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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Evocative and compelling, June 21, 2009
This review is from: In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family In A Changing World (Hardcover)
"Every gun that is picked up, every bullet that is fired, is killing our paradise."
So says one member of the Dar family, an extended clan of four brothers, their aging father -- Hajji Papa -- and their children and cousins, trying to survive in conflict-torn Kashmir. As vividly portrayed by Justine Hardie, this is a land of unparalleled beauty, where the hard edges of the nearby mountain ranges soften into gentle meadows and finally reach the lakes of Srinagar. But for the last two decades, it has been the focus of a guerrilla war between Kashmiri separatists and Indian military forces, a conflict that has driven the Hindu 'Pandit' portion of Kashmirs population away from the homes they inhabited for centuries and into refugee camps outside Delhi, as well as driving rifts among the remaining Muslim inhabitants.
Hardy, who has been familiar with Kashmir since her earliest visits as an adolescent, uses the changes within one of those families, the Dars, as a way to write about the changes within the Kashmir Valley itself. She has known them for as long as the conflict has persisted, has stayed on the houseboats the Dars own on Dal Lake in good times and in bad, and has helped Mohammed Dar set up and run a relief and rebuilding operation in the wake of the 2005 earthquake. Probably few 'outsiders' have both her journalistic talent for telling this kind of story, or the kind of access that transforms what could have been a foreigner's view of another conflict "in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing" (to borrow Neville Chamberlain's infamous view of Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia) into something much more compelling.
Hardy isn't suggesting that we intervene, just that we become more aware of the impact that conflict has one families like the Dars. The family have become more devout Muslims -- Imran, who now sports a thick beard and traditional garb, once favored RayBans and was photographed with his arm around attractive young Western tourists, while the girls of the family, who once ran around the family compound bareheaded, now don heavy black burkas and cover their hair at home as early as the age of six. The Dars are better off than many Kashmiris; as tourists stopped coming to Kashmir, Mohammed began taking traditional Kashmiri crafts abroad, to India, Dubai and Europe, and has become economically successful. But their world at home has become more difficult. The brothers try to send their sons to England to be educated, because Kashmiri children never know how many days a year their school will be open, or whether they will reach it safely; Hardy tells of children abducted and forced to become members of the rebel militias who train in remote regions of Pakistan, as well as those who are seduced into throwing bombs at Indian army encampments. Nine years after the conflict starts, she writes, what is now the sole Kashmiri psychiatric hospital sees 80,000 patients a year (despite having only 150 beds), up from 775 in the mid-1980s. But the psychiatric toll on the men and women is different, Hardy realizes. "The women drove themselves to breakdown, total physical and mental collapse, their nervous systems short-circuiting until they became hysterical or fell silent," she writes. In contrast, she tells the reader, "the men slid into a state of extreme lethargy, almost to catatonia, incapable of the most basic decisions or simple actions, unable to provide for their families or themselves, given to weeping for extended periods of time, or sitting staring at blank walls."
The breakdown of the Kashmiris parallels the breakdown of their world, one in which -- briefly, at least -- Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians lived amicably side by side, sharing festivals with each others. Hardy recounts one Eid celebration she joined in as a young girl, where her Hindu neighbor at dinner -- a teacher at a Catholic school -- explained to her the beauty of the Sura verse of the Koran that lay at her place-setting. Flashbacks like that, juxtaposed against the current reality of Kashmir and the fragile and tentative improvements in the region in the last few years -- the opening of a coffee shop that has remained open without being attacked by militants, for instance -- make clear the ability of conflict to erupt unexpectedly and to take a vast toll on the most routine elements of ordinary life.
Hardy may be a journalist by profession, but she tells the story of her love affair with Kashmir and the region's disintegration only partly as a journalist -- getting different perspectives from different groups affected by the conflict, from an older female doctor now working in another part of India to a Pandit refugee, to a former fighter who is learning to walk properly with only half of his foot -- and partly as someone with deep and long-lasting ties to many of those she writes of. The result is half-memoir, half chronicle. But overall, it's beautifully and elegantly written; rather than simply declaring that militants took over, Hardy shows us vividly how Srinagar was once a city of many gods, where the call to prayer from the mosque blended with temple bells. "And then," Hardy writes, "it was decided by a militant minority that there could be only one god for the Valley."
