The Press Colony
I arrive on a domestic flight from Delhi to Srinagar during Ramadan in 2018, registering as a foreigner three times, palms sweating and grateful that I am travelling separately from my filmmaker friend. It is illegal for foreigners to film in Kashmir. The questions on the migration forms are simple enough; each time, I wonder if it will be the last, pulling my luggage alongside me. My cell phone has no signal. International phone plans do not work in Kashmir.
The prepaid taxi stall is staffed by a man with a long beard. The sun beats down on me as I hand him my credit card. “This is Kashmir; we take cash only,” he says, and I give him a wad of bills. His tone is curt as if he wants to say – Why are you here as a tourist when we live under occupation?
Seven years before, I’d visited Srinagar, and on my very first evening, as a friend arrived to meet me, Srinagar’s head of surveillance pointed me out, saying, “Your friend from California is waiting for you.” He wanted me to know that I was being watched. Apparently, being a storyteller posed a threat to the world’s largest democracy. India deploys roughly 700,000 armed forces in Kashmir, making it one of the world’s most densely militarized zones.
This trip, I take precautions not to draw too much attention to myself. Nobody knows that I am coming and bringing a filmmaker. My hotel is just behind the lake, a small enclave for tourists. After I select my hotel room, a wood lacquered suite on the third floor with a view of the mountain (the price increases by floor), I take care of my first order of business: getting my cell working. Heading down a dusty street with three-story houses carved with ornate shutters and tarps hanging over rooftops, I stop at a small stand selling plastic nicknacks, newspapers and peanuts. “Do you sell SIM cards?” I ask.
The men shake their heads. “No, not here, but wait, wait madam.” A man pulls out his phone talking in Kashmiri. After he hangs up and no SIM card materializes, I start to walk away. “Wait, madam. Soon.” The sun draws sweat along my neck as I stand against the wall of the building on the dirt road. A few minutes later a man arrives on a motorcycle and rolls up the metal gate of his storefront. We try several domestic SIM cards, but none work. How am I going to survive in the city without a working cell?
I return to the hotel lobby, the only place I can get Wi-Fi, and message my Kashmiri friends on Facebook. I am in town. Can we meet? Back home such a message would get a – I’d love to, but we are in Tahoe for the weekend, or I have a board meeting tonight or the kids have soccer. It is a gamble to arrive during Ramadan unannounced. My timing wins. All my friends are in town and simply say, Yes, let’s meet.
After supper, I stroll around Daal Lake, during golden hour. The lily pads are dappled in light as men paddle shikara boats against an orange sky. Larger houseboats docked at the other side of the lake tote signs – Free Breakfast & Wifi. Men lean close when they walk down the street, holding hands at times, an intimacy foreign to American men. Indian women tourists, clad in fuchsia, turquoise, and yellow salwars, clutch their husbands and take photos with the lake as a backdrop, the military checkpoint across the road, conveniently left out of the frame.
A blue scarf winds around my neck and head – foreign with a twist. My dirty sneakers are a true giveaway that I do not belong, a Desi, born abroad. I walk a bit slower, fully upright, face slack, shoulders back, trying to deflect the stares from the clusters of men on the street.
I give you very cheap ride, Madam. Best hashish. You want opium? Come to my boat, I give you nice massage. Madam.
Their voices bleed into one another. I snap a photo of the checkpoints and barbed wire glistening at sunset.
During the night, dogs howl as melodic prayers pierce the night. At 2 am the orange moon fills my window. In the morning, I dress in shades of blue, more like the ocean than the sky. These are mountain people that may never know the shades of blue of the sea. Jetlagged at breakfast, I devour my omelette and paratha. The hotel owner gives me a local phone, concerned for my safety as a foreign woman traveling alone.
After making several local calls, I tell the hotel owner that I am going shopping and take a rickshaw to meet a friend. I have been advised against telling the hotel owner, where I go, with whom I meet. He will call me each day, checking in on what I’m doing, when I’m returning. After I leave, his phone will be turned over to the security forces. Though I had it wiped clean, the memory will be recovered. Anyone I called will be taken in for questioning.
The yellow-and-black rickshaw bumps over the narrow road, swerving between a bicycle and dog and then drops me off at the Press Colony. As I hand the driver money he says, “May God protect you.” Chills vibrate down my spine.
The Press Colony, which started as a residential living space for British officials under Dogra rule, eventually housed the Press Information Bureau in the 1950s. During the militancy of the 1990s the government had journalists report from the colony, consolidating the media. The Press Colony is a series of crumbling buildings lined with barbed wire. As I enter, a press conference is in progress on a narrow street. Three men hold a banner, which I cannot read. A few members of the media film and photograph the signs.
When I spoke to my friend earlier, he said, Call when you arrive. I can come out and meet you. But since we spoke, another friend warned me against using the hotel owner’s local phone, saying, Best not to use it unless you really need to. Figuring it shouldn’t be too hard to find his office, I head down the road past the press conference. Eyes stick to me like thistles. Foreign. Woman. My head is covered in a turquoise dupatta, but I have neither skill nor craft in wearing a headscarf. The cotton rides up sloppily, allowing whisps of my long brown hair to slip out. I ask a small cluster of men where the offices for the international paper are. Straight down and to the right. I go to the end of the alley, but there is nowhere to turn right. The road is blocked by a gate with guard stations on both sides, inside are helmeted soldier, AK47 in hand.
