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Noraseri – The End of Mourning Days

Mahfil, another party to commemmorate the 40th day after the death of Mister Hajji April 2, 2006 The time passed very fast. When I came to Noraseri for the first time, the ground was dry and the hills were yellow. But spring had touched Kashmir, that the flowers had blossomed and the hills were carpeted by green rugs. It had been at least forty days since my first coming here. And the project of Danish Muslim Aid NGO had almost finished. The neighboring families had a queue to invite the personnel of the NGO to their house to have dinner or lunch. Three days ago it was Uncle Bashir’s family, then Doctor Shahab, then we had breakfast in Afaq’s house, and yesterday it was the turn of Farman Shah. The work had almost been completed. The dispensary was just some wood sticks, but now it had been walled and roofed by CGI sheets. Two days ago I came back from Muzaffarabad to make documentation of the NGO works in Pattika and yesterday it was the day of Harama and Noraseri. Most of the people were cooperative, except one woman who refused to put the emblem in her house saying that [...]

April 2, 2006 // 0 Comments

Noraseri – Homesick

March 29, 2006 Totally devastated, but life has to go on Time passed very fast, and it had been my thirtieth day in the NGO camp in Noorasery. I was reading some printed material from Andreas Harsono blog (andreasharsono.blogspot.com) which explained about some basics of journalism. This weblog was recommended in the photographer website. It was indeed enlightening. The posts were mostly in Indonesian, and the articles about investigative journalism, how to write in English, some basic elements of journalism, the narrow Indonesian nationalism in tsunami disaster, and the literal journalism were very well-written that I thought deeply about my country. He was right, Indonesia, our country, was full of problems. It was not difficult to see injustice, suppressed people, poverty, mysteries, struggles, and so on. I felt that somehow I wanted to dedicate myself deeper to the journalism world. But I still had too much to learn, as my educational background was not exactly fit with this new life I am trying to start. There is no reason to complain. Live here is much harder. Reading the articles in Indonesia made me really homesick. I dreamt about Indonesia, and somehow wanted to be there soon. I missed the food, [...]

March 29, 2006 // 2 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Poems from Kashmir

March 27, 2006 The beautiful Kashmir is endless source of inspiration During my stay in the area, people kept teaching me various things to be more proper Pakistani or Urdu speakers. That was including those meaningless Noraseri Hindko salaams of ‘gay Barhean’ or ‘mu ko ni pata’. But here I would like to share some interesting ones. This was the national poem (komi trana) of Kashmir. National poem? Yes, Kashmir was still regarded as ‘not Pakistan’; it had its own flag and national anthem also. The national poem had simple words, nice rhyming, and easy to remember. So, let’s start. Baghon aur Baharonwalla (the gardens and the spring) Daryaon aur Kohsaronwalla (the rivers and the mountains) Jannat ki Nazaronwalla (the heavenly scenery) Jammu Kashmir HAmira (Jammu and Kashmir are ours) Vatan HAmira, Azad Kashmir, Azad Kashmir, Azad Kashmir (Our Homeland is the Free Kashmir) The part with ‘jannat’, ‘heaven’, I had problem with my memory. We were in the jeep and the guys asked me to read the poem to them. As I remembered that heaven was always to be coupled with hell, so I read ‘jannat aur jahanamwalla’, ‘the heaven and hell’. People laughed. Even the ladies hiding their [...]

March 27, 2006 // 0 Comments

Noraseri – Where is the Bride?

