Dr S W Naw Bahaar
It hurt me like never before. I felt as if the entire Himalayas had been pinned against my chest. My ribcage was feeling an extreme compression and my diaphragm seemed to be resisting the pressure of hundreds PSI. I wanted to scream my lungs out but couldn’t as I was watching the evening news bulletin with my family. My child was sitting in my lap humming a favourite rhyme of his. While the gory images of a crestfallen mother clasping tightly on to the dead body of her ‘’just a moment ago alive and kicking’’ child were being aired, I could do nothing but watch helplessly. As tears silently rolled down my cheeks, all I could do was clasp on to my child more tightly. The images of the woebegone mother and her doomed 7 year old child wouldn’t leave my thoughts for a moment since the time they became victims of witless shelling from across the border. The retaliatory exercise unleashed the torment of an unwarranted tragedy in the remote hamlet of Kupwara on April 12, 2020. The impact of the images was such that it continues to dominate my entire limbic system till today. My neurons and synapses wouldn’t process and transfer anything save the images of slain baby and his disconsolate mother. It gave me a feeling of déjà vu. I was transported back to a melancholic September morning; the year was 2015, when all the local as well as international news channels and social media sites were flashing the pictures of a toddler dressed in red tees, blue shorts and grey sneakers lying face down on a Greek coast. It was the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi, a 3 year old Syrian migrant trying to sneak into Europe in search of a secure future along with his family. Their boat capsized in which 11 people including Alan Kurdi, his 5 yr old brother Galip Kurdi and their mother Rehana Kurdi drowned in the Mediterranean Sea while fleeing their battle ravaged home land. The pictures of Alan Kurdi’s dead body washed ashore jolted entire humanity. It was a somber reminder of how the worlds mighty have failed the worlds vulnerable. Statistics depict that 1 migrant child is reported dead or missing each day. Around 1600 migrant children were reported missing between 2014 and 2018. My heart stubbornly disagrees with the figures. How could anyone harm already battered and star crossed innocent souls? Maybe arithmetic figures are mean and have no heart! The 3 spring old Alan Kurdi tragically gained an iconic status only after his death. His lifeless body did what millions of living migrants couldn’t do. It attracted the busy world’s attention to the human migration crisis which ironically has been catalysed by the West sabotaging the East under the garb of fighting terror created by former in the first place. The emblematic photograph of lifeless Alan Kurdi lying face down with the surf tossing him gently became viral in no time. It garnered a short lived high tide of sympathies from across the world which ebbed away gradually. Its pathos was so widely felt that many countries eased their border restrictions and welcomed the migrants with an open heart. Unfortunately, the wave of empathy didn’t last long. After creating a stir in the real and the virtual world, it met its ultimate destiny; it joined the league of forgotten and forsaken. The images of Alan Kurdi met a similar fate in my mind as well. It gathered a fine layer of dust as happens to a cherished souvenir stored safely in a luxurious drawer for safe keeping. I always avoided any thoroughfare lest it would rekindle the spark, and shake my already guilty conscience. It had attained the status of a holy shrine which never mandated any human intervention, the reverence is held in heart and a safe distance is maintained.
My eyes await a future where each day my kids return home from school wearing mud soiled uniforms not the blood stained ones; a future where our kids shall be able to run wildly across the meadows without any fear of landmines and shells; a future where the vocabulary of our kids shall be a rich profusion of terms from arts, humanities, science and not a blabber of guns and goons, shutdowns and curfews. A peaceful present and a reliable future is all I want for my children. Hope I am not asking for too much!
