing the household chores, she would hum songs to Firdous lying in his crib. The lives of the brothers revolved around their Ammi—they would please her and tease her and make her run after them. When squabbles broke out between the brothers, she would dispense justice, becoming the harbinger of peace.

When the mother reckoned it was Shakeel’s fault, she would side with Khalid and they would jokingly threaten to carry the defaulter to the jungle and leave him there in the thickets. Khalid would tease Shakeel further, ‘And in the jungle, the leopard will come stealthily and gobble you up like his favourite dish.’ The young Shakeel would cry and hug his mother, refusing to leave her side. The fear of the jungle stayed with him for quite some time. Ironically, Shakeel would later live in the jungle and become its undisputed leopard on the prowl, looking to gobble up the kaafirs.

Normally, the boys in the village did not study beyond primary school. They would then go on to work as porters or labourers at road construction sites or the gypsum mines. Shakeel and his brother had followed the trend. In the summers, the two brothers joined the other village boys and trekked up the hill to reach the green meadows around Parvati Kund—the highest peak in the mountains towering over Morha Madana. There, they would look for the elusive gucchis—the famous morchella mushrooms of the mountains. It was said that one needed to have great luck to spot the gucchis; otherwise one could search for them endlessly without any success. The lucky ones would sell these gucchis to vegetable vendors in the bazaar of Doda for small profits. The Himalayan gucchis, painstakingly gathered by the locals, would finally reach the exquisite cuisines of luxury hotels.

Life in the village went on peacefully, season after season, until one summer, everything began to change.

The call for azadi resonating in Kashmir crossed over to the mountains of Doda, to sweep village after village, with a bloody price tag attached to it. The mountain chain overlooking the village of Morha Madana proved to be an ideal spot for the mujahids to take refuge.

That summer, gun-toting mujahids were all over the hills—in the dhokes, the natural caves, tents and everywhere beneath the vast, blue sky. There were long-nosed Kashmiris and Pakistanis; there were Afghans, Lebanese and Turks. There were even the occassional, thick-lipped, curly-haired men from Africa. Two were from Chechnya—a country no one had even heard about.

In due course, the mujahids started to knock on the doors of the villages and hamlets down the hills. Initially, the villagers welcomed them with great jubilation. It was believed that the houses that received the knock of the mujahids were chosen by Allah himself to host His sons. The women of these fortunate houses would break into wuwan—the wedding songs—and the delectable aroma of spices and mutton would fill their kitchens. Sheep were slaughtered and the exquisite cuisine of wazwan was laid out on the finest floral sheets. When the mujahids knelt, looking west to offer the namaaz, many men of the village joined them. The mujahids became the indisputable heroes of legendary stories of valour and sacrifice.

One such renowned story was that of Akbar Bhai.

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All of six feet and six inches, Akbar Bhai was a Pathan from the ‘Village of Warriors’ on the outskirts of Kabul. He carried a Light Machine Gun (LMG) on his back, famed to have been looted from the Indian Army when he was operating for the tanzeem in the border district of Kupwara. Akbar Bhai became an instant hero for the young boys. Whenever he sauntered lazily into the village, the boys would run after him shouting, ‘Tera Bhai, Mera Bhai … Akbar Bhai, Akbar Bhai!’ Your brother, my brother … Akbar Bhai, Akbar Bhai. Stories of his great courage became folklore in the village households. How he had killed six Indian soldiers with his bare hands, strangling them to death; how he had snatched the LMG of a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), and how he had run laughing through an apple orchard, under the flurry of gunfire. It was said that while fighting in Afghanistan, he had neutralized three Russian tanks and dragged them with his teeth on the dusty streets and squares of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Khalid had heard about Akbar Bhai from a former classmate who lived in the upper part of Morha Madana. He had instantly started to revere him and nurtured a great desire to meet his hero. On the day his chance came, Kausar Jan had not been at home. Shakeel had accompanied him with little Firdous in his arms. Akbar Bhai had stood in the maize field, eagerly shaking hands with the village boys and blessing them in Pashto. ‘Mashallah,’ Akbar Bhai had rejoiced when he saw Firdous and had pulled his chubby cheeks. He made Firdous stand on his shoes and challenged him to touch his beard. He was so tall that Firdous’ tender hands remained far away from the nest of his beard that dropped all the way from his chin to his chest. That had triggered lots of laughter all around and Khalid had been truly impressed. Finally, Akbar Bhai had picked up Firdous in his arms, kissing his cheeks and letting the child stroke his thick beard.