March 26, 2006 A night before I started to suspect the so-called ‘sexy gabshab’, sexy conversations of the boys, which included physical jokes like touching, hugging, and kissing. Yesterday a boy successfully reached my bed and found his way to hide under my blanket, and gave me massage. I thought it was just a normal massage of friends. But his hand always tried to guerilla to ‘that’ place. I prevented him to. And accidentally touched ‘his’ and I was surprised that he was erected. I jumped. I cursed, “Harami!”. End of joke. It was raining the whole day yesterday. It was a sudden, like weathers in mountain areas, changed drastically in minute basis. It was terribly hot day the day before. But the radio forecast that the rain would be for three consecutive days. For sure the main road which connected the village and the outside world was blocked by the landslides. See my cupboard! For today, after doing a short time of documentation of eighty shelter homes in Harama village (no obvious relationship with ‘Harami’), I went back to Noraseri, hearing that there would be a wedding to be held. I was invited by Vicky’s brother. Vicky was a [...]

March 26, 2006 // 0 Comments

Noraseri – Living on Faith

In deeply religious Pakistan, it is important to pay attention to their culture and religion so not to offend them March 25, 2006 Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a country which was founded to house the Muslims of India and to establish a country following the way suggested by the religion, was among the most famous countries in Muslim world. From a discussion with a Pakistani scholar, it was stated that the founding of Pakistan was not only to guarantee the freedom of religion (as people were also free to pray in India), but also to guarantee the life in God’s preferred path. What was the meaning of the name of Pakistan? Formally, Pakistan means land of pure. Some other people claimed that the name of the country referred to the essence of Pakistan: Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Sindhi, and Balluchistan (Bangladesh, the ex East Pakistan, didn’t find its place in the name of the country). Another man in Muzaffarabad told me that the meaning of Pakistan was Laillahaillallah, the holy kalimah of Muslims, which means there is no god but Allah. No matter what, the name of the country had already inferred the hope of being the ones preferred by God. [...]

March 25, 2006 // 0 Comments

Noraseri – The Hajji Shahab Family

March 23, 2006 Tajjamal and his cousin The relation with Taj Mahal brought me back to the Hajji Shahab’s house. Hajji Shahab, an old man who died recently, whose funeral was photographed by me in my first day in Noraseri, was quite a reputable person in the village. And Tajjamal, or Taj Mahal, was his distant relative. Taj Mahal didn’t come to the funeral day, as he was in Muzaffarabad. This was the first time he came back to Noraseri so it was essential for him to visit the family again to deliver some prayers. A daughter of Mr. Hajji came late in the funeral day, so she didn’t have the chance to evidence her father’s face for the last time. Samera, the name of this daughter, asked me to show her the pictures of the face of the dead father. Samera was in Lahore, and due to road blocks (very common in these rainy days due to the landslides in Kashmir, and the day when Hajji Shahab passed away was also a rainy day) Samera came a day later. Due to my customs, I didn’t take the close up pictures of the face of the dead man. I had [...]

March 23, 2006 // 0 Comments

Noraseri – Majlis in Noraseri

March 22, 2006 Roof top gathering Yesterday was the Chehlum, the forty day of the mourning period of the death of Imam Hussain, the third Imam of Shia Muslim sect. Farman Shah telephoned to our office and invited me to join the majlis which would be held in his house. Farman Shah lived in Noraseri, not far from our camp in the village. Farman Shah and his family were all from Shia sect, the Aliwallahs. Majlis, the speech which was held everyday during the mourning period of Muharram until Chehlum, would deliver the story of the death of Imam Hussain. And more than often, the speech brought tears to all of the audience. The Chehlum majlis, as the Ashura majlis (the death day of the Imam) was among the biggest and the most important. I departed early in the morning from Muzaffarabad together with Tajjamal (I called him Taj Mahal), a guy from Noraseri who lived in Muzaffarabad. He came early in the morning, when I was not prepared yet and was still shocked by the whole day of Chehlum self-beating and self-torturing. He rushed me, I was rushed. The transport was not easy either. There was no bus going [...]

