In the house once occupied by soldiers
laughter echoes
as three women sing
Yamberzal sutures a song
Banafsha, her daughter, gathers a distich
and urges her aunt, Sombul, to carry it on
Outside, dark enfolds the mountains
thousands of stars gather in clandestine assemblages
a brook gushes inconsolably
bright yellow flowers
murmur spring’s arrival to the insurrectionary night wind
Sombul looks across the gently rising ridges
to the south, she tells me, is the lake cradling tempests
she points toward the military camp overlooking
their home, fields, apple trees
The Line of Control
traces a haphazard arc
far along the hamlet’s northern edge
toward west, it gapes like an open bracket
On a map, the Line exists as a dotted strip
a 740-km “open wound”
sundering
meadows and mountains
rivers and songs
Banafsha fetches her mother’s “sound box”
as she turns it on
voices of a wedding troupe
abruptly lash against the room
“From your wedding fabrics
we stitched a shroud
your blood-soaked garment—
who shall wash it, alas!”
Banafsha was a year and a half, she tells me,
when her father was killed—
“My father’s house was burnt down.
This house belongs to my maternal grandfather,
for three years this was an army camp”
Laughter turns to dust,
night passes in an unknown but palpable fear,
and grief spreads through the house
like a low hum
swelling in the dark
resonant through its every crevice
As dawn crawls in through door slits,
we gather again lugging the night in our hearts
snowy mountains and ridges
awash in mist
grappling with light
In her checkered pheran and turquoise scarf,
Sombul sits by the hearth
watching dying embers
The floral rug
—pallid
its blue hues stolen by time
Yamberzal reaches for her medicines
on the sill behind her bed,
a fall in the meadows
while gathering herbs has left her broken, she says,
as she enumerates the healing plants found in the nearby forests:
hand, tripater, sheel hakh, koth, kahzaban
Two friends stop by,
Banafsha initiates the recall of songs
amid rounds of tea and freshly baked bread
women gather fragments,
holding each other
along memory’s ruthless terrain
In the house—
once occupied by soldiers,
voices soar
with refrains
of the ungrievable dead
geographies of loss resound
place after place
a roll call of the dead
refrain after refrain—
those who died near the border
those who crossed never to return:
Rasheed, Nabb’e Kak, Javaid, Manzoor, Zahoor,
Gulzar, Rahman, Bayt’e, Magg’e Maam, Latif, Sadaam …
“Rasheed was my paternal cousin,” Banafsha interjects—
“Manzoor was my nephew. Sadaam was also from here,” Sombul says—
“If we sing the names of all those we have lost,
night will descend and our song shall remain incomplete”
In each of their songs,
I listen to time’s severance
—an almostness
“These songs shall journey far away—across times,” Yamberzal
murmurs, pointing toward my recorder
