The light that saved lives

OUR Army camp had a mazaar. One of its two rooms had a grave that was covered by a green cloth. The adjacent room was a prayer chamber with a mimbar (pulpit) in the west-facing wall.

We could not go out of the camp, which had several sheds made of corrugated iron, because it was located in an area called the ‘granary of terrorism’. The mazaar stood under the huge chinar trees that must have been more than a hundred years old.

One day, I stood outside the little building and felt the melancholic peace that hangs around such places. My eyes fell on the low parapet of the roof. Two words were written in a language I didn’t recognise. I made enquiries and found out that the name Rasool Shah was engraved on the mazaar’s parapet in Gurmukhi. Nobody whom I asked could give me a satisfactory reply about why the name was written in Punjabi.

About 25 years ago, terrorists roamed in far larger numbers in our area. The camp used to have just a barbed-wire fence around it; the Surankote valley rang with the rattle of gunfire every night. That night, there was silence. The clouds gathered, and heavy showers took away the camp’s electricity. At 3 am, a sentry heard stray dogs slithering underneath the fence. He shouted in Punjabi since the camp was with a Sikh battalion at that time. Two men who had crawled inside stood up and fired their Kalashnikovs. The sound of gunfire echoed in the valley.

The terrorists advanced, firing at tin huts. Soldiers sleeping inside leapt out of their bunks to get hold of their rifles. The whole camp was lit only by the occasional flashes from the barrels of Kalashnikovs.

Then, all of a sudden, a lone light shone above the grave of the pir. From whence or how nobody knew, but everybody saw the light that made the two terrorists visible. An exchange of fire started. Soon, the fidayeen departed for the next world.

The next day, we talked about the pir baba’s miracle: amid the darkness, he had sent the light that saved many men from dying. The terrorists were not able to cross the grave. The Commanding Officer, too, had seen the light. That day, the personnel of the battalion decided to build a proper mazaar over the grave. Within days, a boundary wall came up, built with reverence. The rooms were readied. Then, the plaster work was done and the mason carved the name Rasool Shah in Gurmukhi on the parapet.

Faith is a strong thing. They still say that the pir baba protects the camp.