While at its core, this is the same kind of book as Asne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul or The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan and will strongly appeal to readers of both, Justine Hardy has produced a book that is more beautifully written and more personal in nature. Because of the extent of her involvement with the people of whom she writes -- these were her friends, long before she chose to write this book or before the events occurred that led her to write about them -- it is more deeply-felt and thus carries an even-greater 'wallop', reminding even the most jaded reader of the ugly realities of life lived in the multitude of places in the world like Kashmir. While they may intrude on our consciousness only when a particularly ugly or brutal incident occurs, or in the wake of an event such as the 2005 earthquake, Hardy gently prods our consciousness and our consciences, telling us that what shakes us briefly is the daily horror for men and women. Her vivid portrayals of these individuals remind us that they ARE individuals, not some collective 'other' to be depersonalized.
Highly recommended.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting in spots, but dry in others..., July 14, 2009
This review is from: In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family In A Changing World (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I really wanted to like In the Valley of Mist, Kashmir: One Family in a Changing World. I enjoy reading about distant countries and especially, different cultures. But as I read, I kept thinking how dry this book actually was. I can't say that it was boring, but it wasn't exactly engaging, either.
Hardy follows the Dar family through the trials and tribulations of modern-day Kashmir. The Kashmir Valley is reported to be one of the most beautiful spots on earth. Throughout history, it has also proved to be a political Eden. "The Poetry of the Valley's past is that it was a heaven on earth, a place of such gentleness that those who lived there did so in harmony, most particularly the Muslims and Hindus, the doors of their homes were open to each other, their festivals shared, some of their saints interchangeable." But that was before the insurgency where India, Pakistan and extremist Muslims began fighting over the fate of this beautiful country.
But this strife is mainly a backdrop for the Dar family--a Muslim family of carpet sellers and houseboat owners. Mohammad is the patriarch and it is through him that Hardy gets to know his family. She follows their personal lives as they deal with simple things--like weddings and educating to their children, to the more serious issues of war, earthquakes and corrupt government workers. Some chapters are more interesting than others. I especially enjoyed reading about the upcoming wedding of Mohammad's daughter. I know that Hardy has emotional ties to Kashmir and the Dars, but I don't think that this came through in her book.
One suggestion for In the Valley of Mist would have been to publish at least some of the photographs in color. Kashmir is a beautiful country, but you can't tell from the photos. I did find some of Hardy's photographs in color on the internet, and they are stunning.
I admire Justine Hardy for the life she has led and her efforts on behalf of the people of Kashmir (to whom she dedicates her book). I just wish that I enjoyed it more than I did.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Interpretive Dance about Kashmir, July 28, 2009
This review is from: In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family In A Changing World (Hardcover)
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The first chapter is about an item of clothing worn by all Kashmiris. This is an unusual way to start a story, almost boring, but after reading the entire book and understanding what the people of Kashmir have experienced, I can see why the author would want to start with an idyllic, unifying subject.
The story quickly plunges into mayhem as Kashmir seeks freedom from India and Pakistan, Pakistan helps them fight India, which morphs the conflict into a battle between Islam and Hindu, and an entire generation is raised knowing little more than war and loss. Just when the war-exhausted people begin to form some sort of normalcy, a severe earthquake strikes.
Justine Hardy's writing style is simultaneously poetic and politically revealing. She is an amazing investigator, managing to get behind borders and earn the trust of all sides.
But I was confused throughout much of the book. I needed a diagram of the terms "insurgent," "militant," "security force," "jihadi," "army," "police," "soldier," and so on; I was constantly wondering who was doing what--which side are we hearing from now? I could also use a diagram of the Dar family... twenty-five members and counting, but I never could figure out who was what or even if we were still discussing a member of the Dar family or some other random person. And I needed a time-line that Hardy could refer to every time she started a new paragraph--she jumped between decades back and forth.
Finally I decided not to try to approach this book as a coherent narrative, but rather as an interpretive dance. That worked quite well for me. Justine Hardy has given us a feel, a gestalt, a song about the trouble in Kashmir, and she has done an excellent job of it. It doesn't matter who did what or exactly who we're reading about, it is Everyman in Kashmir.
Thanks to Hardy's excellent journalistic investigations, this book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to know more about terrorism or jihad. Today I read in the headline news that investigators have discovered that the Taliban is recruiting teens as suicide bombers. But after reading this book, I realized that they might not be recruiting, they might be kidnapping. I also understand that many jihad fighters feel that they have no better options, that the militants are their only hope for an income.
While I had difficulty reading through this book, both because of the disturbing subject matter and confusing narrative, I think it is one of the most important books I've ever read.
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