There was an old woman in the village of Aishmuqam, near Islamabad, south of Srinagar, who kept silent for months on end after her son, Suhail Ahmad Bhat (Sonny to his friends), was shot to pieces by soldiers. He was outside buying milk and was shot dead. His broken body was found in pieces, from all of the bullets, in a pool of red blood and white milk.

 I remember that day, how she kept crying and crying. I tried to console her, I did, but she didn’t want affection from me, Zamir, her Sonny’s best friend. We sat on the floor in a room inside her house. Men were in one room and women sitting in the other. We could hear the women, wailing and wailing. We, his friends, the men, say nothing and are silent. I remember Ghulam Nabi Dar, one of our best friends, who still lives in Aishmuqam, and works as a primary school teacher, moved his prayer beads, beating, one-by-one, the name of Allaha-kerim. His eyes begin filling with tears and he stops when the tears fall on the prayer beads. The ladies were wailing and we, his best friends were sitting on the floor in circle in silence looking at the ground with guilt. It’s strange when someone so close to you dies. You blame yourself, even if it’s not your fault.

You think of all the things you should have said. You imagine trying to save him. And you even wish it was you who died and not them. We were sitting there, each of us looking into our own guilty minds thinking how we could have saved Sonny and how it should have been us, and not him who was shot dead.

 Ghulam puts the prayer beads down and holds his face. Tears are streaming down and I’m thinking that the image in his mind where he saves Sonny must have stopped and he realises that it’s too late and Sonny’s dead. I take off my glasses. My throat is aching and I wish I could cry but I can’t. I don’t know why. God, I don’t know why.

 The rain starts falling. Gently at first, before the skies open and rain falls down so much that it feels as though were in a cave under a water fall as drops of rain fall through the open window in the living room where we’re sitting. I look at Ghulam’s tears as they drip out under his hands that are holding his face and I look at the rain falling down and I think whether it must be a good sign if rain falls down during a funeral. Perhaps, Sonny is telling us not to cry and not to feel guilty about not being there for him and not being able to save him. I look at the rain and I’m thinking this and trying to smile because I wish it’s true, but inside of me, I can’t stop this guilt I’m feeling. I put my arm around Ghulam and tell him not to cry and to say a prayer for Sonny.
 
 An hour later the rain stops. Sonny is buried and although we think of him, our lives move on. I leave Aishmuqam a few months later to start my PhD at Cambridge in England and only return to my ancestral village now and again. Ghulam gets married and takes up the job as the primary school teacher in Aishmuqam. Almost seven years pass, and I’m working as a research fellow in the United States. It’s the 5th of July 2010 and I’m writing a paper for a conference in Hyderabad and it’s going slowly. I hear the sound of rain from the open window in my office room in Cleveland Ohio, and my mind goes back to that day in Aishmuqam when Soohail Ahmad Bhat (Sonny) was shot dead as he was walking outside to buy milk for his mother. I remember my friend, Sonny, and I take off my glasses and rest my forehead on my arms which are folded on my desk, in front of my computer. The rain falls down outside and in my mind I think of my old friend, Sonny, and I start to cry.

Lastupdate on : Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST