SCENE FOUR Ugly Feelings ۱
What if you are desirous of a world you cannot have? What to make of those ugly feelings—the irritations, exasperations, frustrations of constantly failing plans?
The sign on the left cement block reads: “Trees are our investment—Pakistan Army.”
The nomadic Bakarwal crowd the road while a military truck approaches in the distance.
Abrar irritates me; I am sure I also annoy him. Even after all these years, I suspect he holds a grudge against me for not assisting him in finding employment or doing more to save his father from dying. Truth be told, I am terrified of him. The expectations he places on me I cannot satisfy. His demands feel unfulfillable—out of line—and exceed the constituents of our relationship. At least, that is how I thought relationships ought to be: safe, bounded interactions—you know, intimacies within reason. The scene presents Abrar’s irritations, exasperations, and exhaustion; it contains the urgency, palpability, and material groundings of his frustrations with the world. In her book Ugly Feelings, also the title of this scene, Sianne Ngai argues that these minor, noncathartic, and more politically ambiguous feelings are all the more suited for a diagnosis of late modernity.1 They can be thought of “as a mediation between the aesthetic and the political in a nontrivial way.”2 These ambient, less intense, and “dysphoric affects” are nastier in their ability to uphold passivity and the “obstructed agency” experienced by the marginalized.3 Frustration and irritability are marked by an ongoingness and “have a remarkable capacity for duration,” unlike rage, which cannot be indefinitely sustained.4
Ugly feelings are pushback to a world that one is not permitted to attain: the languor, stupor, and fatigue of attempting to breathe amid suffocation. The unlocalizability of such unprestigious affects corresponds more closely to what Eu Jin Chua describes as the “institutions and practices that operate diffusely and without discernible manifestation—structures that may indeed be constituted out of assemblages of ugly feelings directed toward oppressive ends.”5 Abrar shows us that under some conditions, effective resistance may take the form of “limp affirmations,” gradually building up into a “sublime, powerful agency.”6 The scene encourages us to “recuperate the minor negative emotions for politics,” instead of focusing only on direct negation.7 Ugly, ignoble, mean affects are the “psychic fuel” on which capitalism runs, as Ngai argues,8 but they can also serve as indexes of the social conditions of frustration and fatigue—agency suspended and dulled by coloniality.
Abrar’s frustrations, exhaustions, irritability—what I call his “minor anger”—at the world are not unwarranted. The scene shows that such feelings are generative and ontologically informed. They are not simply affective residue (that bitter aftertaste) of a life derailed. How are ugly feelings linked with repair and flourishing? I approach this question within the microcosm of my relationship with Abrar and how that is emblematic of the broader colonial dynamics between Pakistan and Kashmir, the center and the periphery, the plains and the pahars. I also wonder about the possibilities of friendship in settings of incommensurable inequality.
Minor Anger and the Sovereign
My fear of that anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.
—Audre Lorde9
According to Frantz Fanon, we revolt not for a particular culture but simply because we can no longer breathe.10 Every year, Kashmiris on both sides of the LoC mark Yaum-e-Siyah (Dark Day), a day of protest. It falls on October 27 to commemorate the occupation of Kashmir by Indian forces in the aftermath of the Partition, when the region was passed from the long and cruel Dogra rule to brutal Indian control.11 A Kashmiri resident remarked: “We are used to struggle; first the Dogra, now India and Pakistan.” There are strikes and passionate speeches across Kashmir, and public offices and schools remain closed. Often, protestors damage property and burn effigies. It is a moment of rage. Once the day is over, people return to their daily routines; their anger again, and for the time being, dulled to a simmer.
Anger has been elaborated as a worthy response to injustice despite demands from liberal democracies to eject anger entirely from political, public, and popular deliberations.12 However, I am not interested in anger as elaborated by feminist and critical race scholarship, which seeks to establish a sensorium of rage around collective wrongs to elicit a call to action.13 Nor am I looking to develop a typology. For example, Martha Nussbaum seeks to distinguish between “unproductive” and “productive” anger.14 Similarly, Sonali Chakravarti attempts to reduce anger to cognitive-evaluative, confrontational, and kinetic forms.15 Instead, I refer to the smallness of anger—minor anger—to draw in its irresolution and perniciousness, ambivalence and moodiness,16 and to bring to the fore its varied social, cultural, and political productivities.17 Put differently, I am drawn to the frictions arising from a life rendered inconvenient by the sovereign.
