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

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Hardy (The Wonder House) draws on her 12-year relationship with the Dar family to recount the story of modern-day Kashmir—part pastoral idyll, part war zone. Hardy writes, There is no single casualty of war, no one noun that sums up what has been lost, and she paints a moving portrait of the ravaged communities and landscape, weaving in analysis of how the political machinations of Pakistan and India have quelled or intensified the conflict. She contrasts the sleepy valley she encountered decades ago to the Dar family's Kashmir, which has witnessed the 1989 uprisings and strikes, martial law, deadly encounter killings, mass migrations of Pandits (Kashmiri Hindus), increasing religious orthodoxy and the widespread disruption of education, health care, economic prosperity and family and social life. Hardy's deep familiarity with the region—she has reported on the Kashmir conflict for close to 20 years—allows her to present complicated and conflicting points of view from reformed jihadists, Indian generals, Pandit refugees and various members of the Dar family. Her reporting is admirable and gilded by lyrical prose and evocative description. (June)
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Product Description

A personal, moving, and vibrant picture of one of the most beautiful and troubled places in the world -- described through the experiences of one family, whose fortunes have changed dramatically with those of the region.

" If there is a paradise on earth, it is definitely here and only here," said the early seventeenthcentury Mughal Emperor Jehangir when describing the Kashmir Valley. This is a place that has always inspired poetry and war: the Kashmir Valley has been fought over for centuries. Tensions there exploded yet again in 1989, and since then it has been embedded in constant conflict -- every facet of militant and fundamentalist extremism having already exhibited its horrible results long before September 11, 2001.

In the midst of this breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking conflict enters the novelist, journalist, filmmaker, and aid worker Justine Hardy. Having lived and worked in Kashmir for two decades, she draws the reader beyond the headlines into the world of In the Valley of Mist. A family portrait, the book describes a unique and gentle culture that has been shattered by the impact of insurgency, repression, and Islamic extremism in a place once famous for the warmth between its Hindu and Muslim residents.

In the Valley of Mist is not a story of politics and power, but of the Dar family, a warm and welcoming group of houseboat owners and carpet sellers, women and men, who have inhabited the Kashmir Valley for generations. As Justine Hardy relates them, the Dars' experiences before the war, through the conflict, and on to the life-altering earthquake that shattered the region in 2005 give us unique insight into the culture and mind-set of the area. In the Valley of Mist captures a natural landscape -- its side-byside lakes dotted with houseboats, gardens, mosques, markets, and chai-khana stalls -- while taking the reader along for experiences as diverse as wedding parties and militant training camps. As Hardy describes burning cities and deserted neighborhoods, she also longingly reflects on a past time of entwined festivals and traditions, when Pandits (Kashmiri Hindus), Muslims, and Sikhs coexisted peacefully.

What emerges is a profound portrait of a textured cultural landscape, shaped by idealistic divides that are both germane and deeply resonant as the world faces the ongoing state of conflict between East and West. Revealing, provocative, and warm, In the Valley of Mist paints Kashmir as the template for the changing face of Islam.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439102899
• ISBN-13: 978-1439102893
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #359,060 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative and compelling, June 21, 2009

By	S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Interpretive Dance about Kashmir, July 28, 2009

By	Crease in the Page (Hills of Northern California) - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Kashmiri Family, July 7, 2009

By	S. R. Schnur "srschnur" (ME USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

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.