Salma’s father shivered with cold as it was raining outside. He wore a tired look and lazily stroked his unkempt beard. Seated on a wooden bench he began biting his fingernails.  When called in by the doctor he signed the papers with his trembling hand and marked the date (1/12/1991) under his crooked name and waited in the corridor of the hospital, his head hanging low. A cheerful couple came. They greeted Salma’s father and sat next to him.

“What did the doctors say?” asked the woman, rolling up her umbrella.

“God knows better. But they said the case will be normal.” Salma’s father said dully.

“May Allah safeguard both their lives.” The woman and her husband said in unison.

Half an hour later, Salma felt the first piercing pain in her stomach around 3 o’clock. Squirming on the bed, in the dingy labor room in Srinagar hospital, she murmured some verses of the Quran when pain coursed through her whole body. She clenched her fists and craned her neck sometimes right, sometimes left. She knew that, though the pain was sharp, it would relieve her from the longest pain. The longest pain that had been crushing her from within since the day the doctor declared her pregnant. For the last few months Salma had been living as a benumbed soul. But now the sharp pain snapped her out of her deadness and reminded her, for a moment, that she existed.

Salma welcomed the labor pains with a sense of relief. She could hardly wait to get rid of her burden, this child growing in her womb. This child that she considered as a bullet lodged in her chest. She had helplessly wanted it gone but could not get that done. Only pain was the constant companion of her existence through these last months.

The pungent smell of phenyl in the room was nauseating for Salma who was turning and twisting on the lonely bed. She felt dizzy and her body ached. It seemed to her that she was swelling with every minute. Running her right hand over her gravid stomach, she sighed and sobbed.

With every second the pain grew sharper, Salma thought that she would die in a few seconds. It was not only the body that troubled her but also the memories that this physical pain triggered that tormented her. The horror of that dreadful winter night flashed across her mind: The smell of the rum and the chewing tobacco. The expletives the men mouthed and their merciless laughing, her own useless cries and the pain which lasted around an hour. These residues of her devastation which she had not been able to forget. Neither could she forget how desperately she implored them for a breath of air.

As the doctors entered and locked the door from inside, Salma shrunk.  She shivered in fear. She remembered that less than a year earlier those men also locked her room from inside. A tremor of fear shot through her. She quivered and winched… but the presence of a cheerful nurse in the room soothed her.

The seeds of the present throes of pain were sown during that equally painful and soul-shattering experience some nine months ago during that wintry night. It was pain then; it would be pain now. But Salma could distinguish between the two. They had pounced upon her like beasts then, but these people are humans here, in uniforms, her assailants were oppressors, these are saviours, Salma thought to comfort herself. For a moment, the train of her thoughts stopped but the physical pain didn’t relent. She continued to writhe in pain and cried louder and louder.

[restrict …]

The patients and the attendants, in the nearby wards were stirred because Salma’s piercing cries escaped the confines of the labor room. When the fierce pang of pain shot through her, Salma rubbed her feet against the cold bed. She then pulled her hair and dashed her head against the plastic back of the bed. A moment later she fell silent as a stone. The nurse told her to relax and Salma felt the touch of the doctor’s hand on her face.

“Relax and take the long breaths.” said the doctor.

Salma didn’t respond. She turned pale and soughed dismally.

“Which district have you come from?” The nurse asked to see if Salma was coherent.

“Kupwara.” Salma whispered deliriously.

“Can you tell me where you are right now?” the doctor asked breezily.

“Lal Ded haspatalas manz, In Lal Ded Hospital.” Salma whispered.

Both of the doctors and the nurse felt relieved to know that the patient was aware.

“Good! You must know that you are in the top maternity hospital of Kashmir. You have two of our best doctors attending and this senior sister.” The doctor comforted her. “Why should you panic? Keep calm.”

“Doctor saeb dagge seet chum zan zoo nearaan, Doctor! I am dying with pain.” Salma mumbled; her face drenched in sweat.

“Keep patience and push a bit harder. It will soon be over.” The doctor assured her.