I understand the sovereign in the loosest of terms—those who adjudicate knowledge, life, politics. The sovereign can be the nation-state, the liberal self, the writer, the reader, or even the community and the family. Lauren Berlant and Michael Hardt agree that the notion of the sovereign is overstated within contemporary political theory.18 Berlant believes that sovereignty is, at best, an aspirational and normative concept (not a “true” given condition), mistakenly circulated as realism.19 Ruba Salih and Sophie Richter-Devroe show in their work on Palestine that countering and undoing the frames of the singular sovereign is a political and epistemic project.20
Building and departing from contemporary understandings of anger that see it as reactive and demand-seeking21 and as an investment in the reshaping of geopolitics and citizenship,22 the productivities of minor anger lie in interrupting the sovereign’s ability to make decisions singularly. Therefore, I seek to understand minor anger—those ugly feelings—as ontologically constitutive and transgressive, as disorganization that compels us to gradually move beyond ourselves, as instability not merely in an emotive sense but in the sense of a durative crawl for a relationality with possibilities of the social that may not be permitted otherwise. In other words, I want to percolate in the proposition that the ambient and minor affects of anger propel the subject toward nonsovereignty, which can itself engender novel relationalities.23
Lauren Berlant understands nonsovereignty as a state of plural and multiple (even contrasting) forms of self-adjudication.24 Nonsovereignty allows us to consider a “different relation to incoherence,” where one’s “complicity and contradiction can never be resolved.”25 Kimberly Lau believes nonsovereignty is not a permanent state of being but a fleeting transformative experience.26 I depart from Lau’s understanding of nonsovereignty as signaling a life form that can be guided and nudged from suspension to coherence. Instead, I draw attention to life under the dullness of coloniality—that is, life continuously unhinged. Further, informed by Michael Hardt, I approach nonsovereignty at the level of both the social and the self and explore how they relate to one another.27
In this scene, I attempt to work through the nonsovereign. I take to heart Lauren Berlant’s advice to consider the “different ways in which we engender different kinds of claims on the world, in our attachments or ways of moving or desires for habituation or aspirations.”28 For Abrar, life’s ugly feelings are a constant relation, not a mere passing through.29 He is continually unhinged, frustrating the biopolitics of those who seek to constrain him. His ugly feelings are a want or desire for more from the world, despite being repeatedly reminded of the audacity of such a proposition. They disrupt or supplement the logics of social strategy. They are an everyday mode of engagement that, in their animal immediacy, can delight in the promise/joy/potential that sovereignty seeks to enslave or selectively enhance.30
The scene hints at a relationship between the smallness of anger and repair. It presents nonsovereign relationalities and “being-with-disintegration” to reject the smoothing of edges as the desired state of subjectivity31—and to think about the possibilities (or impossibilities) of repair within the same conditions of nonsovereignty. Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman write: “[to] encounter ourselves as nonsovereign … is to encounter relationality itself, in the psychic, social, and political senses of the term.”32 How then can nonsovereignty foster “both intimate and social bonds”?33
Prickly
Abrar’s father, whom I referred to as Baba, was the caretaker of the guesthouse where I often stayed. Baba tasked Abrar with looking after me: preparing breakfast and dinner, heating water, and running any small errands I might have. In this sense, I never formally planned on writing about Abrar, though out of habit, I took copious notes of our conversations when and where I could. Over repeated trips to the pahars, we struck up a friendship. I spent most evenings at the guesthouse, often bored and lonely. Abrar would join me. We talked, exchanged stories, and spoke about our lives.
It was some four years into our friendship that I decided to write about Abrar. When I asked for his permission, he responded: “I thought you would never ask” (main samjha shayad aap kabhi nahin puchein gay). The sites of my interactions with Abrar were multiple: the guesthouse where we first met, the technologies (cell phone and Facebook) through which we kept contact, and the tea shops and hospitals of Islamabad. I return to these sites throughout the scene. Lisa M. Tillmann-Healy considers friendship as an inquiry and a mode of fieldwork in itself.34 She suggests that the very processes of building sustained engagements, compassion, and vulnerability constitute “data collection,” and the “path of the relationship becomes the path of the project [research].”35
Abrar can be very prickly. One morning at breakfast, he was in a particularly grumpy mood. He stared me down for waking him up so early in the day:
We have this one wretched hen who never lays any eggs. Early in the morning, she was making so much shor (annoying noise). It turns out she finally laid an egg! I had to chase her away to shut her up [so I could go back to sleep].
He then pointed at his phone:
I went to bed very late. First, I watched a film on my phone. Then I was up most of the night trying to reach my girlfriend. I had to try a million times before the call went through [drawing attention to the poor telephone reception].
Abrar was not referring to streaming a film online since there is no or minimal Internet available in these pahars. Instead, a video store in the bazaar transfers pirated Bollywood films onto the customer’s phone using an old-fashioned USB. Abrar liked to watch movies on the very tiny screen of his dated Nokia phone.
It was freezing that morning, Abrar added:
Winter here sucks. It is so cold; there is nothing much to do but sleep and stay warm in bed. When I was younger, I would spend all day in front of the fire, reading saucy romance novels. We never had a TV, but the radio was always on. Schools were closed during the deep winter months but remained open otherwise. Most kids skipped school when it snowed, but I was forced to go every day since I lived so close. If I didn’t go, the teacher would hit me and say: “Why didn’t you come yesterday? You live nearby?”
He sighed: “Where can one go? There are pahars everywhere; you look here, you see a pahar, you look there, you see some more” (kidhar jayen? Har jagah pahar hi pahar hain, idhar dekho pahar, udhar dekho pahar).
Flight Birds
During summer, Abrar worked as a tourist guide. He worked as a salesman at a clothing store in Lahore (a Pakistani city) for the rest of the year. He explained: “I earn more as a tourist guide here in four months than working all year round in Lahore.” Tourists are typically overcharged—the price of everything goes up from food to accommodation to the cost of hiring a jeep. Abrar quipped: “That’s the price you pay for being a tourist.”
Abrar appreciated the vibrancy and energy urban Lahore offers, but he was also mindful of its perils:
The first year when I was in Lahore, I made friends with a rowdy group of boys. We would go around the bazaar late at night and mug people, steal money, mobile phones—even food. We once robbed a drunk shopkeeper and ran away with all the merchandise from his stall. But then it struck me: these guys have families here; if we get caught by the police, their families will get them out of jail. What will happen to me? So, I decided to leave their company; they taunted and bullied me for some weeks but eventually left me alone.
Abrar continued: “Lahore is a dangerous city. When I was new there, the police would often harass me in hopes of making extra cash. They got on my case as soon as they found out I was from Kashmir. I am lucky; I have a reference [acquaintance] in the police force. I would take his name and tell them to fuck off.” He further added: “In Lahore, Kashmiris are called panchi (flight birds) because there is an assumption among Pakistanis that we are not loyal and can take off whenever we want.” He shook his head: “As if Pakistanis are committed in their relationships. They are nice when they need something, but once that is over, they simply forget about you.” I felt the last statement was directed at me; it was Abrar’s way of prodding whether I, too, would forget him once my research was over. He laughed: “There is a stereotype that we Kashmiris run away from work during summer when the garmi (heat) is unbearable for us pahari log (mountain people). This is true; it is sweltering in Lahore in the summer. Who in their right mind would want to stay in a furnace willingly?”
