Rain
Â
Among my notes is a record of a telephone conversation on May 5. The day before he had gone to the hospital for an important test, a scan that was expected to reveal whether or not the course of chemotherapy that he was then undergoing had had the desired effect. All other alternative therapies and courses of treatment had been put off until this report.
The scan was scheduled for 2:30 in the afternoon. I called his number several times in the late afternoon and early eveningâthere was no response. I called again the next morning, and this time he answered. There were no preambles. He said, "Listen, Amitav, the news is not good at all. Basically, they are going to stop all my medicines nowâthe chemotherapy and so on. They give me a year or less. They'd suspected that I was not responding well because of the way I look. They will give me some radiation a little later. But they said there was not much hope."
Dazed, staring blankly at my desk, I said, "What will you do now, Shahid?"
"I would like to go back to Kashmir to die." His voice was quiet and untroubled. "Now I have to get my passport, settle my will, and all that. I don't want to leave a mess for my siblings. But after that I would like to go to Kashmir. It's still such a feudal system there, and there will be so much supportâand my father is there too. Anyway, I don't want my siblings to have to make the journey afterward, like we had to with my mother."
Later, because of logistical and other reasons, he changed his mind about returning to Kashmir: he was content to be laid to rest in Northampton, in the vicinity of Amherst, a town sacred to the memory of his beloved Emily Dickinson. But I do not think it was an accident that his mind turned to Kashmir in speaking of death. Already, in his poetic imagery, death, Kashmir, and Shahid/Shahid had become so closely overlaid as to be inseparable, like old photographs that have melted together in the rain.
Â
   Yes, I remember it,
the day I'll die, I broadcast the crimson,
Â
so long ago of that sky, its spread air,
its rushing dyes, and a piece of earth
Â
bleeding, apart from the shore, as we went
on the day I'll die, post the guards, and he,
Â
keeper of the world's last saffron, rowed me
on an island the size of a grave. On
Â
two yards he rowed me into the sunset,
past all pain. On everyone's lips was news
Â
of my death but only that beloved couplet,
broken, on his:
Â
"If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this."
Â
Shahid's mother, Sufia Nomani, was from Rudauli, in Uttar Pradesh. She was descended from a family that was well known for its Sufi heritage. Shahid believed that this connection influenced her life in many intangible ways; "She had the grandeur of a Sufi," he liked to say.
Although Shahid's parents lived in Srinagar, they usually spent the winter months in their flat in New Delhi. It was there that his mother had her first seizure, in December 1995. The attack was initially misdiagnosed, and it was not till the family brought her to New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, in January 1996, that it was confirmed that she had a malignant brain tumor. Her condition was so serious that she was operated on two days after her arrival. The operation did not have the desired effect and resulted instead in a partial paralysis. At the time Shahid and his younger brother Iqbal were both teaching at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. His sister Hena was working on a Ph.D. at the same institution. The siblings decided to move their mother to Amherst, and it was there that she died, on April 24, 1997. In keeping with
her wishes, the family took her body back to Kashmir for burial. This long and traumatic journey forms the subject of a cycle of poems, "From Amherst to Kashmir," that was later included in Shahid's 2001 collection,
Rooms Are Never Finished.
During the last phase of his mother's illness and for several months
Â
Among my notes is a record of a telephone conversation on May 5. The day before he had gone to the hospital for an important test, a scan that was expected to reveal whether or not the course of chemotherapy that he was then undergoing had had the desired effect. All other alternative therapies and courses of treatment had been put off until this report.
The scan was scheduled for 2:30 in the afternoon. I called his number several times in the late afternoon and early eveningâthere was no response. I called again the next morning, and this time he answered. There were no preambles. He said, "Listen, Amitav, the news is not good at all. Basically, they are going to stop all my medicines nowâthe chemotherapy and so on. They give me a year or less. They'd suspected that I was not responding well because of the way I look. They will give me some radiation a little later. But they said there was not much hope."
Dazed, staring blankly at my desk, I said, "What will you do now, Shahid?"
"I would like to go back to Kashmir to die." His voice was quiet and untroubled. "Now I have to get my passport, settle my will, and all that. I don't want to leave a mess for my siblings. But after that I would like to go to Kashmir. It's still such a feudal system there, and there will be so much supportâand my father is there too. Anyway, I don't want my siblings to have to make the journey afterward, like we had to with my mother."
Later, because of logistical and other reasons, he changed his mind about returning to Kashmir: he was content to be laid to rest in Northampton, in the vicinity of Amherst, a town sacred to the memory of his beloved Emily Dickinson. But I do not think it was an accident that his mind turned to Kashmir in speaking of death. Already, in his poetic imagery, death, Kashmir, and Shahid/Shahid had become so closely overlaid as to be inseparable, like old photographs that have melted together in the rain.
Â
   Yes, I remember it,
the day I'll die, I broadcast the crimson,
Â
so long ago of that sky, its spread air,
its rushing dyes, and a piece of earth
Â
bleeding, apart from the shore, as we went
on the day I'll die, post the guards, and he,
Â
keeper of the world's last saffron, rowed me
on an island the size of a grave. On
Â
two yards he rowed me into the sunset,
past all pain. On everyone's lips was news
Â
of my death but only that beloved couplet,
broken, on his:
Â
"If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this."
Â
Shahid's mother, Sufia Nomani, was from Rudauli, in Uttar Pradesh. She was descended from a family that was well known for its Sufi heritage. Shahid believed that this connection influenced her life in many intangible ways; "She had the grandeur of a Sufi," he liked to say.
Although Shahid's parents lived in Srinagar, they usually spent the winter months in their flat in New Delhi. It was there that his mother had her first seizure, in December 1995. The attack was initially misdiagnosed, and it was not till the family brought her to New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, in January 1996, that it was confirmed that she had a malignant brain tumor. Her condition was so serious that she was operated on two days after her arrival. The operation did not have the desired effect and resulted instead in a partial paralysis. At the time Shahid and his younger brother Iqbal were both teaching at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. His sister Hena was working on a Ph.D. at the same institution. The siblings decided to move their mother to Amherst, and it was there that she died, on April 24, 1997. In keeping with
her wishes, the family took her body back to Kashmir for burial. This long and traumatic journey forms the subject of a cycle of poems, "From Amherst to Kashmir," that was later included in Shahid's 2001 collection,
Rooms Are Never Finished.
During the last phase of his mother's illness and for several months
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