Book Review: Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer

Curfewed Night is an amazing memoir by a Kashmiri writer, Basharat Peer. Peer tells his painful life story combined with the sanguinary history of the valley of Kashmir. The book gives a comprehensive insight about the Kashmir conflict in an unbiased way. If you are interested to get an insider's perspective on the conflict then this is definitely the book for you. 

I have been interested to read this book ever since I came to know about it from a class-fellow of mine. I have a great interest in the literature written about my part of the world, and I have been a fan of Pakistani literature for a really long time. But, unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to read anything on Kashmir and that is beyond sad as I belong to the part of Kashmir that has had accession to Pakistan. It is known as Azad Kashmir. Azad Kashmiris have a really strange relationship with the Kashmir issue, especially those who belong to my generation: They are constantly made aware of its existence but, thankfully, have never had the misfortune of experiencing it. Let me say that it is kind of like believing in God. You are aware of his omnipresence but you cannot see him, you cannot feel him and you most certainly cannot be IN him. So, we have not experienced the situation itself but it is very much a part of our consciousness. We Azad Kashmiris have been taught about the conflict in our overly biased course books from the very start of our education yet, we are strangely kept away from it at the same time. I have never been to Sirinagar or Anantnag but that does not mean that I cannot feel the pain of my Kashmiri brothers and sisters who live in the most highly militarized country in the world.

Reading Peer's memoir has in fact been an attempt to know more about the Kashmir issue and to connect with my fellow Kashmiri brethren on a deeper level. It is an attempt to know how it is like to see your fellow countrymen being gunned down in hundreds and thousands, how it is like to have your house ransacked by unknown military men on a daily basis or how it is like to have almost all your childhood friends killed by the forces because the dared to raise their voices against this never ending oppression. It is an attempt to see how it feels to have your young boy taken away from home to be interrogated to unknown and unreachable places, never to be returned again or how does it feel to have your newly-wed bride being raped by a dozen military men in front of your eyes on your wedding night on your way home from the bride's house.  

I find the title of the book to be most accurate. It just conveys the Kashmir tragedy so very well. Reading the book lets you know that living in Kashmir is like living under a curfew for eternity. It means forsaking personal agency and submitting to oppressive military authority without ever complaining about it. It means being cut off from the rest of the world. The thing that I find the strangest about the Kashmir issue is the fact that such a place exists in this time and age. It is just so terrible to think that even in today's time powerful countries have the right to invade weaker ones and exercise authority over them with impunity. It makes me wonder how could anyone have the right to humiliate an entire nation so freely without having to face any consequences. It also makes me question the entire notion of human rights. For Kahmiris it is a mere fantasy, it simply does not exist. 

The cover of the book is extremely haunting as well. The image of a child (I assume it is a child) peeking through a broken wall looks just so heartbreaking. I think the saddest aspect of living in a war zone is being unable to protect your children from all this ugliness. It just doesn't feel right. 

Curfewed Night is a mixture of Peer's life journey and the accounts of atrocities that have befallen on other Kasmiri people. Kamila Shamsie very accurately describes this book as a combination of reportage and narration in her review of the book. Peer perfectly intertwines personal experience with history and what the local people have had to go through ever since war began in Kashmir. You get to know so much about the ancient history of Kashmir as well. One of the things that the writer has emphasized on throughout the book is the constant erasure of the Kashmiri history and the destruction of its ancient historical monuments and sites. Material things hold no value in a place where human life is treated with absolutely no respect. However, consciously erasing the history of a country certainly has long-lasting effects on its collective consciousness. Peer narrates how the freedom movement started as an extremely fiery struggle against the illegitimate control of India over Kashmir but has eventually died down to a feeble protest as most of the militants have been murdered or arrested by the military. Peer tells how Kashmir is a country full of graveyards and most of those graveyards have the same dates on their tombstones.

I found the book to be extremely moving. I cried on a lot of places as it was really disturbing, and bear in mind that I have a very high thresh hold for disturbing literature. I think that the fact that these accounts are not fictional but things that people like us have actually endured just intensified the reading experience manifolds. You keep on wondering what these people could possibly have done to deserve such a brutal life. Some of the accounts of prison torture were extremely depressing and I felt really disturbed after reading them.  

I would definitely recommend you people to read this book if you like to have a comprehensive on the Kashmir issue. I think it is very important to raise a consciousness about the issue and just to talk and write about it more. It is something that needs to be discussed more seriously and definitely much more often.

I hope you guys like the review. Do let me know if you read the book and how you feel about it. That is all for today. I'll see you next time with another post very, very soon. Goodbye! :)