“We Are Not from India”
Asleep in the guesthouse, I felt a strong earthquake. By the time I got out of bed, the tremors had subsided. Unsure if I had imagined all this, I went back to sleep. The following day, I inquired if Abrar had felt the tremor. He shrugged: “I remember the bed shaking, but I wasn’t convinced if I needed to get up. Instead, I sent a text message to a friend and went back to sleep.” He continued: “The tremors were third-class. It wasn’t like the one we had many years ago. The shocks then were so intense; I thought maybe India was attacking us with missiles!” Abrar’s eyes lit up: “Shall I tell you something else?” I nodded. He continued:
Do you see this naala (stream) running down the pahar and under that bridge? This swells up during the monsoons every year. Remember the big flood? That year, the naala destroyed the bridge separating this village from the rest. We were stuck here; the naala became another LoC! My brother was stuck on the other side; he remained there for nearly two weeks. People would write letters, tie them to rocks, and hurl them across the water. A man from our village wrote a note saying: “We are out of atta (wheat flour), send us some!” On the other side, a person wrote back: “We don’t have a flour mill here, you idiot! Don’t bother coming here; there is nothing here for you.” People on this side got furious at his provocation. They burst out: “We are not from India that we are not allowed to cross!”
As the floodwaters receded, the Pakistani army eventually rehabilitated the bridge, reconnecting the pahars once again.
The Best Days of My Life
Abrar dressed smartly, his clothes always ironed, and sandals polished: “You know, in Lahore, customers are surprised when they find out I am a shopkeeper. I am so well dressed that they mistake me for one of them.” I asked what inspired him to dress so well. He shrugged: “I don’t know. I picked up fashion tips when I lived in the [displacement] camp in Islamabad [after the earthquake]. Those were the best days of my life.”
After the earthquake in 2005, a series of “model” displacement camps were set up in Islamabad to accommodate people from Kashmir and affected areas of Northern Pakistan. The camps were unusual because they were right in the city under the watchful eyes of Islamabad’s elite, news reporters, and the head offices of humanitarian organizations. Unlike most squalid, dirty, and underserviced camps, these were quite extraordinary in their attention to cleanliness and reasonable quality of living facilities.
At the time of the quake, Abrar’s sister lived in Rawalpindi with her husband. Hearing how comfortable the camps were, they managed to enter a camp designated for people from Kashmir. They invited Abrar to stay with them, and he did so for a year. He explained:
Life was strange there. But if I look back, I have never lived as comfortably (aaraam aur ayashi say) as I did in the camp. Everything was free, whatever your heart desired! I lived like the people of Islamabad, neat in my appearance. Initially, others in the camp were suspicious because they mistakenly assumed I was from Northern Pakistan [instead of Kashmir]. They would tell me to leave the camp as it was only for Kashmiris. They were satisfied only after they overheard me talking to my sister in a mix of Pahari and Kashmiri. After that, sometimes, they would refer to me as their Kashmiri bhai (Kashmiri brother).
I inquired if he had made any friends in the camp. Abrar responded: “When I first got there, the other kids were brutal. They would pick on me and beat me. I was new and didn’t know the ropes. The first two months were tough. One day, I decided enough is enough; life cannot go on like this. I took things into my own hands.” “What did you do?” I wondered aloud. Abrar laughed: “Simple—I grew a pair! I would not give in to their demands; if they hit me, I would strike back. I became fierce. A time came when I surpassed them. They began to look up to me. Soon, whenever they wanted to beat someone or play somewhere, they would seek my advice and company. I became their leader.”
Abrar recalled an unusual incident in the camp:
One day, the camp ran out of water. A fellow resident, already known for his activism, encouraged us to protest in the streets. He stopped the traffic, yelling, screaming, and tearing his clothes off. We also grabbed our empty containers and joined him. We blocked traffic and created a ruckus. This went on for a few hours. Eventually, some government officials started negotiating with our strike leader [the activist]. The activist instructed us to return to the camp, saying that the government had promised to restore the water supply. We all went back, but there was no water for another three days. It was rumored that the activist was bribed to call off the strike. I even saw a car drop off Nestlé water bottles in front of his tent. That fucker.
After nearly a year, the government started pressuring camp residents to return home, and eventually, the camps were shut down. Abrar recalled:
When I returned home, I was reminded of the harsh conditions of life in the pahars. For example, there is little or no electricity here; it is always dark. The camp was always lit up. There were no restrictions on movement there. Here, if you enter someone’s property to sample their fruit, they yell at you. What do you do if you feel like having fruit and are surrounded by other people’s fruit trees? I still miss my friends. My closest friend was a boy named Zeeshan. He was from Muzaffarabad. We have lost contact. I don’t know where he lives, but I remember his father had a shop in the bazaar. To this day, whenever I go to a bazaar in Muzaffarabad, I ask about him. So far, I have not been lucky. My life will become so much better if we are to be united.
