Customer Reviews

In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family In A Changing World

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"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.

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.

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.

Selecting this book, I was hoping to learn more about the roots of the conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, and maybe a bit about Kashmir itself - its people and culture. But reading it left me confused about the main issues.

Justine Hardy tells us she has been going to Kashmir since her childhood, but she does not say why. Maybe me being American and she being British is why I do not understand the back story here. Is Kashmir a popular tourist destination for people from Great Britain? Or did Hardy's family have some other ties there (business, family)? And why did she continue to go there over many years? Was it recreation or was she working as a journalist there? How could she spare so much time to return again and again? She does not clarify this. Since it is her impressions and memories that fill the book, I'd like to know more about her connection to Kashmir, but she does not explain.

Because of her long-time experiences in Kashmir, she covers a long timeframe, jumping forward and backward in time as she relates personal episodes. The book mainly centers on the Dar family, but there is a confusing collection of cousins and family retainers and it was difficult to keep track of them all. The book dust jacket tells us Hardy is also a novelist and maybe that is why she chose to tell her stories in dialog. These dialogs are, of course, her recreated memories of conversations. While this is a legitimate device, it did not always provide any information about the flow of events or their larger meaning. A more narrative approach might have yielded a more understandable picture of the situation in Kashmir.

If the book was supposed to be "the story of the conflict" (per the back cover), it did not succeed. I did learn that trouble began with a Kashmir separatist movement which was mainly Muslim and which resulted in many of the Hindus (Pandits) leaving their homeland. The local rebels were initially supported by Pakistan, but later abandoned. The book has two maps, but these did not clarify who controls what.

I got the feeling the author wrote this book to express her own distress over the change she had seen in the beautiful valley that is Kashmir. It was once a place where people of all faiths lived side by side and hosted many tourists who brought prosperity as they spent money vacationing on the houseboats, buying rugs and shawls and enjoying a "paradise." But does the author, even with her connection to the prosperous Dar family, really understand the dynamic that brought about so much change?

I did admire Hardy's spunk in going into dangerous places, especially after Kashmir became more Muslim fundamentalist, and women's rights deteriorated badly. Her humanitarian efforts following a devastating earthquake also show her genuine concern for the country and its people. She provides a look inside this troubled part of the world based on long experience, but the book left me with mostly unanswered questions and wondering if these vignettes of Hardy's conversations with members of one wealthy family can really illuminate the recent history of Kashmir.

As someone who grew up in India, notions of Kashmir was strictly bi-modal - a freedom struggle or Islamic terrorism. This framing has helped the entire political class in Pakistan and perhaps North India as much as it has hurt the countries. Nevertheless, this account, I hoped, will provide a humanistic realism to the Kashmir problem. It flattered to deceive.

The focus on an extended family enforces a discipline for narrating events from a relatively apolitical viewpoint. Hardy does a remarkably fine job in making the reader relate to the family. Hardy also succeeds in providing a good representation of various stakeholders in the conflict without being judgmental. However, the constant jumping around of timeline interspersed with sometime overtly poetic and over-romanticized flourish in narration, makes this a difficult and quite distracting read. Very often, it hardly reads as a non-fiction book, but more as a poetic travelogue with no in-depth analysis or observations. Hardy does not even aim to position some of the events in the right political context, especially from India's perspective (for eg. the events regarding the kidnapping of a minister's daughter - a huge political issue that impacted even me growing up in the Southern most part of India) and unwittingly ends up providing a fairly naive or unwittingly romanticized version of violence-infused politics. While Hardy manages to avoid usual archetypes in describing the subcontinent, it is not devoid of (unintentional?) paternalism ("...when the Raj finally left...". - as if the British left India on their own accord!)

Overall, for someone who has not followed the conflict that has defined the relations of two countries since their very independence, this account provides a "poetic" narrative from a mostly non-political viewpoint. However, if you expect this account to be an analytical account of the conflict told from an average person's viewpoint, you will be sorely disappointed.

I was torn on whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars. It gives us outsiders an insider's view to a part of the world that most of us have never seen. On the other hand, it does ramble and I had some trouble following the story. The main problem is that the author jumps around in time, sometimes more than 20 years in one chapter. She stayed in Kashmir in her youth with her mother, then went back by herself as a young woman, followed by many other visits.

