(On the Kashmir exodus of the 1990s)
When my mother escapes the Valley, an aeon of existence gasps into un-existence. In this surviving, violent version of the world, the Jhelum will have an iron taste and the blood of brothers. The Kaul house in Fatehkadal from the 19th century will not survive the 20th. The child of my mother’s neighbours, who was going to be a little girl – Naaz – will never be born. Three generations of men and women on either side of a barbed wire will inherit terror as a totem and curse each other. For centuries, a subcontinent will beg to know if the water divides the land, or the land divides the water. The answer will break their hearts and families. I won’t know those streets of Habba Khatoon, and my children won’t know her language. Displacement is a bitterness which is made stronger with distance; what was left behind becomes fuller, truer with time, and the loss of it becomes crueller. When the story is told again, there will be versions based on who is asked but all their voices will crack. An exodus leaves hollow, both who leaves and who remains, and what remains of the Valley will weep and bleed forever.