Everyone Keeps Score
“You know, an interesting thing about the pahars is that people here always keep score,” Abrar shared. There is tension within Abrar’s paternal family. This is due to competing claims on property left behind by Abrar’s now-deceased grandfather. This complicates matters because Abrar’s home is surrounded mainly by these relatives. I wondered what it was like to be surrounded by people one does not like. Abrar provided an example: “The village mailman is my father’s relative [an “enemy”]. We sent a time-sensitive letter a few years ago, but the mailman delayed the letter by fifteen days. Any letter that leaves this area goes through him. That bastard is very calculating and forwards the mail according to his wishes. This is how he maintains power over us. He gets jealous when we develop relationships with people in Pakistan, fearing that we may gain strong allies.” He continued: “Then there is the master sahib (school headmaster). He has been bugging my siblings and me since we started school. He always picked on me in class. Or, during exam time, he would send a proctor to single me out for a body search or make me sit in the noisiest spot in the room. He is the same son of a bitch who would scold me if I missed even a day of school during bad weather.” Abrar added: “People here are out to get each other; if you don’t keep score, they will consume [destroy] you” (log kha jayen gay).
Document Everything
It is well known that the pahars are run by the Pakistani military and state intelligence agencies (locally known as the “agencies”). The agencies maintain a close watch on residents. The pahars in Kashmir, in particular, have a long history of unexplainable civilian disappearances. Getting on the agencies’ radar is considered “the worst possible outcome of life” and, as one interlocutor described, “certain death.” The agencies work with a discernible juridical-political logic of exception and impunity, rendering pahari subjects as threats and opportunities to extend Pakistan’s own sovereignty claims against unfavorable regional geopolitics.
Abrar confided in me that his eldest brother was in jail. He has been in prison for the last fourteen years. A year remained in his sentence. While I did not ask for the details of his conviction, it was clear that Abrar blamed his extended family for his brother’s incarceration. He explained: “My cousins put my eldest brother in jail. Our entire family life was destroyed—imagine having your loved one locked away for fifteen years. The money and time we spent, the loss of peace of mind, not knowing if he would be okay.” Abrar added: “We didn’t even know what to do when my brother was arrested. We had no experience with the police or the legal system and were unaware of terms like evidence, witness, and appeal.” He continued: “Over time, we have learned how to deal with the police, the army, the agencies, the hard way, how to be vigilant. The trick is to document everything.”
Abrar’s family maintains a ledger of any “strange” interactions they have with the police, the agencies, or the military and any violations or harms inflicted on them by their extended family. He explained: “My brother, who is in the army, maintains a ledger. He writes down every incident, including any harm committed by our extended family. He has been keeping this ledger since he was in grade six. We are seven brothers; we will take revenge on each recorded transgression as we get older.” Abrar offered an example:
The rainwater from my uncle’s house drains directly onto our property. We have repeatedly asked them to dig a drain. One day, I got pissed, took a shovel, and dug a drain on their property. The men came out yelling, telling me to get off their land. There was a fight, and they beat me up. When I got home, I entered the incident in our ledger. We called a jirga [a village-level tribunal]. We presented all their transgressions; there were pages and pages of chronological documentation dating back to 1970! The matter was decided in our favor, and my uncles were obligated to sign a document of apology and publicly apologize to us in the mosque.
I made several trips to Islamabad during my time in the pahars. On one such occasion, Abrar handed me a thin manila envelope: “Can you please post this? This is too important to be mailed from here. This is a request from my mother to my brother’s warden for his early release. It is a compassionate appeal from a mother for her son.” When I reached Islamabad, I dropped the letter at the post office. A few weeks later, Abrar’s brother was released from prison.
Matters of Love
Abrar spent a lot of his time texting with his girlfriend, Naima. “How did you meet?” I inquired.
My sister is married to her brother; she lives with them. Once, I called my sister from Lahore, and instead, Naima answered. We got talking, and one thing led to another. We exchanged numbers and began regularly texting. I did not even know what she looked like, but I fell in love! I decided to visit my sister to see Naima in person. I was shocked; she wasn’t that attractive! I had a panic attack: fuck, what have I gotten myself into? But I thought if I left her now, she would think it was because of her looks, and that I was superficial.
He continued: “One day, I was on the bus to Lahore, and Naima called. She professed her love for me and expressed a desire for marriage. Our relationship entered a new phase of intimacy, but her parents did not want us to be together. They are worried our wedding will lower the position of their son. They think that if their son mistreats my sister, I will retaliate by harming their daughter.” Abrar added: “Her parents have instructed me to forget about her. But how can I? Last week, I went hiking with my friends. Suddenly, it started to rain and hail. There was so much wind, the trees were swaying, and we had minimal visibility. Everyone ran for cover; we were all concerned about ourselves (nafsa nafsi ka alam tha). I darted into a cave and etched Naima’s name into the wall. I told her parents: ‘Even at 400 meters, under conditions in which most people forget Allah, she was on my mind. How can I forget her?’ ”
I inquired how he will move forward: “Well, I have decided, if I want to pursue this relationship, I need to figure out a way to move back to Kashmir. What better way to do that than joining the army?”
