Bilques was waiting for her turn, on the banks of Wullar Lake, to take a joyride when the boat capsized. Moments later she saw her sister Rehana drowning. “Her last words to me were- papas wanta mi bachaw” (Tell father to save me),” she says.

The vast lake was abuzz with activity on a bright summer day. Girls running around, boys playing hide-and-seek in nearby thickets and teachers disciplining tots to sing poems of hope and brighter tomorrow, the usually silent Wullar had come to...

“They started entering houses and shooting people at point blank range,” Ghulam Qadeer Baig recalls that fateful day of May 21, 1990, which is remembered as Hawal massacre in the collective memory of Kashmiris. The killings by the Border Security Force troopers took place on a day when people were participating in the funeral procession of Mirwaiz Molvi Farooq.

Ghulam Qadeer’s brother-in-law, Farooq Ahmad Baig, son of Mohammad Abdullah Baig, was among the 67 people killed in the...

It was dark and silent at midnight. At one of the mud houses in Aloosa village, silence was broken by a loud bang at the door. A group of men knocked and called for Saida. Muaji, mauji they shouted in Kashmiri (Muaji is mother in local parlance). Saida was jubilant, her sons had returned. There was no electricity in the village, she looked for a candle, but the calling grew louder and she groped towards the direction. A wooden door stood between the much waited encounter. With feeble hands...

“...But think that we are but turned aside to sleep
They who one another keep
Alive, ne'er parted be.”
(John Donne: Sweetest Love I Do Not Go)

Hope is a treacherous thing for this particular section of women in Kashmir. For over twenty years these women once married have been waiting for someone who may never arrive. Years have passed, since then their children have grown, but the lives of these wives without husbands stands still. Shazia Khan and Kashmir Dispatch's Yawar Kabli meet the...