Minutes later, Salma pushed, moaned and screamed. She felt her eyesight failed her. Closing her eyes, she clinched her teeth and cringed her face. Her nostrils wavered and her head fell to a side. She dug her fingernails into the flesh of her palms. She felt like someone was, so ruthlessly, pulling out her innards. She was so weltered in sweat that it looked as if she had recently bathed herself. The drops of sweat trickled down her throat. She breathed heavy and inconsistently. Her tongue turned dry and it didn’t move.

Salma then stretched her body, contorted her face and shrieked. But gradually all the accumulated pain inside her slowly trickled out with her tears, and with the blood which flowed between her trembling legs. She dropped her head backward, her eyes closing slowly. A wide grin broke across the face of the doctor when he opened his arms to hold the baby.

‘It is a baby boy.’ He announced and handed him to the nurse.

Ensconced on a sweat-soaked smelling bed in ward number 6 to recuperate, Salma opened her eyes and slowly regained herself. She no longer felt the sharp physical pain but the disturbing recurrent images didn’t escape her mind. Half asleep, she was roused by the nurse who brought over the child to Salma for milk. The baby made no sound and Salma thought that perhaps her wish had been granted and the baby was stillborn after all. But before Salma could celebrate, the baby gave a sharp cry. Salma froze in shock and turned her head away. She cursed both—the child and her wretched self. She didn’t pick the child up. She didn’t want to touch it. She didn’t feed it.

The child laid beside Salma, stretched out on a white sheet, perfectly still, his arms and legs splayed like someone surrendering before soldiers. Salma stealthily looked at its little fingers with their tiny real-life nails. The child’s head was turned to the right side. He was asleep and, in his slumber, he sucked in his little lips. His eyes moved rapidly under their translucent lids. Salma had a strange feeling when she observed the child’s dark long eyelashes and his thatch of dark hair, which was sticky with sweat. She saw that his sharp nose resembled hers. His breathing was rapid and rhythmic, with his little soft tummy rising and falling, up and down, up and down. His little feet stuck up in the air motionless.

To Salma, the child was simply a nameless little being, who after nine months had come out of her body. Nothing more than that. She felt relieved, that her entire past has spilled out of her body with this child. She felt so light as if she could get up that moment and walk away with no burden. She scowled her face and sighed. But out of an abrupt volition, she again turned her head aside, and a few droplets welled out of her almond-shaped eyes. She didn’t know why she wanted to look at the child once again but she seesawed between yes and no. She was being hounded, ripped apart by numberless pairs of opposing emotions war and peace, love and hate, revenge and forgiveness, life and death. However, she ended up stealing a few more glances.

As she was looking at the little creature sleeping, a murderous thought flickered in her mind. She recalled a scene from a movie she had happened to watch, soon after the doctors had announced her pregnancy. She closed her eyes and remembered the villain of the movie, who entered a room and found a little baby sleeping. The villain picked up the pillow and placed it over the baby. The baby had blonde hair; Salma remembered. The villain pressed the pillow down on the baby, covering it completely. After about five minutes it was over and the baby died.

When she opened her eyes, she looked at the child lying beside her. “I too could do the same thing to this child. Yes, I can.” Salma thought. “Press down and it would all be over in a second, both my suffering and my father’s.” The baby was sleeping peacefully so Salma was sure he would not feel even a little pain. Then she stretched her hand under his clothes and touched the baby, felt the warmth of his skin and saw how his ribcage fluttered with the beating of his heart. As she ran her fingers over the child’s throat Salma abruptly withdrew her hand as if afraid of harming it. No, she could not do it, because she realized that she had seen so much death of youths in the Kashmir, that the very thought of it made her sick.

Salma felt helpless and wished she had died in the place of her mother. She trembled and burst into tears.

Salma fixed her gaze on the hanging bulb, in the ward over her head. She remembered how peaceful her soul-shattering experience night. How her father loved her and never made her feel the necessity of a mother. She had lost her mother, less than a week after she was born. Her father didn’t marry again, thinking that the stepmother could spoil Salma’s life. He himself taught her the Quran and he was perhaps the first parent from the village, who had enrolled his daughter in private school for a better education.

