“But their interest in KDP and you all does make you hot cakes for the local media, and hence the locals.”
He went silent.
“Good event.” She went on.
“Good half-day event.” He corrected.
Amaal began to open her mouth to refuse when his chin dipped in warning. She shut her mouth. And hesitantly, begrudgingly, his mouth tipped on one side. He pushed his hands behind his back and walked down the pergola — “Learn when to stop lying.”
A loud gunshot tore through the pandemonium. Her heart stopped. Birds fluttered. And a stream of gunshots began to fire before screams erupted. Amaal broke into a run. Samar was running in front of her, down the paved path and through the tunnel of almond blossoms. They emerged into the opening of stalls and there was carnage there. Everything broken. Deserted. The few people left were injured, on the floor. Crying. Amaal froze.
“Stay back.” Samar caught her arm and dragged her under a half-broken tent. “Stay down.” Her brain had stopped working. She could see everything, hear everything. Nothing processed.
Amaal crouched under the drooping canvas of KDP blue, flinching, shoulders hunched, as more gunshots sounded. People got pushed under the tent with her. She moved, making space for them. More gunshots. Everyone screamed. More gunshots. Everyone plastered themselves to the floor. Continuous firing.
Heavy rounds of firing. Screams.
And then, everything went silent. Long minutes of silence. Murmurs started in the tent. Men started getting up and stepping out. Amaal followed on shaky legs, seeing nothing but bright sunshine around her. She looked left, and there were three people on the ground, Samar between them, on his haunches. KDP volunteers were running around. Amaal walked ahead, craning her head, trying to see what he was hunched over.
She saw it and reared back. Blood, oozing like a burst water pipe from the little girl in the pink shawl, Samar’s hands pressing down on it. Amaal burst into tears, slapping her hands over her mouth.
“Cloth! Napkin! Give me a cloth!” He was calling out. Adil came running. He got Adil to press her neck. Then he pulled off his own T-shirt, bunched it, and pressed it into her neck.
“Evacuate! Niklo! Niklo,” Atharva’s voice was loud behind her. She turned, only to find him herding the people from the tent behind her out of the park. “Amaal, move. Is anybody left?” He was going from tent to tent. “Koi hai?” He was yelling. “Chalo! Sab surakshit hai, bahar chalo![35]”
She moved with the crowd that Atharva shepherded, her heart thudding. He passed her, and she saw blood. On his shirt. An entire side drenched. Heavy iron. She looked down, hoping to take that image out of her mind. Amaal kept her eyes on the ground beneath her feet. And the pink blossoms carpeting the ground started to turn red. She looked up to avoid that and the blue KDP flag at the entrance of Badamwari had been spray painted with black words.
HINDUSTAN HAMAAYAT MA KARIV[36]
7. She held her passport in her hand…
She held her passport in her hand, staring at the dark blue flap. The Indian emblem with the three faces of the lions stared back at her. Brilliant gold on dark blue.
Satyamev Jayate
REPUBLIC OF INDIA
She stared at the words. She was an Indian, a Kashmiri, in Kashmir. Did that make her a criminal here?
Her fingers shook.
A loud bang made her flinch. Amaal glanced up at the window of her flat. Construction material had fallen on the plot opposite hers. She widened her eyes, trying to recover. The evening was falling away and her body was beginning to feel cold. The fever wasn’t completely gone yet. The hand holding her passport was now shivering violently.
She slapped her other hand over it. Still. Amaal squeezed, trying to draw a complete breath.
Her doorbell went off and she startled.
It’s just the doorbell,she reasoned with herself.
She recovered from the haze and set her passport down. Amaal grabbed her sweater from the armrest of her sofa and wrapped it around herself. If this evening followed the last four days, then she would be shivering in agony within the next hour. She needed to cook something and eat before that happened. She still didn’t know if she was needed back at the KDP office. Her mobile had fallen away, where, she still did not remember. Maybe in the pandemonium of the shooting. She should have gone straight to the office after being evacuated. But she had been unable to control her own shaking body.
She decided to see whoever was at the door, then go to her neighbour’s house and make a call to Fahad.
Amaal turned the lock and pulled open the door, surprised to see the last man she would expect on her threshold.
“You?”
“You forgot this.” Samar held her BlackBerry out.
