[Establishing Shot]
Here’s the image Auntie P gave me: the street a pool
of spilled light & all the neighborhood children
at my grandfather’s knee. Kids: turbaned or taqiyahed
or tilakaad or not. How Jammu smelled of jasmine.
[Elevator Pitch]
Yes, I’ve heard your story—the man who saved my family
before they were my family. The boy who sat, crowned
at the cusp of my grandfather’s light, who walked to their place
belt wrapped around books, swinging their shadows to the sun.
[Primary Research]
Ullu remembers it like this: clutching a suitcase of toys
when the men came, machetes swinging the sun red. The year
we found out who we were & who we were not. Muslims boarded
on the bus. Sikh men, laughing: you wanted a fairytale & now you’ll get it.
[Rationale]
It takes a lot of work to remember we are nothing.
What has history given us but a fickle home? A legacy
of bloodied men. What’s a nation to the sky? Some other wood
to call ours, some other snippet of cloud to pretend we own.
[Secondary Research]
My mom’s clean, lean legs pounding the ground. Kirpans
catching light, limbs lost in long grass. Her hand above, searching
for someone’s to hold. The red rain falling on the leaves.
The ground: a rose river begging her to swim.
[Working Title]
Pakistan: Disneyland, a fairytale promised. Land of prayer mats & ladoo.
Fat chum chums dripping with pink coconut syrup & all the rupees
to buy them. Land of jobs & tender lamb sliding off the bone. Land
of endless Ramzan’s magrib & nights bouncing with mehndi-ed feet.
[Legal & Ethical Considerations]
History didn’t give me a blueprint for loving you, but here I am,
70 years after you crossed a blood-sodden field, building your altar.
History didn’t give you a blueprint for loving us, but there you were,
guiding through the tall grass, kirpan clearing a red path.
[Character Breakdown]
They aren’t soldiers. Just men. Men who wear matching shirts.
Men who carry machetes. Men who march in formation.
These aren’t refugees, just families vacationing to the Promised Land.
We aren’t at war. Just neighbors who like to kill each other.
[Sample Dialogue]
I know that man—my teacher—this bus goes right—right—left
—did you pack the attah—we’ll come back when—yes—Kashmir
is our—what’s a home anyway—I know that man—a prick at the wheel,
golden thread—bus gone left—you wanted a fairytale & now—
[Audio Element: Silence]
Auntie P talks of the apple orchards. The fruit piled into her arms.
Backyard’s blossoms perfuming the whole neighborhood.
& my grandfather, yes, she loves the story of my grandfather, teaching
the neighborhood children while all the streetlights fireflyed the night.
[Constraints]
Even with all this light, I can’t see past the silence of my family.
The silence of a home I’ve never lived in, the sins of a people mine
& also not mine. My aunt’s long stare, Ullu’s bowed eyes.
His voice’s rough engine stalled in the blood-soaked mud.
[Contingency]
I’m a bad researcher: I don’t know your name, what you did
other than take my family off the bus once we arrived at the park
-ing lot full of death. This is a love letter, I think. You’re a murderer
I think. Did you save us, walk back & slaughter the rest?
[Target Audience]
Everyone wants Kashmir but no one wants Kashmiris.
Aren’t I a miracle? A seed that survived the slaughter & slaughters
to come. I think I believe in freedom I just don’t know where it is.
I think I believe in home, I just don’t know where to look.
[Narrative Device: Flash Forward]
In America they slaughtered a temple of Sikhs because they thought
them us. Here we all become towelheads, amorphous fears praying
to a brown god. Others that become others that look like others.
They don’t know our history, its locked doors & heavy whispers.
[Narrative Device: Flashback]
Bring back the books: belted in your hand, swinging
their shadowed love across your body. You—a schoolboy
handsome, sucking a cigarette, never worrying about your lungs
or gut—old man fears hanging on some distant clothesline.
[Visual Element: Filtered Light]
Ullu remembers it like this: the bus turning left. Right. Left?
The lot of parked busses, mountains of Muslims stacked to the sky.
A brown shirt & red crusted blade, running to them. My grandfather’s
eyes wide: the boy who used to sit by his knee, now a man.
[Visual Element: Camera Swing]
You’re the god of small slaughters. I’ll write to you forever.
The man who would not let his teacher die. What stories
were your family told? Are your grandchildren in Jammu still,
throwing rocks at the armies who stain the streets?
[Property Rights]
Everyone wants Kashmir, a useless crown, a ruby fed blood
carved by machete. The past is a land I do not know.
I love a man who saved my family by stealing our home.
I want a land that doesn’t want me. I love a land that doesn’t exist.
[Denouement]
The image Ullu gave me: the long march through the forest
after, his mother’s plea to Allah piercing the trees like a strangled bird.
My mother’s eyes blank, as he held her hand, his siblings’ squeals drying
in their throats. & there in the horizon: a new country, a broken promise.
[End Credits]
In another life, could you have been my uncle, throwing me over
your shoulders when I was a baby? & when I grew up
I could have taught your children’s children’s children until
the streetlights came on, until our neighborhood crowded night.