Master Sahib Strikes Again
The army forms the backdrop against which all life unfolds in the pahars. It regulates most institutions and services, from hospitals to the only mobile phone service in the pahars where Abrar lived. Abrar smirked: “When they spy on my calls, they probably hear me having phone sex.” One can spot numerous security posts, cantonments, and military-grade vehicles throughout the pahars. The military is an essential yet highly selective source of employment here. It provides a rare opportunity for regular income, a pension, and medical care via an elaborate network of nationwide military hospitals. In joining the army (if one is lucky enough to get accepted), residents must concede to a version of Kashmir under Pakistan’s benevolent supervision. Drawing on Raymond Williams’s work on “structures of feeling,”36 Nosheen Ali argues that, through constant surveillance via its intelligence arm and highly selective employment, the army “dominates discourse, emotions, and ways of being.”37 She explains:
Regional employment in the Pakistani military creates loyal subjects who revere the army and the military state, producing the conditions of possibility for continued military authoritarianism in the region. At the same time, the activities of the intelligence agencies produce a paranoid state and suspicious subjects.… Loyalty and suspicion thus constitute forms of emotional regulation that are paradoxical but not contradictory: the former integrates people into the nation and accomplishes rule by creating consent, while the latter services state power by emotionally disintegrating the region through suspicion and hindering the possibilities of local collective action.38
Through various forms of emotional regulation, the army restricts ways of being and relating. The military’s hold is so intimate and complete that it even impinges on romantic relations and regulates whom one can love and how, as Abrar explains:
This is my third attempt at applying for the army. The last time I got close: I passed the written test and the interview. But things got derailed when I was brought in for the medical examination. I had etched Naima’s name on my arm using sharp scissors. The army major [the doctor] saw the cuts on my arm and inquired what they were. At first, I said I got cut during work and hoped he would move on. But the motherfucker kept pressing on. Eventually, I told him what they meant. He immediately referred me for a psych evaluation. I was handed a whole bunch of questions. It was all fine until I read the question: “Have you ever loved a boy or a girl?” I panicked. I don’t know what happened, but something consumed me at that point. I just froze. I drew thick lines across the question with my pen. After reviewing my responses, the psychiatrist leveled with me: “Baita (son), you can’t do this job.” I asked: “Why not?” He responded: “Baita, don’t argue; just go home; you can’t do this job.” Here I am again, trying to get into the bloody army. Do you know that my brother got in after seven tries?
Baba was exceptionally proud of his other son, who made it into the army. He was hopeful that Abrar, too, would make it that year. Baba shared excitedly: “This year, we even have some sifarish (a source). The person who makes the entry tests is a relative, and so is the person who checks the height of potential recruits.” On the morning of the test, Abrar was very nervous. I wished him luck. That same night, he stormed into my room, visibly pissed. Things did not go as planned. Abrar arrived at the test center to learn that his surname was misspelled on the documents forwarded from his school. The headmaster strikes again. Abrar was not allowed to sit the exam because of this clerical error. He was trembling with rage; I tried to calm him down. We both swore at the headmaster till we ran out of insults.
Abuka: The Con Man
The following year when I returned to Pakistan, I called Abrar. The army had yet to accept him. He told me he had spent the past few months texting with a Nigerian man he met on a bus in Lahore. The man’s name was Abuka, and he claimed to work for the Nigerian High Commission in Islamabad. He asked Abrar for Rs. 2 lakh (two hundred thousand rupees) in exchange for a guaranteed visa and job in Nigeria for a salary of $5,000 a month. “That’s an obscene amount of money,” I tried to reason with him. Abrar thought I was unsupportive and presumptuous. He raised his voice: “I mustered up whatever courage I had to speak with him in English, but can you please talk with him and help me understand the process of obtaining a visa?” I reluctantly agreed to accompany Abrar in his meeting with Abuka. We decided that I would question Abuka to gauge the authenticity of his offer and get more details about the job he was promising. Over the phone, we also made a list of tasks that Abrar would need to do if he did get the job (such as applying for a passport) and a list of alternatives if he did not.
I picked up Abrar from a bus stop in Islamabad the following day. We Googled the Nigerian High Commission to obtain a list of staff members, but Abuka was not listed. I cautioned Abrar not to get his hopes up. Abrar did not appreciate this and accused me of sabotage: “First, at least meet him; this is how these things work. When embassy people work through back channels, they act sneaky and accept bribes.”
We met Abuka at a tea shop. I tried to get some preliminary details from him, such as the documentation required for the visa and the job’s nature and location. He could not answer sufficiently any of my questions. Instead, he put me on the phone with his associate, a mysterious “Dr. Gerry,” who “works at the UK consulate.” Dr. Gerry was also not very helpful. Before leaving, Abuka demanded Rs. 2 lakh and Abrar’s passport within the next two weeks; otherwise, the offer would expire. I strongly advised Abrar not to hand over any money or documents to Abuka.
The Military Hospital
Baba had a severe accident. I was not present when it happened, but I heard details from Abrar a few days later when he returned from the hospital:
We were cutting grass, as we always do. We heard a noise and looked up to see abbu (father) stumble off the ledge. He had slipped. We ran down; his head had hit some rocks and was split open; he was heavily bleeding. I sent my brother to the dispensary in the bazaar for help [there are no readily available doctors in this section of the pahars]. But the dispenser refused to come to see my father and retorted: “The clinic is here; bring the patient here. Have you ever heard the doctor visiting the patient?” We then carried him to the dispensary, where he was injected with a powerful sedative. I ran to the jeep wala (jeep driver), who usually drives tourists. He also refused to help us. He is an outsider, a man from Lahore. I told him to fuck off and then, out of desperation, ran to one of my uncles, who also owns a jeep. Despite our history of hostility, he came right away. I muttered under my breath: “After all, only blood relatives can be ‘real’ family; everyone else will always remain strangers” (apnay apnay hi hotay hain, aur paraye paraye hi).
Baba was rushed to the military hospital, some three hours away. There were no doctors on call. A technician attempted to take an X-ray of Baba’s head. But he could not figure out how to X-ray someone lying down. Abrar recalled:
He [the X-ray technician] told us to support abbu’s body upright. We moved him and propped him up; at that very moment, his entire body went limp, and he lost consciousness. We then drove him to the better-equipped military hospital in Muzaffarabad. It was a Sunday; only one doctor was present, already overwhelmed with various medical emergencies. We moved him to the Combined Military Hospital in Rawalpindi the following day. He was immediately shifted to the neuro ward. The doctor ordered a head CT scan, which showed a skull fracture and blood clots. Right now, he is numb from his waist down.