March 22, 2006 // 0 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Chehlum

March 21, 2006 It’s real blade The mourning of the death of the Prophet’s grandson, Hazrat Hussain, who was killed in a war in Qarbala, 1400 years ago, still continued until the fortieth day after Ashura. It was 20 Safar, 40 days after 10 Muharram, the final day of all of the mourning. I had experienced the Ashura celebration in Lahore, which was an astonished experience. For Chehlum, I had it in Muzaffarabad. I came quite early in the morning, 12 noon, to the Shia mosque near the chowk of Medina Market. The mosque itself was not big, signified by the black huge flag, distinctive of Shia mosques. An attendant there said that before the earthquake, the mosque was always crowded during this time of the year. But now, many of the believers had gone. Indeed, the majlis was not crowded, the people who came was only about a quarter of the number the space can handle. The majlis speech, delivered in language more about the same as Urdu, also brought the listeners to hysteria. Ya Hussain e The mourning parade in earthquake zone I was escorted by Hamdani, claimed himself as a policeman, to go around the mosque while [...]

March 21, 2006 // 2 Comments

Noraseri – Urdu for Dummies

Urdu is written in nastaliq style of Arabic script March 20, 2006 Urdu, the national language of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is quite an interesting language to learn, for linguists or anybody else who is curious about the culture of the Sub-continent. You are forgiven if you don’t know that the language is closely related to the national language of its biggest neighbor enemy, Hindi from Hindustan (India). Indeed, the physical form of both languages are completely different, Hindi is written in Sanskrit Devnagari script while Urdu is written in Perso-Arabic script, or Arabic script written in nashtaliq style which was developed in Persia. But the sound of Urdu and Hindi are more and less the same. In fact, in most conversations it was difficult to detect whether someone is a Pakistani speaking Urdu or a Northern Indian speaking Hindi, except when the Pakistani use more Arabic borrowed words and the Indian use the Sanskrit ancient words. The relation between the two languages is even closer than Malaysian and Indonesian, where the accents of the two dialects are quite obviously different. In other side, Urdu and Hindi relation is also comparable to Malaysian and Indonesian, as Malaysian derived more [...]

March 20, 2006 // 0 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Day of Accidents

Having lunch in a ‘hotel’ and got invited March 19, 2006 The day was started by a missed call, missed call from God. It was a small aftershock early in the morning. I was in the middle of my dream, and suddenly felt that my matras was rocked. It was exactly the same feeling as when I stayed in a cheap hotel in India, and got a room next to the main road, and the whole room would be rocked by the passing trucks or buses. The aftershock, a real earthquake, brought me back to India in my dream. And just realized I was in a tent in Pakistan side of Kashmir when I got up. After a hot and sunny day yesterday, today it changed drastically to be cloudy and raining. Many of the plans today were altered, and instead of going to another village, I returned back to Muzaffarabad today. I met the boy who was so desperate to kiss me before, and he gave greetings, and said to me, “A beautiful… piece of meat”, and laughed. Hmm…quite a command of English vocabulary. I didn’t find this special anymore, as the day before three other different guys successfully [...]

March 19, 2006 // 0 Comments

Noraseri – A Story from Basyir’s Family

New home, new hope March 18, 2006 After five consecutive months living in emergency tents, finally, Mr. Basyir had the chance for a celebration: a move to the new shelter. The Danish Muslim Aid, an NGO from Denmark, had provided the family with the building material, and three men from the family worked hard every day to build their new home, the new place to shelter the hopes and dreams remained after everything was devastated by the disaster. Mr. Basyir was a typical example of the suffering victims of the disaster which rocked South Asia on October 8, 2005. The family, once consisted of the parents and ten children, now was smaller. Basyir had had six sons and four daughters. Three died. All boys. And the boys were the youngest in their family. The scars of the tragedy still rooted very deep on Mrs. Basyir. Her youngest boy looked like a Chinese boy, when he was alive. That youngest son was only two years old, and he was not recovered under the rubbles of the house. Mr. Basyir said that his wife cried on the first day she saw me, due to my Oriental face which reminded her to her [...]

