by SHAZIA YOUSUF
Mothers of missing Kashmiri men console each other on the International Day of Disappeared Persons, observed on Aug 30 2014. PHOTO/Kashmir Observer.
When I met Taja Begum in the winter of 2009, I could tell she was dying soon. Taja, 75, was skin and bones. Every time she spoke, her trembling hands went up to soothe her tired chest. She took little sips of hot water in between long pauses. Still, every word she uttered was followed by a hum.
Taja’s weak body carried a strong soul. She used the medium of poetry to communicate with her son after he was killed by Indian soldiers. With a mother’s bruised soul, she cried on paper and wrote poems of grief and loss. I had known many Kashmiri mothers dying in grief, but Taja was the first mother who, someone told me, survived on it. I pitched the story for the magazine I worked for and went to interview Taja. Writing a feature was just an excuse; I wanted to sit by her side and listen, as Taja read verses from her book.
The day I met Taja at her home in Tral Village, she had not slept for three nights. A poem was structuring itself within her.
The two decades of Kashmir conflict has left almost a 100,000 people dead. Most of them bread-earning young men who left behind their mothers, wives, sisters, and children. Thousands of women live lives of poverty and depression. There are around 800,000 people in Kashmir who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and most include women who witnessed someone dying in their immediate or extended families.