She also has so many characters in her book that it is difficult to know who she is talking about, and in which time period. Another problem that I had is she uses so many words from that culture that I don't know. A glossary would have been a welcome addition to this book.

On the plus side, the author has an intimate familiarity with the area, having spent a lot of time there. I think it's great learning about different people and cultures, especially in our current state of war with many Muslim areas.

Bottom line: It's worth reading, but a bit difficult to follow. For a better book about the Muslim culture, I would recommend "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson. It doesn't talk about the Kashmir region, but it is one of the best books I've read about the Muslim areas and what impact the war & Taliban has had on them. It's also a truly inspiring book.

When Great Britain granted independence to India and Pakistan, Kashmir remained in dispute. Summer people from India vacationed there. Moslems and Hindus were the predominant religions. These days with militant Islamists on the move, things have changed in Kashmir, and not for the better. This book might give people a start into learning about Kashmir.

I had a problem with this book that others might not have. I have a linear mind, and I couldn't figure out what the organizing principle was in this book. The author apparently lived in Kashmir in her youth. I think the book might have been better if she had described her experiences in order as she lived them for the framework of her book and wrote the experiences of her Kashmiri friends into that narrative. On the other hand, Justin Hardy is a published author, and I am not.

Since Kashmir has been "off the radar" in recent years, and it is part of a dispute between two nuclear powers and is part of a greater push of Islamists, we should all learn more about it. I, therefore recommend this book despite having had trouble following the narrative.

The author has visited Kashmir for many years and details the changes in the region through the story of a family of carpet sellers. The many traumatic events in the region - from war and terrorism to earthquakes - provide a dramatic backdrop to this exploration of the effects of Islamic fundamentalism on a traditionally tolerant multi-ethnic country. The book does not leave one optimistic about Kashmir's future.

I particularly appreciated the author's clear treatment of the rather confusing political situation in India and Pakistan in regards to Kashmir. But rather than embroiling us in complicated geopolitical discussions, she sticks to the story of the Dar family and shows how all the members of the extended family are affected by these events and the outside poltical struggles for control of Kashmir. She also provides a quite interesting, and personal, account of the change in the situation of women in Kashmir as the extremist Islamic culture becomes more powerful in the area.

Perhaps my only quibble with the book was the decision by the publisher to print the photographs of what is described as a very beautiful country in black and white. It gives a very "1950's" feel to an interesting 2009 book.

I was in Kashmir in the fall of 1989 for my daughters wedding. Serious fighting began just after the wedding ceremony ended and we were escorted to the airport at Srinigar under armed guard. This book rings true from what I saw and remember. It is an even handed and sympathetic appraisal of the problems of Kashmir and I enjoyed every word. Derrell Sweem

I began this book with extremely limited knowledge of the conflict in Kashmir. Suffice to say that I knew Kashmir was a mountainous and disputed territory between India and Pakistan, and that relations between the two countries have gone from cool to flaming on numerous occasions. I had no idea what that really meant, or the time line or the extent of the bad luck that has befallen this territory.

Hardy skillfully educates her readers about the conflict from the point of view of one Kashmiri family. When I say educate, I do not mean that she lectures. Her delivery of knowledge is akin to that process where nutrients slip through the membrane of a cell wall. She is developing an onion in layers so that in the end, your base of understanding is greatly broadened without the feeling that you've been in school. She does this through talented character developement. Every larger than life character has some real life flaw--like the militant who fought a lifelong battle with embarrassing motion sickness and how he taught Hardy to combat the problem herself by chewing ginger root.

I was constantly awestruck by the sheer notion of a white woman traveling so freely in this heavily occupied and male dominated zone. She never seemed to wonder how she was able to get away with this, and I think some analysis of this might have helped the story. Additionally, the book was somewhat one sided. Towards the end she wove in a broad minded view of the Indian military, but clearly both governments (India and Pakistan) were the villains here.

I was left at the end wanting more. I want the sister book from the point of view of Pakistan, and I would love to read her take on the Armenian genocide and ongoing Turkish denial. I want to visit Kashmir, vacation on a houseboat and have a pheran specially tailored for me.

This is a great non-fiction book that reads like fiction. I highly recommend it.