March 18, 2006 // 0 Comments

Gilgit – Leaving Scars

Waiting for freedom March 11, 2006 The experience in the jail when visiting the two Indonesian girls was not quite nice. I was really waiting for that moment to come, that the two girls haunted my dream, but when I had the chance to meet them, I even didn’t talk a lot with them as I was rushed by the harsh policemen. I was very disappointed, and at the same time, helpless. Today, a guy from Chilas who discussed about sex with me a night before, asked me to go back again to the jail. The Chilas guy, Mirza, was in the jail for some days because of fighting. Regarding his origin, I thought it was due to free sex, but it was not. The people from Chilas, as those Pathans from western border of Pakistan, were famous of their male to male sexual activities. Mirza said to me, it was not homosexual activities, or at least very different from the concept of homosexuality in Europe, as here men only want to fuck, no suck, no love. He said that Pakistan was very conservative, as this is an Islamic republic. But he didn’t deny that he had sex with some [...]

March 11, 2006 // 0 Comments

Gilgit – Two Indonesian Prisoners

Waiting for freedom March 10. 2006 Maryam and Christina, the name of the two poor girls, who were detained by the Pakistani border officials when they tried to smuggle heroine to China. A meeting with Mr Raja Sadafar in Deputy Commisioner office in Gilgit led me to a visit to the Gilgit District Jail today. “They are very poor, really poor girls,” said Raja, mentioning that in a year there was no even a single Indonesian visiting them. He asked me to visit them, as a countryman, and bring them some fruits or something. I have heard the story of the two girls long before, from several different people. They were innocent girls, involved in this kind of business for the first time, thus inexperienced. There was a box of 4 kg heroine planted in the bottom of their backpacks. One of the girls successfully passed the Pakistani check, but when the other was trying to pass, the experienced border guard suspected that the backpack was to heavy for their tiny body size. It was really a bad luck that even the manual custom search of Pakistan border could find the hidden stuff in their bag, locked firmly in a [...]

March 10, 2006 // 4 Comments

Gilgit – The Story of My Visa

Some tricks are needed to get a new visa extension March 9, 2006 Sorry for being snobby about visa, but I dont know why I have to be the poorest creature to be created to always have tragedies with visa, especially in this trip. From the Indian visa in Nepal, Pakistan visa in India, and now, Pakistan visa extension. As what I was believing, Pakistan visa was easy to extend, as the country is promoting tourism now. My visa was about a week left when I was in Muzaffarabad, and Rashid, the guy from our NGO, said that if that possible, than it would be very easy to extend. He just came back from Islamabad Monday 6th, and on Tuesday we started our ‘visa extension struggle’. First of all, instead of directly went to the DC Office where the extension and passport paperworks are done, we visited the Muzaffarabad SSP (I dont know what this stand for), the man with highest position in police department in Muzaffarabad. U know, in Pakistan you can go anywhere with connection. Knowing someone in the high position is always a good thing. Mr Kurshid, the Muzaffarabad SSP, is a very friendly man with very [...]

March 9, 2006 // 0 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Sea of Tents

Sea of tents March 4, 2006 The city of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, sprawls along two important rivers in Pakistan, Niilam and Jhelam. The two rivers meet in the heart of the city, where the economic activities of the city concentrated. The main road stretched from the north through Chella Bandi area until the ‘Secretariat’ area, of total 4 kms of length. Muzaffarabad is hilly city, the roads are all ‘uupar niche’ (up and down), with several steep cliffs (many were collapsed due to the earthquake 5 months earlier) and ladder provided to pedestratians to up the hill. Was the main landmark and tourist attraction of the city, the historical Red Fort or Lal Qila is now a bunch of red stones. The remains of the fort, walls now not more than 2 metres tall, are still standing on the top of small hill near Chella Bandi. The shops and houses are also still showing the scars of disasters, with orphaned children beggar sleeping on the street, exhausted of waiting alms from the pedestrians. The shop owners are apparently going back to their shops, despite the risk that the shops may collapse at any single possible [...]

