Volume : 6, Issue : 6, June - 2017

Basharat Peer's Curfewed Night: An Overview

Showkat Hussain Dar

Abstract :

With snow–clad mountains, tall trees of Chinar, lush green plains, serpentine rivers, and huge calm lakes, Kashmir is set like a jewelled crown on the map of India. It is the valley of Sufis and saints. It is the home of deities and bounties. “If there is Paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.” But alas! All this beauty turned ugly as valley bathes in blood of innocents. Following the end of Soviet – Afghan conflict, Kashmir turned virtually overnight from an idyllic retreat into a war zone. The dreaming valley of mountains, water and light was torn apart by bloodshed and politics. Through the experience of his own family and other Kashmiris, Basharat Peer in his debut work Curfewed Night, reveals what life is like for those who live in this tension – filled land. In Curfewed Night, he paints an intimate portrait of a fragile part of the world whose future hangs in the balance. Basharat Peer was a teenager when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir in 1989. As the following years saw countless young men cross over the Line of Control to train in Pakistani army camps, Peer was sent off to school in Aligarh to keep out of trouble. He finished college and became a journalist in Delhi. But Kashmir – angrier, more violent, more helpless – was never far away. In 2003, the young journalist left his job and returned to his homeland to quest out the stories that had invariably haunted him; he paints a harrowing and intensely moving picture of Kashmir and its people in Curfewed Night. The book beautifully describes Kashmir as known before 1989, a land of peace, simplicity, mutual otherhood and unmatched beauty. It also deals with the conflict and the rebellion that erupted in 1990 from very humanistic point of view. It is the first English language narrative by a young Kashmiri who describes Kashmiri’s recent tumultuous history as lived experience. It is Peer’s attempt to present the facts of what he has seen, heard and experienced, including but not limited to his own emotional response, and leaves all room possible for the reader to form their own opinion. Anapestic, enlivening and chilling Curfewed Night is a stunning book and an unforgettable portrait of a war- torn valley. It is a labor of love, a proof of steely determination to make the voice of his people heard.  <o:p></o:p>