Tragedies manifest pain, and pain is universal. Doesn’t matter much whether it unleashes its fury in water or land. What the waters of Mediterranean Sea and the border village of Kupwara witnessed (5 years apart) was a tragedy of similar magnitude in terms of human loss and much more than that it was a harrowing tale of injustice where the victim had nothing to do with the power politics of greedy politicians fighting their guts out over a piece of beautifully sculpted land with no concern for its unfortunate natives. Coincidentally both the kids wore red shirts and blue bottoms when death found them! The macabre scenes of a mother hugging and kissing her murdered child are an indescribable tragedy. Its scale is colossal. The ill fated mother and child had to pay a back breaking price for being natives of a conflict zone which has witnessed power crazy rulers from within and without nibbling on its vitals every now and then. The dead baby in the lap of her hapless and wailing mother symbolized all the pain suffered by innocent victims living in conflict zones around the world. According to a report by Save The Children, roughly some 300 babies die daily due to the effects of war. As per UNICEF, year 2019 marked the end of a deadly decade with more than 170,000 grave violations against children in conflict – the equivalent of more than 45 violations per day. The violation include killing, maiming, sexual violence, abductions, denial of humanitarian access etc. pertinent to add that innumerable cases go grossly unreported. Children have always bore the brunt of warmongering policies of power hungry rulers. History stands witness to how children have been subjected to grave abuses since times immemorial. The advent of photography has made many clicks immortal. History is replete with photographs that show the extent of abuse unleashed on children especially during wars and armed conflicts. The photo of the Warsaw Ghetto boy surrendering to Nazis in 1943, the Vietnam war victim Napalm girl in 1972 or the photo of the little frail girl seconds away from being scavenged by a vulture in the famine hit Sudan in 1992 also known as ‘The Vulture and the Little Girl’ share a great deal of similitude. The power of the later click was such that it won its photographer, Kevin Carter the Pulitzer Prize. But the guilt was more forceful than accolades. Four months later, Kevin Carter took his own life not being able to overcome the traumatic memories of the wide scale starvation and destruction. The photographic portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee girl of Pashtun origin with piercing green eyes staring intensely into the camera appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. It was clicked by an international award winner photojournalist Steve McCurry and is referred to as “The First Worlds Third World Mona Lisa”. More recently the dead body of Alan Kurdi washed ashore on the Mediterranean beaches was an ugly reminder of the trail of child right breaches marking the path of human development. The heart breaking photographs of children snatched from their parents at US – Mexico border could make even a stone heart cry. The harrowing Trump administration family separation policy aimed at discouraging migrations into US was a tell tale saga of pathos. The highly controversial policy which was supposed to end in June 2018 continues unabatedly till today in a more concealed form. Thousands of children have been separated from their parents leading them to obscurity, oblivion, lost childhood and everlasting trauma. The photographs of the Kupwara shelling victim may never get enough circulation needed to attain an emblematic status. Nevertheless it will continue to rattle our conscience for all the years to come. It will keep asking the question; do we make any distinction to the parties engaged in war? Do we mean anything more than just fuel to the furnace? The scourge continues unabashed. It continues to change faces and places. The agencies of persecution vary but the victims of torment remain the same. How long shall the world’s most powerful continue to subjugate the world’s frailest? How long our children shall be fed to the flames of nauseating show of supremacy and egotistic politics? Children need parks to play not killing fields with land mines and bomb shells. Children need food not bullets. Children need schools not detention centres. Children need happy families not forced migrations. Children deserve a gleeful present not a bleak future. They have no understanding of conflicts and hatred. All they know is love and laughter. They are little heavenly miracles manifesting a human form. Peaceful childhood is their right. The world has been held hostage by a lusty few whose thirst for power is insatiable. Being a mother I hardly care who sits on the throne or who does not. It hardly matters to me which religion, race or belief he follows as long as he is just and guarantees his subjects right to a dignified and prosperous life. I may sound too naïve to understand the intricacies of international politics but I believe that a peace loving ignoramus is way better than a sagacious intellect.
I long for a future where I wouldn’t have to rush to bolt the doors and windows of my house even before dusk falls just to avoid an unwelcome encounter. My eyes await a future where each day my kids return home from school wearing mud soiled uniforms not the blood stained ones; a future where our kids shall be able to run wildly across the meadows without any fear of landmines and shells; a future where the vocabulary of our kids shall be a rich profusion of terms from arts, humanities, science and not a blabber of guns and goons, shutdowns and curfews. A peaceful present and a reliable future is all I want for my children. Hope I am not asking for too much!
(The author is an Assistant Professor at J&K Higher Education Department. Views are her own)