March 4, 2006 // 0 Comments

Muzaffarabad – World Hartal Day

Protesters yelling “Death to America”, in front of a banner stating that help from an American fondation is highly appreciated March 3, 2006 Friday, March 3, 2006, was supposed to be the world strike day to protest the Danish cartoon. I didn’t know whether it was indeed done universally, but at least it was nation-wide in Pakistan, and included in this quake torn capital of AJ&K, Muzaffarabad. The experience of unrest in Lahore gave me a fore thinking, that anything could happen in so-called ‘peaceful protests’. The boy from the office accompanied me along the way, and I was wearing my Indonesian peci for my national identity, not to be misunderstood as Chinese and Japanese. From the information I gathered, the whole city would be under strike situation, where all shops were supposed to be closed and no public transport operating. But even though most shops were closed, those which kept doing business were not few anyway. And many restaurants were open, and food were not scarce at all (compared to total hartal in Lahore in previous experience). I have heard that the demonstration (Urdu: jurus) started from the University, but it was very quiet there. Wrong information. Series of [...]

March 3, 2006 // 2 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Missed Call

It was a real call, not just mere a ‘missed call’ March 2, 2006 After the major earthquake disaster on October 8 last year, up till now there were already 2,000 big and small aftershocks, of which the people called as ‘missed call’, as the shocks resembles the short vibration of the mobile phone when a missed call comes. I was not shocked by the small earthquakes, as we also live in earthquake area in our homeland. But the people here, covered by the trauma from the disaster, were all running to the street. Still most people chose to live in tents instead of inhabiting the house buildings; no matter how good and untouched the house was, as everybody was still afraid. I was sleeping in my room at that time, when the young boy in the office urged me to run away immediately. It was a missed call anyway. No [...]

March 2, 2006 // 2 Comments

Muzaffarabad – Farewell Party

A lavish farewell party in a ‘hotel’ (aka restaurant) in Muzaffarabad March 1, 2006 The NGO work is almost to an end. It has started since the disaster, and now everybody in the relief team was going to go back to their life. Most of the team members were temporary members, working for 1 month or so, but some like the Gillanis, were here since October last year. As today was a new day of a new month, the members were reducing again. The guys planned to have a farewell party in Muzaffarabad to say good bye to some of leaving members. The transport to go back to the province capital was not easy, and after waiting almost about an hour, we successfully ‘hijacked’ a Suzuki bus. The lunch was in Muzaffarabad Cantonment area, with splendid fried rice, roti, mutton curry, and the pink coloured Kashmiri tea. I really regretted to come very late, that the work is almost to an end. The NGO would be still in the area up till the third week of this month, and there would be still some work to do to make documentation of the shelter homes in Patikha. But for these some [...]

March 1, 2006 // 1 Comment

Noraseri – An Exhausting Day

New development in the earthquake zones February 28, 2006 Mahmood Gillani, who possesses a strange habit to only spoke Urdu when there was the sun and spoke other strange tribal languages to me in other time, just came back a night before from Islamabad. The road was open. The work of clearing the road from the blocks was done very rapidly, thanks to the heavy machine donated by ‘the people of Japan’. Electricity was supposed to come yesterday, as the weather was clear. But it came very late, so that the plan to watch porn movie with young boys from neighborhood was cancelled. And I also met a young guy who was very desperate in kissing and hugging me. I gave my palm for him to kiss, but not my face (yet). The porn watching plan was replaced by sexy gabshab (sexy talk), where the goftgu (conversation) was dominated by sex topics. The boys here not only put sexual jokes verbally, but also physically, like hugging and kissing. It was really hard to determine their sexual orientation somehow, lol. Our work is to distribute the so-called CGI sheets to the survivors As yesterday there were not many shelter homes that [...]

February 28, 2006 // 1 Comment

Marshall Cavendish (2006): Photography on Central Asia

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February 28, 2006 // 0 Comments

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