He considered Salma’s proper upbringing his passport to heaven. But life for the father and daughter turned hellish on that fateful night in February when the army launched a operation in twin remote villages of Kashmir where Salma lived. Men were ordered to assemble in the open area and kept on the snow, most of them tortured. Salma’s father was one of them. The other hundred soldiers barged into the houses upon the women. They drank heavily and gang-raped the women― young and old.

Salma was alone at home waiting for her father. They demanded that she unlock the door. Salma shrank to a corner and stood silent, like a little child, afraid. But the army men broke into Salma’s room. They stripped her of her clothes and sprinkled rum on her virgin body. One army man stuffed his gloves into her mouth and all fell upon her, like hungry vulture.

To avoid taunts and barbs of the people, Salma and her father choose not to disclose to anyone, not even to a doctor. But once Salma’s stomach began to swell, they visited a hospital in Srinagar, where a doctor broke the bad news of her pregnancy. The words of the doctor fell like a bomb on Salma and her father. Her father fainted and collapsed to the ground.

The first thought that came to her mind, when Salma realized that she was pregnant was death. This child was condemned to death from the start. It lived only because, by that time, it was already too late for an abortion. She had to carry through her pregnancy to the bitter end, with a swelling stomach that made it impossible for her to move outside her house, because their dignity would have been marred. She never wanted to bring a slur on the fair name of her father. She is not yet married. How can she be pregnant? People would have raised such questions. To safeguard the family honor, Salma’s father decided to send her to his in-laws, so that her swelling stomach doesn’t invite taunts, by the people of his village. He knew how families unscathed by the incident, even in the affected villages, had banned all social contacts with the victim’s families.

It became difficult for parents to get a groom for their daughters under such circumstances.

At one time, Salma’s father had made up his mind that he would kill the child or throw it in some garbage, but due to his religious scruples, he shunned such thoughts. He knew he had to be answerable to God. Then he decided that once the child was delivered, he would give it to a childless couple. He didn’t want the child to grow in the house, a painful memory of oppression.

When he apprised Salma of his decision, first she didn’t speak for a moment but after her father put forth the complexity of the case to her, she nodded. Her love for her father and his honor overcame her emotions. Eventually nothing but animosity for her child developed in her.  Salma often thought it a tumor growing inside with every new day. She had never thought of it as a child, only as a disease, a burden she wished to get rid of.

Conscious of the child’s presence beside her, Salma remembered the dark faces of the army men with bushy moustaches. She always wanted to kill them, the fathers of this child, anonymous and drunk. She didn’t know how many, but here and there she remembered their bloodshot eyes, husky voices, rough hands, the smell, often a stench. Any of them could be the father of the child.

She wanted revenge. She imagined herself mowing the green grass in the apple orchard for cattle around the same area of her village. She pictured that she suddenly caught the sight of a familiar face of an army man. She was sure he was one of them. She walked up to him and stabbed him with the sharp sickle in the abdomen making sure he got a good look at her face first. As the metal plunged into him, the army man bled to death. Salma felt relieved, even happy. She then poked the end of the scythe in the army man’s eyes and finally slit his throat. Salma cried in the fury that justice has prevailed. For a moment she felt she was no longer a victim.

But when the child brushed the arm of Salma. The soft-touch on her skin broke the string of her imaginary revenge. She shuddered and soon realized that she was still helpless and still a victim, just a mass of flesh with the tumor lying beside her.

Salma was also obsessed with a sense of filth. This was another feeling she often had, and it was just as disturbing as her idea of revenge. She looked at her hands, at the dirt under her fingernails. ‘I will never be clean again. No amount of water is enough.’ She thought to herself.

Later, the cheerful adopting couple slowly entered the ward. Salma’s father followed them in. Salma saw them lumbering towards her. The man smiled gently at Salma but she didn’t respond. She looked cold. The woman stood motionless. Salma felt deaf and dumb. “Hope you are feeling good.” Said the man hesitatingly. Salma kept silent. She felt helpless as if her right leg was going to be amputated.

She turned her gaze to her father. She saw that he was standing like a statue. Salma looked at the child who was no longer part of her, whose future doesn’t belong to her. She felt that she was completely divested of any responsibility for him. Though it made her a bit relieved, deep in her heart she felt a strange hollowness. In that instant, she felt glad, that she gave birth to him, that she gave him life, rather than death.