I walk back down the lane, the press conference has ended, so, I ask a man standing by the sidewalk. Days after I return to California, a senior report will be assassinated just feet from this spot that we are standing. I will google images of the murdered reporter. He will resemble this man giving me direction. His round brown face, the clean moustache. The glasses. Shujaat Bukhari will be gunned down on the eve of Eid. He will be killed on the same day that the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commission releases its first report on Kashmir. The report urges that the past and ongoing human rights violations in Kashmir be addressed, so that justice can be brought forth for all the Kashmiri people who have been suffering seven decades of conflict.
Shujaat Bukhari’s last tweet will be India rejects UN report. His bodyguards will be shot dead in a pool of their own blood.
The man with glasses and a thin moustache gives me the exact same instructions. Down the road to the right. How could I have missed the turn? I thank him for the directions and head toward the gate, the only possible place to go. There is a small opening that I can slip through. Heeding the directions, I don’t shrink next to the men with machine guns and camo gear, I walk through the narrow opening that gives way to another group of buildings.
Two men sit on the stoop outside of a building, chatting. I ask for my friend, and they nod me inside, as if this were normal to have soldiers in the middle of the press colony, cleaving the international press from the local papers.
It’s dark inside the building and I see my friend, sitting quietly at his desk, wearing a long sleave cream kurta. The light on his desk cast orbs that shine in his glasses. We speak of our mothers. Both have metastatic cancers, but he is caretaking his mother. Living by her side. “It’s an honour,” he says. Hand feeding her, moving her around, because being with him makes her happy. It is years now, that she is so ill and living with him. Four days he is with her, three days at the office. He works weekends. At home, he works with his laptop out and he sits by her. “I love working on the ground,” he says. “I am an open book.”
The pressures of reporting on your own conflict and taking care of an elderly parent must be overwhelming. It must at time feel like the walls are suffocating. “You must travel,” I say. “Get away from all that you are taking care of. Five days is all you need.” It has been my medicine these last few years. The weight of caregiving weighing heavy on me. The sudden surge of disappearing from home and entering another landscape a welcome balm.
He nods. “Yes, some time I will go.” He is wise, gentle and somewhat formal. It has been seven years since we’ve seen each other. He is fasting. It is Ramadan. “Why did you come during Ramadan?” he asks, disappointed that we can’t share a meal.
I shrug, unable to explain the intricacies of planning this trip. It had to be the right slice of time that worked for me and my partner filmmaker – which needed to coincide with when my mother would be healthy enough for me to be away. An uncalculatable risk. A sliver of time that my father could watch my twin daughters and that I would return for their graduation from elementary school. “I am glad to be here with you,” I say, feeling blessed with the timing.
Our visit is short and treasured. “Call me with whatever you need,” he says. “No matter how late, I always answer the phone.” It is his promise of protection. We say goodbye, and I find my way back to the city centre.
Srinagar by Day, Srinagar by Night
Another Friday Night
In other parts of the world on Friday nights, what do young men do? Grease or comb their hair, slap on perfume or cologne, travel to clubs to dance to techno or Reggaeton. There will be shots fired in these towns, too. Young men armed with guns, shooting each other. But here, in Srinagar, Kashmir – Friday nights are different. Boys pelt stones at soldiers on Friday nights. The Indian occupying forces are mostly young men too, armed with machine guns, so far from their home.
The azan sounds, summoning people to prayer at the old mosque in the city centre. I avoid the mosque in the old city on Friday and return to my hotel. The photos arrive via an encrypted Ap, Signal.
The sunset is fire. An army vehicle drives through the protest gathered outside of the old mosque. The crowd pounds on the car, trying to stop it. Tear gas and pellets are fired by the armed forces. In Kashmir, it is legal to use pellet guns on civilians – routine, in fact. In other parts of the world, pellet guns are banned from use on animals. Once the pellets enter the skin, they are often too small to remove surgically.
The indiscriminate shots fired hit four or five people. The pellets will remain in their bodies. The mark of Friday night. The mark of occupation.
This Friday night, Qaiser Amin Bhat, a 21-year-old local artist is killed. In the final image of him alive, his head is visible under the army vehicle, next to the wheel. He was protesting, as he did most Friday nights. The next morning, the paper says that the army vehicle got lost and accidentally drove through the 500 protestors. It was an accident. A foot pressed against metal. A young man fallen. A life extinguished. The night of stone pelting. Where boys throw stones at the army, and some nights the army fires back with bullets, pellets, tear gas.
In the morning, cell service is suspended in Srinagar, or maybe just down, or maybe lines are cut across the entire disputed zone of Indian-occupied Kashmir. Hard to know. We still have internet at the hotel. The resistance leaders call for a general strike to protest the murder of the young man. General strikes are when the separatists call on civilians to protest the occupation by not leaving their homes, businesses close, but tourists still move through the city. On the other hand, curfews are police enforced, requiring everyone to stay inside. If a curfew is called on the day I fly out, I am told to head to the airport by 3 am to reach before daylight. Sometimes, more than a couple of weeks pass without a strike or curfew. Staying home all day without school or work is a part of the rhythm of life in Srinagar. When COVID comes, it will be a lockdown within a lockdown. Most people already have enough food in their homes to last a few months, because they are used to not being able to leave their house for weeks at a time.
How many more Friday nights will young people in Srinagar live under Indian Occupation? Young men will pray. Young men will leave their place of worship. Some young men will hurl stones at the soldiers outside of the mosque. It will be just another Friday night.
