The loudspeakers of the mosque nearby cried loud the words “La Illaha Illala” when Sanarina opened her closed, rickety window to see the crowd of men walking towards the graveyard. From a young age, she had keenly wondered about the concepts of ‘life’ and ‘death’. She had never seen anyone dying in front of her eyes, although she lived in Kashmir. She did grow up seeing blood in every season— snow, summer, as well as spring. This was one such same routine days of her life, when she looked up and saw the crows grouped together in the sky on a wire. She knew something was not right.

Her school was usually shut on Saturdays. It was the day when she would often stroll around downtown and see the open shops and their owners bursting full of rumors and news. Today, Saranina stopped in an area of Gawkadal, to see how the famous milkman of the town prepared curd and other varieties of milk. She got curious to see the intricate hand movements of the milkman and forgot she was standing in the middle of the road when a scooter honked right by her right ear. Disrupted by the noise of the horn, she looked up from the beautiful old hands of the milkman. Not far away was an old wooden house with almost twenty-four windows which had been left abandoned. The old wooden house was the second storey of a shop complex and sign boards sprawled over it, for brands to pitch in their commercial ideas. It was only March, but felt like July because of the sun and its scorching heat that melted Sanarina’s skin like wax. In another area of the downtown, she saw the dark tunnel leading the way to the bund area, as if a path to a new Kashmir. A new Kashmir, it was. They had established cafes and fine dining places in that part of the city. The exotic paper machie work on the walls reminded her of the river Jhelum which flowed in such beauty traversing the Kashmir valley. Sanarina knew how to spend her Saturdays walking around the city, until this day when her father did not return home.

Few days later, after school on Friday, Sanarina joined her neighborhood friend for a game on the bridge. The bridge stood right at the center and they played as if they would not meet each other the next time. They both studied in the same school. It was in an old wooden building with just five classrooms and a sign board was placed facing the front of Jhelum. The sign board was written in Urdu and it said it was a local gully school for Islamic studies. Most of the times the game they played was hide and seek, but this time they played it along with Chinese whispers. The rules of the game were not to speak aloud and to hide. Sanarina, on her turn, found a place behind the oldest Chinar and won the game. Each turn they took, she discovered a new corner. Her friend, who was taller, couldn’t hide behind the Chinar but found a spot in an abandoned boat. It was the only time both friends screamed, played and did a lot of things together. The place where they played had a large number of people moving in and out. People said it was like an imitation of London’s picturesque gardens. Only that Sanarina had never heard the name of the place or could imagine what it was like. For her it was always Kashmir, her home without her father.

An emergency curfew had been declared in the area. Their school had been suspected to have some curious movements within. Not the regular ones you see. Baba Jaffry, father of Sanarina, with his other friends from the mohalla had gathered at their house to discuss the matter.
“Baba Jaffry, so, what do you think? Would there be a speech on this?”
“Not that we know of. But there should be. The skies have cried all night. If not many, there might be few of them hiding there.”
Militants had groped the area. Baba Jaffry knew the scuffle between the militants and the state. He offered no help. Instead, he had hid behind the huge chinars forgetting that Sanarina was young and still inside her room observing everything. Her father gave sermons in large gatherings preaching Islam and politics. He met a lot of scholars and discussed religion and Islamic faith in the world.
The morning began with screams everywhere. The larks had set out in each mohalla early that day. Sanarina’s mother who was two-months pregnant had ran out of milk. It was an ordeal to find milk anywhere. Sanarina remembered the skies on the day were a deep crimson. It was close to midnight that her mother decided to cross the gully of her mohalla to ask for milk from her neighbors. Sanarina had heard that her father was far away in the mountains giving speeches on peace and harmony.

Two weeks had gone by. She searched for her father everywhere, who had not returned. His disappearance had made everything gloomy in the family. The tears and sighs her mother left on Sanarina’s chest were heavy for her to bear. The season was also shifting. Winter was soon approaching. A lot of articles were being written in the newspapers and through them, they learned something was not right with Baba Jaffry.
After the first two weeks, Sanarina also lost hope. Her mohalla had become a space of melancholy. Men from other families were disappearing rapidly, and those who survived where killed anyways. The families were often called and frisked heavily top to bottom. It was a strange life. Who would have wanted to live like this constantly? Sanarina often gazed at the birds from her window and wondered where her father was and what he might be doing. She missed him terribly.

Baba would always get her favorite colors. She remembered how he used to go to downtown to get her colors from the market. Her father was six feet tall. Like an “Angrez” as Mian chacha had once remarked. Baba was nowhere to be found. Anyone could have confused Baba to being a European. He looked like that, tall and striking. A few of his articles had been published in the magazines and many were appreciated for the voice they carried. He was also well known for his performances in the open theatre in Kashmir. But where was her Baba?  Had he eaten anything all these days? Was he even alive? All these questions bothered Sanarina. In that one month of his disappearance, she grew old amidst conflict and nightmares. Each night, she had a different dream. Sometimes she would see her father eating worms near the Chinar. Sometime he would climb a tree. It was hard to believe, her baba was missing and they were clueless.

*

Everyone was slowly forgetting the disappearing people in the city. It was clear that they had been killed. Somewhere in the illusion of hope they were kept alive in the hearts of their loved ones. With some flashes of overlooked memory, her father’s image kept haunting Sanarina every Sunday. It was like a routine dream. She slowly resumed her customary visits to downtown again. On one such walks, Sanarina discovered a rose water shop from the past, located in a chowk of Fateh Kadal. The shop stood there as if part of an eternity. It was like the rest of Kashmir, disappearing with its old, tubular bottles of invisible yet fragrant rose water on its decaying shelves. There was a time she remembered when the shop had a vibrant, rustic charm. The delicate fragrances of rose water used to waft in the air as people walked closer to the shop with sparkling glass bottles of various shapes displayed on blue velvet. For a moment everything came back to her.

As she looked around, she realized like her Baba, there was nothing left of the shop. There were barely any rose water bottles left, and the fragrance had now combined with the rustic smell of the past, and of dust and concretized cement. The sight of the rose water shop brought back memories of her Baba. All of Kashmir was disappearing in front of her eyes. Sanarina started walking back towards her home, strolling a ghostly downtown. She knew she had lost her father like one of those rose waters bottles. Empty, and sadly wafting some remnants of the past.

                                                ***