The boys of the village were greatly fascinated by the mujahids. They wanted to become like them—hold guns, kill Indian soldiers and get benediction in paradise. ‘Encounter-Encounter’, was a new game invented in the village. The boys would take turns at being mujahids and Indian soldiers. They would hide behind the boulders, crawl under the shrubs and disappear behind the trunks of trees. Cricket bats would masquerade as Kalashnikovs and the encounter would begin. The mujahids would emerge victorious and kill all the Indian soldiers. Then the roles would get reversed. Somehow, Shakeel and Khalid always ended up in rival teams. They killed each other, many times over.

But soon, the dark side of jihad began to unfold. The demands of the mujahids increased day by day—food, shelter and women. Young men were often picked up and used as porters, couriers and guides. Money was extorted on one pretext or the other. ‘The mujahids are collecting money for constructing new mosques in the villages and people must donate generously,’ was the diktat. ‘The money is required for the well-being of the families of our fallen brothers.’

The hapless people of Morha Madana could admit only in their private comfort that, ‘It is a fasaad and not a jihad.’ It is a riot and not the holy war.

Where there are guns, the temptation to use them is immense, and bloodshed is not far behind. A retired school-master was shot dead for making too many visits to the police. A Gujar was beheaded for refusing to let a mujahid sleep with his young daughter. Two Hindus who lived in the periphery of the village were kidnapped and after a few days, their bullet-riddled bodies were recovered from the jungles. Fear loomed large all around and the Hindu families of Morha Madana started to migrate in small groups to safer areas. Soon, the nondescript village of Morha Madana was marked as highly sensitive on the maps of the agencies fighting against the tanzeem.

One fine day, scores of soldiers arrived in the village. The first company post was set up in the abandoned houses of the Hindus and these were further reinforced with fabricated structures and tents. The whole complex was circuited with spirals of concertina wire and sand bunkers were set up at regular intervals. More blood started to get spilled. Three soldiers from the Madras Regiment, on a long-range patrol, were killed in a high intensity blast caused by an Improvised Explosive Device. Three unidentified, decomposed bodies were recovered in the meadows. The bodies of two young girls of the village were found in the brook. Blood was all over the place—on the blades of grass, the buds of summer flowers, the twigs of pomegranate plants, the boughs of the impassive pine trees and the leaves of the maize.

Then came the day that a mujahid fell.

Akbar Bhai was killed in the barn of an isolated house. He had hidden in the manger and covered himself with hay when the suspected complex was cordoned off and stormed. Under siege, for all his bravery, Akbar Bhai was trembling in his shalwar, and his LMG did not come to his rescue. Amidst great jubilation from the soldiers, the dead body was extracted, placed on a charpoy and paraded through Morha Madana. The dismembered body, with its limbs dangling off the sides of the cot, shocked the villagers. The local maulvi recited the last prayers to offer fatiah for the slain as the body was thrown into the mighty Chenab, bestowing upon him a watery grave.

Khalid had stood on the sidelines with other village boys to watch Akbar Bhai’s corpse being carried out. The scene would remain etched in his memory for a long time. One day, on his return from an ‘encounter-encounter’ game, Khalid announced to his mother, ‘I want to become a mujahid.’

‘Ya Khudaya … what ill luck has befallen us!’ Kausar Jan lamented. The very next day, she took her three sons to the Ziyarat of Baba Ghulam Baksh—miles away from the village, on a different hillock—to beg forgiveness for her son’s foolish wish. In deep repentance, she swept the floors of the Ziyarat complex, watered the plants and donated money to the crippled beggars, trying to avert the sin caused by Khalid’s words. She made Khalid vow that he would never again utter his desire to become a mujahid. After laying a chador on the revered grave, she donated hundred and one rupees and prayed for the well-being of her three sons.

‘Let no harm, no pain, no grief ever touch the three pieces of my heart. If the Almighty ever decides to punish them, let him bring those sufferings to me instead,’ Kausar Jan had silently prayed while her sons played on the steps leading to the holy grave.

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Kausar Jan pours some more tea from the samovar to fill the empty cups. She can feel the tension between her sons. In order to ease things she says jocularly, ‘We are looking for a beautiful bride for Khalid and after the month of Ramzan we will bring home his begum.’

Khalid blushes and does not say a word.

‘Inshallah! I hope he calls his mujahid brothers for the feast,’ Shakeel smiles.

Kausar Jan looks pleased to know of Shakeel’s desire to attend his brother’s marriage. She smiles lovingly at the childish way in which he licks the butter off his fingers. Suddenly, Abu Hamza’s radio vibrates; he turns the knob and mutters, ‘Akhrot Point, Roger!’ and makes eye-contact with his commander.

‘Ammi, Abu Hamza would love to visit again, for the bowl of butter if not for Khalid’s welcome,’ Shakeel says, washing his hands in