The couple put a thick woollen blanket around the child. The woman lifted it in her arms, with a smile on her face. Salma stirred and felt empty. Her heart skipped a beat. “My Lord, may he live long! And forgive me!” Salma murmured. A few tears rolled down her cheeks. She swallowed a dry breath. Her head whirled. Under the quilt, she rubbed her hands.

“At least I should kiss once on the child’s little hands.” Salma thought to herself. She tried to lift her hand, to hold the child’s tiny pink hands in hers. But her heart was racing fast. She dropped the hand promptly; she didn’t understand why. She vacillated and arrested her emotions. She retrospected asking herself why she didn’t kill herself soon after that incident. She could have taken that extreme step, but she didn’t want to leave her father alone.

The woman turned to Salma and said: “Don’t worry about his future. He is our son now. We will give him a better life to live.”

Salma lowered her head and whimpered. She quizzically looked at her father. He ran his hand on Salma’s head and patted on her shoulder with moist eyes.

There was a long silence.

Then the woman took out a baby bottle from her bag and pushed the nipple into the child’s mouth. The baby pulled away, waving little arms and grimaced. The woman then propped the child against her shoulder and smiled at Salma.

Salma didn’t utter a word as the couple, accompanied by Salma’s father, walked out of the ward. Salma fixed her doleful gaze on the child until the woman reached the door.

When they disappeared from Salma’s sight, she stuffed her mouth with the corner of the pillow-case and broke down. Lying on the bed and fighting with her disturbing chain of thoughts, Salma couldn’t see a reason for her existence. An hour later, Salma felt a sudden pressure in her breasts, her long gown was wet as the milk was flowing. She leaned against the pillow, flustered, not knowing what to do. She took a towel and shoved it under her gown. What is going to happen to this milk now? She wondered.

She ran her hands across her sunken stomach and an empty feeling took her over. She felt she was completely hollow as if someone had stolen her innards. Flashes of her pure and virgin self ran through her mind. She buried her face in her hands as an unending chain of teardrops trickled down her thin wrists and fell on the white cotton sheet. 

Salma felt like some invisible ghost was heckling her with unanswerable questions. “Stop it!… Don’t we have to live in our society? Am l not human? And, yes, l am still chaste and am still a good mother! Only God knows!” She talked to herself, and cried, shaking her arms here and there and pummelling her chest. Frowning she gazed around with bloodshot eyes. Frantically she scratched her face, removed the headscarf and pulled her tangled hair strands until the other patients, attendants and her father rushed to her bed.

When the doctors arrived, she had fallen unconscious. Later, when she slowly opened her eyes, she couldn’t recognize anyone around. She laughed terribly and uttered a long gibberish monologue as everyone looked on stunned. When her father, patting on her head, called her lovingly by her name. She recoiled. “Who are you? Don’t you have your own daughter? I’m a chaste girl. Don’t touch me.” The father tried to remind her who he was but she repeated only one utterance:

“Am I a mother? Hahaha. No, I’m a daughter. I’m a daughter, not a mother.” She laughed feverishly and then wept, contorting her fragile body.

Salma wanted to run and tried to remove the blanket from her naked legs, but the nurse restricted her from doing so. She then held the pillow and cuddled it in her arms and took it near her breast. “My child! Drink my sweet milk.” She sang in a bid to lullaby the pillow to sleep.

A moment later, with her brows knitted in a dreadful frown, she suddenly threw the pillow away. “Bastard! I’m not your mother, am a virgin daughter. Get die somewhere!” she yelled, covering her chest with the scarf. She shrieked and giggled. She stared at everyone with her ghastful look.

For a minute she kept quiet. Then she clenched her fists and narrowed her eyes. As the nurse came nearer to pick the pillow up, Salma spat in her face and broke into a vulgar laugh.

Wiping the wet corners of her mouth, she shouted and spat at the people around her and then crooned, tilting her head right and left.

“I will take revenge. I won’t spare you. Will slit the throats of you all! All of you are the chips of the same old block.!” She said and again burst into senseless laughter.

“Doctor! What’s happening to her?” her father murmured and collapsed on the cold floor.

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