To Tariq, Younger Brother
7 November 1952 – 7 November 2014
Lines written at Raj Bagh Cemetery and at Jewel House
The root of our life, the life below the life
Richard Howard
At Raj Bagh Cemetery
Aha! There you are buried at Father’s feet,
next to uncle Rasool. Are you still
not talking to him? Why did you steer clear
of him all your adult life? Grudges?
We lived our childhood with his children, after
all. Say, “Hello! Uncle Rasool,” or your
typical “Howdy!” Believe me, talking cures.
“I don’t want to see your face again,”
you wrote me once I sold you my share in
Jewel House for a brotherly sum.
Net one-eighty. In no time, you seeded
Mia’s young mind with poison talk: Don’t
trust our family, you told her. Have faith in
only the peerless Mister Peer, best
friend—who, by the way, was not at your burial.
Everyone is Corruptible,
his creed, you told me once. No money for your
school, you wrote Mia. She spread the news:
I had taken all. Tsk! Tsk! I know no dad,
except in fiction, who would disgrace
his sole heir, not even the tuk tuk driver
who dodges rogue traffic to wheel me
to the lively veggie bazaar at Dal Gate.
Such malice! Matched only by your ex-
wife’s mediocrity, turning up her fatuous
nose as if her kind had all the world’s
culture, Kashmiris only agriculture.