Showkat Nanda reported from Garkote in Kashmir. Born and raised in Baramulla district, he heard plenty of gunfire growing up, but until last week had never spent a night under military bombardment.
As night fell, we could see in the distance hills dotted with glowing white specks — homes tucked into the slopes of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The town behind us, on the Indian side, was also shimmering.
My friend was hopeful. “Lights are a good sign,” he said. “Means nothing will go wrong tonight.”
But as we settled into dinner, an announcement rang out from a nearby mosque: “Citizens, especially in border areas, are advised toremain indoors.”
As if in concert, the lights on both sides of the border flickered out, and darkness blanketed the Valley. The announcement had sounded mundane, but Kashmiris knew what it meant.
The shelling was about to begin.
I have spent much of my career covering unrest across Kashmir. At the end of a reporting trip at the Line of Control, I looked forward to staying with my old friend Irshad Khwaja and his family in Garkote.
The day before, early Wednesday, tensions between India and Pakistan had flared up into a military clash that would play out as two confrontations being foughtin parallel.
The more conspicuous one — attracting global attention and alarming world leaders — was an advanced aerial engagement, as India and Pakistan launched missiles and drones across the border. The exchange of strikes between nuclear-armed neighbours caused panic, but relatively few casualties.
The other confrontation, more brutal, one was concentrated in Kashmir. In the villages and towns along the LoC, an old-fashioned artillery battle pounded ordinary people caught in the middle.
My friend and his family knew what to do. They ushered me up the hill to a safe house where others had already gathered. We had barely arrived when the explosions began — sharp, rhythmic, intensifying. Each thud sent a tremor through the walls.
Fourteen of us men, mostly my friend’s extended family, were huddled on thin mattresses in a corner room on the ground floor, silent except for the occasional anxious whisper. Women and children had taken shelter in a concrete bunker behind the house.
Around 11.30pm, an elder with a thick white beard asked a younger man to stand and recite the Islamic call to prayer. It was not the regular time for it, but no one questioned the idea.
The young man’s voice rose, trembling but clear in the darkness, as the others quietly repeated his words and waited out the bombardment.
Younger men stayed on their phones, texting friends and relatives in other villages. “Are you safe?” Hardly an hour after the shelling had started, their phones lit up with reports that a woman had been killed not far from where we were sheltering.
“It’s quiet here,” I said, feigning calmness on the phone as I talked to my wife, who was back at our home in Baramulla town, an hour and a half away from the LoC. “I’m in a very safe place.”
I could hear the women in the bunker nearby chanting the Islamic Shahada — “There is no god but God…” — each time a shell landed. Their voices didn’t crack. Each time a blast rang out, my own body tightened.
The shelling stopped at 6am.
It had rained the whole night; the ground was wet and the sky clear. As we stepped out, the first thing we saw was the Haji Pir pass, part of the Pir Panjal mountains. Some of the men with me, speculating like military experts, pointed to the hills and estimated trajectories, trying to make sense of how the shells fell.
Community leaders from the adjacent district in Kashmir have counted 13 dead through the four days’ shelling. Pir Mazhar Shah, an official from the Pakistani side, said 11 people were killed on Thursday night alone.
The fighting is supposed to be over for now. India and Pakistan said on Saturday that they had agreed to a ceasefire, though several hours later there were reports of continued shelling along the border.
But my night in the safe house won’t leave me. Not because of the fear — that passed. What stayed was my reverence for the fortitude of the people along the LoC: for those Kashmiris who live their whole lives in the shadow of danger and carry on nonetheless.
New York Times News Service