Abrar added:
I couldn’t even ask the fauji (army) doctors too many questions; they have no respect for civilians. As soon as we got to the hospital in Rawalpindi, my brother [who is currently in the army] phoned someone from his brigade who now drives an ambulance at this hospital. He helped us navigate the administration. We then called another cousin, who is also in the army at a relatively senior post. He sent a note to the hospital to take care of us. See, isn’t it useful to be in the army?
Over the next few days, as test results came in, the doctors concluded that Baba would most likely never regain full functionality of his body, but he would continue to live. Abrar started to weep.
Changes
Soon after Baba’s accident, I moved to another location for my research. I occasionally checked in with Abrar to inquire about his father. Last I heard from him, Baba was back home and relatively stable. When I returned to Canada, months later, we lost touch. Two summers later, while I was again visiting my parents in Islamabad, I received a Facebook invitation from Abrar. I accepted it and decided to call him to see how he was doing. A lot had changed. Abrar’s brother, who had been in the army, had died the previous year. Not being able to bear the loss of his favorite son, Baba also died shortly after. Abrar sighed: “He just gave up on life.”
There was also some good news; the army had finally accepted Abrar. It had been almost a year since his deployment. He shared: “I wouldn’t say I liked it at first, but now things are okay. Since my brother died, I promised to perform well at work. He [my brother] was the pride of our family; he was a superstar in the military.”
Abrar inquired if I had any photographs of his father. I had only a few, and they were not very good. He grew irritated at me as if I were the family photographer: “You lived with us for so long. Why didn’t you take more pictures of abbu?” This left me speechless. I felt like saying: “You lived with Baba all your life. Why didn’t you take more photographs?” But I bit my tongue. Abrar’s annoyance toward me came from excess, accumulated feelings. They were a buildup of unarticulated expectations, some justifiable, others not so much—the piling up of unaddressed grievances that anxiously sought release.
The following day at 7 A.M., Abrar woke me up with a frantic phone call. His eldest brother (released from prison a few years ago) and his wife and children had been in a major bus accident near Murree (a hill station a couple of hours away from Islamabad). They were admitted to the intensive care unit of a public hospital in Islamabad. He hurriedly inquired if I could meet him there later in the day and speak to the doctors on his behalf. According to Abrar, the doctor was not prescribing adequate painkillers to his brother, who was in extreme pain. I agreed to meet him there.
Despite the circumstances, I was happy to see Abrar. “How are you?” I inquired warmly. He replied—annoyed: “Let me first catch my breath” (main saans to lay lun). Abrar was referring to the fleeting opportunities for gulps of air between a rush of events or between one derailment and the next. Fred Moten writes that breathing (and being Black) is a source of “preoccupation,” as is breathing and being Kashmiri.39 Breathing is also affirmation, improvisation, entanglement, choreography.40
Nonsovereign Relationalities
What is friendship anyway? The expectation is that you show up when asked and unasked, and if you stop showing up—are you still a friend? Gesa Kirsch warns us not to confuse the friendliness of the people we encounter in our fieldwork with genuine friendship.41 She builds on earlier contributions of feminist writers who have argued for the recognition of power differentials between the researcher and the researched and the deceptiveness of seemingly egalitarian relations.42 My relationship with Abrar, its somewhat sharp contours, is perhaps symbolic of the broader relationship between Pakistan and Kashmir, that is, a bond of incommensurable inequality. How can such a skewed relation ever be fully reciprocated when past and continuing violations and grievances are so intense? Shauna Butterwick reminds us that reciprocity can be achieved if sincerely pursued despite difference.43
I brought a printer and scanner to the pahars to make copies of research transcripts as needed. Abrar was keen to learn how to use the machine. Perhaps one day, he figured, he could work as a photocopier (serviced photocopy shops are typical in urban locations throughout the country). I promised to teach him; I needed several transcripts copied anyway. Following dinner, Abrar came to my room to work on the printer. After only fifteen minutes of activity, the electricity went out. We waited for half an hour for the power to come back on, but it did so for only another fifteen minutes. This went on for the rest of the night. After attempting this for four nights, Abrar, understandably frustrated, gave up. I shrugged: “Well, tough luck.” I guess that was the limit of my generosity.
The desi murghi is a prized commodity in the pahars. These chickens are lovingly raised at home; it is a labor of love. The chickens are eaten only on extraordinary occasions, such as after a reunion with a long-separated family member or when a marriage is settled between two households. I noted several occasions when the desi murghi was prepared in Abrar’s home. I was never offered a desi murghi over years of repeated trips to his house. Does this mean that I failed to make genuine and meaningful inroads? Or the opposite, I made such significant progress that Abrar felt no pressure to offer me a desi murghi? I knew if I asked him why I was never offered the chicken, he would shrug (much like I did when my photocopier idea did not pan out): “Well, tough luck.” I guess that was the limit of his generosity.
Can Abrar’s friendships with urban Pakistanis such as myself be considered a form of nonsovereign relationality—incommensurable bonds steeped in colonial grievances, which in their opportunism frustrate the civility of relationships? And which provide some protections disallowed or rendered extremely difficult by conditions of sovereignty? While consumed by his phone, Abrar proudly revealed: “I am texting my friends; one lives in Rawalpindi, one in Lahore, and another in Multan [all major Pakistani cities]. Many people stay at this guesthouse, and we form friendships; the genuine ones keep in touch. You never know when they can come in handy.”
Abrar suggested that these relationships can be activated when kinship limits are stretched or when family or community cannot or intentionally chooses not to accommodate. Such bonds can form at multiple scales. For example, Pascale Schild demonstrates how, after the earthquake, activists in Kashmir pressured the reconstruction bureaucracy in Muzaffarabad by creating alliances with national actors in Pakistan.44 In the same way, a functional engagement with the military, such as having at least one family member join the army, can also be considered a unique relational configuration where the essentially exploitative military is exploited in return to secure particular protections and services that cannot be obtained otherwise (e.g., access to hospitals).
