“Allah must have thought good for us. I’m optimistic,” Tabbasum, wife of Muhammad Afzal Guru, had said recently.
Speaking to this newspaper at the Gurus’ ancestral house built of exposed burnt brick and timber and situated on the banks of the Jhelum at Jagir, a Sopore suburb, 55 km northwest of Srinagar, she had said that however conflicting reports about Guru’s providence pouring out of New Delhi turn her and other family members nervous from time to time. “Those who ask for immediate hanging of Afzal make us anxious. We know why they do that but they, perhaps, don’t realise how painful it is for us, particularly our 13-year-old son Ghalib,” she had said.
“When something about his father appears in a newspaper and he hears about that from his schoolmates the first thing he asks for on returning home is to show him the publication. He also wishes to keep himself abreast of news about his father through the Internet,” she had said.
Whenever he would find something discouraging he would look sad. “That makes me cry,” Tabbasum, who works as a manager at a private nursing home in neighbouring Baramulla, had said. Some time ago, Ghalib, after watching TV, rushed to his mother to tell her Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan has “supported” his father’s situation. “He was excited saying SRK was the only person who spoke in support of his father in a discussion on TV,” his mother recalled.
“I earn sufficiently to keep ourselves going and meet the expenses on Ghalib’s education but Afzal’s absence makes life dark and incomplete. I’m still learning to live without him. In fact, it is his (Afzal’s) prayers and my love and concern for our child that encourage me to live for them. I’m sure he will come back someday,” the 33-year-old Tabbasum had said. Afzal is also her cousin and they tied the knot on November 1, 1998. It was an arranged marriage. He was an MBBS student but had left his studies midway to “fight for the freedom of Kashmir”. The family would make no bones about his being a Pakistan-trained militant. Rather, it feels “proud” about him being a “dedicated soldier” of Kashmir’s “freedom struggle”.
Aijaz Ahmed Guru, Afzal’s brother, said: “I know him so well, better than his wife. He is a brother and has been a friend too. His love for his people is infinite. He is worried about their future and would often express himself before me and other friends. He wanted to see Kashmir liberated from foreign occupation and was prepared to sacrifice his life for the cause. I know that for certain.”