Letter from Kashmir: Meeting with the "Mother of Martyrs"
By Farhana Ali
In Kashmir, the mother of martyrs is a neglected story. The struggles of women living in conflict zone are also rarely documented. The reasons are understandable. There are considerable risks involved when traveling to an occupation, where women are difficult, but not impossible, to reach. In Kashmir, as is true of most conflicts, I was told that women "suffer the most," noted one Kashmiri female political activist. Last winter, I met many Kashmiri women--"war widows" as they are called--to understand how women survive conflict. This is the theme of my forthcoming book on women in war, which examines why women kill (or do not kill) when living under years of occupation. A recent story published by The Middle Times online illustrates one mother's trauma. Some excerpts:
"Called a freedom fighter and a terrorist, Maqbool was a potent threat to both India and Pakistan but a charismatic individual who had a transformative effect on Kashmiris' aspirations for independence from two nuclear-armed rivals. For years, Maqbool evaded capture by living as a fugitive in the underground world, a fact that slipped past his mother. To this day, Amina is unaware of her son's importance to Kashmir's separatist parties. She believes he was innocent.
I did not understand why Maqbool's activities were guarded like a well-kept secret from his mother. It defied Western perception that mothers of martyrs control their children's participation in guerrilla movements.
According to Tahir, women like Amina are naïve. "She is illiterate," he told me, "She is accused of murderer and conspiracy, Maqbool's arrest by Indian authorities and subsequent hanging on Feb. 11, 1984 sparked a wave of resentment and ridicule against India that persists today. In her heavenly voice and a thematic display of emotions, Amina views her son as the valley's great martyr, or Shahid-e-Kashmir. She knows he is venerated by her people. However, her son's death brings little comfort to a woman who lives for her children."