Pahari residents maintain a particular disposition toward those from the plains. In Kashmir, outsiders are not allowed to purchase land and are typically only tolerated as tourists—that, too, rather brusquely. As mentioned earlier, tourists are charged exponentially more for room and board, and different rates exist for renting vehicles for tourists versus the locals. The guesthouse Abrar’s father managed is another example. While the guesthouse is owned by the tourism board, which sets and collects rent, Baba often charged extra and pocketed the difference, even from me. The frictions between tourists and residents configure each in relation to the other in very particular ways, generating a shared understanding of outsiders among the pahari people and setting up minimally intersecting forms of relating. Indeed, these internal borders are enforced both ways, reflecting the strange colonial dynamics between Kashmir and Pakistan, the pahars and the plains, between Abrar and myself. The displacement camp that Abrar described is a good reminder of this. While the Pakistani state created these camps to maintain segregation between paharis displaced from Kashmir versus Northern Pakistan, camp residents also reciprocated by ensuring that only Kashmiris were allowed to live in camps designated for them (recall the suspicion leveled at Abrar, the attempt to assess whether he was Kashmiri). Residents were able to create yet another Kashmir within Pakistan, this time in the heart of its capital city, a kind of alter-community.
At the time, the World Food Program was implementing a nutrition project in the region. The project manager occasionally stopped at the guesthouse. He joked how the locals had a “peculiar flavor”:
I was shocked by how rude people are here. When we are on the road in our vehicle [most World Food Program vehicles are large 4×4 cars], we are forced to honk at pedestrians to get out of the way constantly. They walk in the middle of the road as if they are walking on their forefather’s property (jaisay un kay baap ka road hai). After some time, I realized it is not their fault; they have certain micronutrient deficiencies because of which they have prolonged reactions; they are not rude, just malnourished.
This “peculiar flavor” is what I am referring to when I invoke the concept of nonsovereign relationalities. Residents are hardly “slow in their reactions.” Still, they operate with a considerable agreement to defy road etiquette as a display of solidarity and a refusal of those who seek to encroach on their lands. These unspoken yet shared codes of conduct (such as being rude to tourists and overcharging them) are particular social formations and ways of relating.
The Kashmiris of the pahars possess a significant and chronological ledger of betrayals by the state (and its people), just like the ledger maintained by Abrar’s brother. The recorded treachery includes undermining any collective action and politics within Kashmir (the “bribing” of the Kashmiri activist in the displacement camp is a small example).
Abrar described how public expressions of frustration, such as small strikes and demonstrations, are common in the pahars: “While I was in school, there were frequent power cuts at night. It was exam time—how could we study? We were annoyed. We marched in front of the electricity exchange; those bastards were sending all the power generated from our waterways all the way to Islamabad. We yelled at them to give us back our electricity and not send it to fucking Pakistan.”
The scene holds all those disagreeable feelings that arise under atmospheres of violence. Abrar helps us consider that such feelings may generate unique social formations that can open alternative avenues for claims-making. A similar case can also be made at the level of the community. Residents of the pahars, frustrated by the Pakistani state’s apathy, have collectivized across different lines of power, affiliation, and kinship to take matters into their own hands—such as by maintaining privately run schools, operating village-level micro hydro plants that generate broken streams of electric power, and even practicing alternate approaches to health care and healing. After Baba’s accident, Abrar returned from the hospital to collect medicinal plants and herbs known for their anti-inflammatory properties. Like Sattar Shah in scene three, Abrar’s mother also performs dam for some 300 illnesses, including widespread hepatitis C. Every Sunday she opens her home, and people visit from near and far to benefit from her healing powers, connecting Abrar’s household to people in all corners of the country. A government-funded health facility near Abrar’s village has been under construction for the last seven years. The planned clinic is still nowhere near completion.
The pahari people have innovated alternative social spaces away from the watchful eyes of the military and the state’s intelligence wing, such as closed poetry reading circles and literary societies, locally circulated magazines, and small-scale debating competitions. Bringing people together, these are important venues for nurturing unique political subjectivities among locals and preserving a sense of solidarity and historicity.45 I cannot divulge further details of these spaces, which would risk their overexposure. Perhaps these are all examples of nonsovereign relationalities steeped in ugly feelings. Useful here is the literature on refusal, which prompts us to consider the generative aspects of refusal: that is, those who “turn away” are not merely disengaging but are imagining and enacting new subjectivities, ways of being, and interpretations of histories outside the scope of the sovereign.46 According to Audra Simpson, “refusal is a symptom, a practice, a possibility for doing things differently,” born out of the outright rejection of colonial paradigms of thought and action.47 Leanne Simpson tells the story of the beaver, which blocks some flows and enables new ecologies to flourish elsewhere.48 Tina Campt describes refusal as the “rejection of the status quo as livable and the creation of possibility in the face of negation.”49 To refuse is to reject the systems that render some life illegible and unintelligible and uses, in that process, “negation as a generative and creative source of disorderly power to embrace the possibility of living otherwise.”50
The antagonisms generated by an inconvenient life are unique forms of relationality and intimacy, which distinctively configure irritable bodies. Abrar has had many brusque interactions with those visiting the guesthouse. In his words:
A senior police official was residing at the guesthouse: the bastard was drinking. I entered his room to drop tea. In a drunken state, he said to me: “Why are you wearing such a thick jacket?” I replied: “Because it is cold? Isn’t that obvious?” He didn’t like my response and scoffed: “There are other cures for the cold [referring to his bottle].” I retorted back: “Only you and your kind will know that since you have a racket of the cure.” [The police are notorious for confiscating alcohol, the sale and consumption of which is largely illegal in the country, and consuming it themselves.] With that, I stormed out of the room.
