What else had unhinged him …something to do, perhaps, with the gap between our dreams and our realities. John Le Carre

A narrow pagdandi meandered up the sheer south-west face of the looming mountain. Rahman climbed in slow deliberate steps, avoiding the jagged edges, drawing in long even breaths, as oxygen levels kept falling every minute. When he was young, he could scramble up in no time without breaking a sweat. It was nearing Christmas in 1998; in the frozen silence of the mountains, no one (not even the to-be-intruders quietly passing through un-held gaps, building sanghars on heights) could have imagined how the harsh terrain would erupt in a roar of howitzers and mortars, the whirring of choppers, and the roar of fighter jets in the summer. Every half-an-hour, he would sit on a rock to rest and sip gur-gur chai (a salty-buttery concoction) from a floral, red Chinese flask that had probably come in through Dumchele or Demchok travelling from Rebo to Rebo and then to the Leh bazaar.

Every hour, he would chew on a Khambir along with the chai. For his cousin, he carried a gift of a dozen Bakarkhanis, a large packet of sun-dried Halman apricots, and some cash in Pakistani currency. From the main bus stop in Kargil, Rahman had taken the last bus towards Kaksar, getting off near the Kaksar Imam Bargah a short while after crossing Channigund. Initially, he followed the partly frozen eastern bank of Shingo River, and then trudged along a small dry nullah northeastwards higher up into the desolate Kargil heights.

After climbing continuously for four hours, he was close to the mountain top and the AGPL. It was a few days before Amavasya, with just about enough light to walk along a well-trodden path. He had taken care to by-pass the sections under surveillance of permanent Pakistani positions as well as the Indian ones. There was no pagdandi at this height but he climbed surefooted. Then he came upon a near vertical rock face; slightly jutting out above the steep drop on the left, it looked innocent, but hid a secret. A glance back as he turned revealed the mouth of a narrow natural cave. It was an entrance possibly not known to any other human; he had, however, seen a few droppings of Ibex and Purgis inside. It was a longish through-cave opening on the Gilgit-Baltistan side.

Once inside the tunnel-like cave, he slowly found his way in the light of a small torch the officer from Mulbek had given him and sat down to rest in a throne-like niche in the wall; it was freezing cold but he was one with the mountains. There, on one side of the cave wall, were scores of parallel markings drawn in chalk. He marked another straight line next to the last one.  Fifty-two.

He was tentative and extra vigilant as he emerged on the Pak side. It was enemy territory. If something happened to him now, there would be no one to raise hell. No mercies would be shown. Rahman did not take the narrow, winding pathway, segments of which would be under watch by the OP on a hill on the other side of the narrow valley and swiftly descended sideways down a dry nullah holding on to rocky outcrops along the slope. The noiseless descent would have made an Ibex turn and stare. Very soon, he was close to the upright poplars on the outskirts of the village. Breathing heavily, he rested for a while reclining against a slender trunk taking in the hamlet. A woman hurried out to the shed adjacent to her house to carry in a bucket of chopped wood and a small jerrycan of kerosene. Ibrahim would be by the window as he had been for the last fifteen years.

Ibrahim was sitting by a window keeping vigil; it had been an hour and he had finished half a packet of cheap cigarettes from the Pak Army supply. Southwards were a line of tall poplars bordering the fields. Except once, he had never visited the areas south – only heard stories of Kaksar, Dras, Kargil, Leh and Srinagar from Rahman. What a trip it had been. He had taken leave for a few days and accompanied Rahman to Kargil, just for a night’s stay. The safe house was a building in the congested old town. Houses and shops jostled with each other. The meeting was long – he remembered being very tired by the end of it; some officers were there and they had asked many questions. Each response led to a question. They were polite. But what he remembered most was the lunch – steaming hot rice, loads of chicken curry and curd. It was the most delicious meal of his life.   

There were two quick flashes from behind the trees. A sharp tide of adrenaline washed over, but he got up laboriously as if a hundred eyes followed, and switched off the solitary light bulb in the room. He then waited patiently, trying to trace Rahman’s movement towards the house. This was a game they had come to play and he almost always lost. Ten minutes later, there was a single knock on the door and there stood his older cousin from across, looking old and haggard and very tired.

They talked as they ate from their Balay bowls that Ibrahim had warmed on a kerosene Bukhari. They talked randomly of their families, cousins, and relatives; distracted talk – minds thinking of other things as they enquired after the wellbeing of trans-border relatives. Ibrahim fervently wished this meaningless conversation with his cousin would go on forever. Then Rahman took out the gifts he had bought for Ibrahim arranging them neatly on the table, and asked casually without looking up at Ibrahim for the notes, “kaagaz laaye?” As he shook his head in a no, Ibrahim saw his cousin’s face turn pale, as if all was lost.

“I was on my way here. While crossing the Shingo around noon today, at the point where I usually do, I slipped. My bag was flung in the water and by the time I could pick myself up, the currents had carried it downstream. There is more water in the stream this year. I had made a slightly longish note for you this time about some new unit deployments. The special pencil, you gave me, too is lost. It was in the bag,” Ibrahim blurted, offering a cigarette to Rahman and shakily lighting it for him.

What am I going to tell the officer from Mulbek? Without a note, he will be terribly disappointed. I will not be able to look him in the face. The officer seemed particularly earnest this time. Maybe, because his senior from Leh too had come to Kargil. And, I was planning to ask for a raise. What luck. Ibrahim should have been more careful. He has become bulky eating all the tinned army ration food. He felt like slapping Ibrahim’s moon face but he looked scared and genuinely concerned. Anyways, having come this far, better to extract the best out of him; there was not much time left before dawn broke.

“Inshallah, hum jald phir intezamaat kar leinge, mayoos na ho. Waise hi batayein kya halaat hain idhar ke?” Ibrahim told him about: new troops (unidentified) coming into Gultari, moving to forward positions further up the mountains but without exact details, about porters being used to carry ammunition to forward positions possibly for a planned escalation in cross border firing, about mule trains carrying stuff for the forward positions, about a road getting renovated, etc. Without the exact NLI units it was more-or-less usual stuff, though what Ibrahim was telling him indicated increased activity by the Pak Army in the peak of winter. Rahman hid his disappointment. He had felt for some time that something bigger was brewing up across the border but there was no clear evidence. What did all this activity imply? The LOC in the sector had been sporadically alive with artillery exchanges, anyways, since the past two years.  

Soon, it was time to say goodbye. They both hugged tightly and agreed to meet again in a few months. It was never to be. The mountains erupted in May-June the following year. Hit by a Bofors shrapnel that pierced his brain, Ibrahim died opposite Dras. After the war had started, he would often wonder about what could have been if he had not lost his balance that day? During the war, Rahman worked hard sharing the knowledge of the nullahs and pathways no one knew as well as him. After the fighting was over, he would often rue that his cousin and friend could not have lost the notes at a worse time. Maybe, many hundreds of lives on both sides would have been saved. He had been rewarded and the officers had received awards, but all that was little consolation.

He was already old and after the short, ferocious war, he aged quickly and became cantankerous. Even without the invisible notes, his worth and experience was acknowledged by the officers. The officer from Mulbek called him home for lunch one day. A restless Rahman wandered the mountains again after the guns had fallen silent. But now there were many more troops on both sides of the Kargil heights. He took to fishing in the shallows at the bend of the river where the currents slowed. He was last found sprawled on the pebbles holding on to his fishing line. The officer turned him slowly to face the sun, and then carefully freed the hooked fish still struggling in the water, releasing it gently back in the Indus.  

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