The following day as the officer was checking out, he informed me: “I am not going to pay the bill; after all, I am the police, I am the state.” I replied cheekily: “Put that in writing, and I will let you go.”
A United Nations official demanded that I serve him dinner in the guesthouse room. I refused. Heated words were exchanged. I don’t know who he thinks he is. He comes to our village in his Pajero and demands special treatment. You see, we aren’t allowed to serve food in the rooms. These are the rules. Previously, we used to do so. But the guests are so uncouth; they often get salan (gravy) stains on the white bedsheets. Do you know how hard it is to get those stains out? It is not like we have automatic washing machines available.
At around 11 P.M., two tourists (a man and a woman) walked into the guesthouse and requested a room. I asked for their national identity cards and inquired about the nature of their relationship. I can rent rooms only to legally married couples. The man handed over his identity card for inspection; the woman refused to do so. I pressed further. She eventually handed it over. Their surnames didn’t match. I grew suspicious: “How do I know you are married? Your surnames don’t match.” Feeling insulted, the woman snapped: “Don’t you know whom you are talking to? I will call my papa in Muzaffarabad. All he needs to do is make a few phone calls, and you will be taken to task.” I couldn’t stop smiling: “Madam, the phones don’t work very well here; good luck to you and your papa.”
Breath
It comes as a great shock to discover that the country, which is your birthplace, to which you owe your life and your identity, has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you.
—James Baldwin51
As we crossed the many checkpoints dotting the pahars on our way to the guesthouse, the driver, a middle-aged man from the plains and a retired driver from the army, muttered under his breath: “The child of a Kashmiri can never be trusted” (Kashmiri ka bacha, kabhi nahin sacha). Claudia Rankine reminds us that it all begins with a sigh and a breath.52 The sigh carries the baggage of microaggressions and the breath, the burden of collective memory. In a quest for a breathable world—where things for once unfold as planned—Abrar insists against the conditions of sovereignty that seek to diminish him, whether be it in matters of love or of life and death. Abrar forms his point of departure from the world amid a broader backdrop of rage and anger through a clingy form of endurance—frustration mixed with exhaustion. This provides traction for relating differently. His percolating irritability with the world chisels alternative and often generative social formations that blur distinctions between what one has presently and what one can achieve. Abrar’s world is the only world that matters. He is determined.
His frustrations cannot be disentangled from the daily diminishments of pahari life, the dull chipping away of self and subjectivity. The demands Abrar places on others may appear outrageous; the scene shows that his sense of entitlement is also a mode of self-advocacy in a world where nothing is guaranteed, or a given. I have brought to the fore those minor inconveniences that can impede flourishing—such as in matters of love, employment, life, or death. Abrar reads the world as an accumulation of uncertainty, where things seldom go as planned and where one must doubly rely on the asymmetries of power to achieve the simplest of tasks. By this, I mean minuscule undertakings such as delivering an important letter on time or getting one’s name spelled correctly on official documents. Matters that, despite their smallness, can be mourned as significant obstacles when they do not align or can be celebrated as glorious achievements when they do. I am reminded of the various times Abrar asked—rather, demanded—that I speak to the doctor on his behalf or with Abuka (the Nigerian con man who sells dreams of prosperous employment in Africa): “You are more respected; they will listen to you” (aap baray hain, aap ki baat woh sunein gay).
The scene presents the grittiness and inconveniences of being young in the pahars and the multiple forms of attrition—wear and tear—life demands. The arising ugly feelings are a window onto the world. I have captured the myriad ways Abrar insists against the conditions of sovereignty that seek to diminish him, leading to much exhaustion and frustration. I have teased out social formations nurtured by such ugly feelings and how being in a state of irritability may provide the impetus for novel ways of relating. Irritation, exasperation, frustration—as transgressions—can generate sophisticated moral communities in the service of repair work. Abrar points to those ugly feelings that arise when life does not go as planned and how they forge particular intimacies and social bonds.
Using my “friendship” with Abrar as a microcosm of broader colonial relations between Pakistan and Kashmir, I have focused on Abrar’s frustrations (much like the frustration of Kashmiris in Pakistan) as entry points for approximating the labor of life in the pahars. Abrar shows us that these ugly feelings nurture sophisticated moral communities in their very minor transgressions. The affective forces of these small feelings adjust and orient the social in ways that are not necessarily counterproductive to flourishing, as one would intuitively assume. Ugly feelings in minor and everyday gestures compel an ethical urgency for profoundly engaging with those very irritations that impede life.
Some friendships are strong and survive over the years, while others are muscular and fade. Abrar’s and my friendship is one closely shaped by power relations and biopolitics. Abrar may or may not have extended sincere gestures of friendship toward me, but nor did I, and neither one of us can do so without earnestly engaging with the broader colonial relations that govern us. Instead, we were able to foster a mutually shared tolerance, a guarded proclivity, a cautious, tentative fondness—as a placeholder until broader colonial ambiguities are fully worked through. We maintain an intimacy that we hold dearly, regardless of the ugly feelings that persist between us.
My dad stutters. When I was young and impatient, I completed his sentences as if I knew what he was about to say. He gently corrected me when I got it wrong, which was often.
I witnessed him deliver a high-stakes speech in front of hundreds of people in a grand auditorium when I was fourteen. I couldn’t have been prouder. In the days leading up to the event, he practiced his delivery daily, reading slowly but carefully, determined not to get lost in a jungle of words.
Dear writers, dreamers, and world makers—how can we fully open ourselves to the world? Will they wait if we can’t find the words we seek? Will they listen as we put together feeling?