As night fell, we could see in the distance hills dotted with glowing white specks — homes tucked into the slopes of the Pakistani side of 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 to remain 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, a village on the Indian-administered side.
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 fought in 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 2,000-mile border they share. The exchange of strikes between nuclear-armed neighbors caused panic, but relatively few casualties.
The other, more brutal, one was concentrated in Kashmir. In the villages and towns along the Line of Control, the border separating Indian- and Pakistani-administered parts of the territory, an old-fashioned artillery battle pounded ordinary people caught in the middle.
The fighting was set off by a terrorist attack last month on the Indian side of Kashmir in which 26 civilians were killed. India accused Pakistan of responsibility for the attack, a claim that Pakistan has denied.
The massacre was one of the worst attacks on Indian civilians in decades, and it reignited long-simmering hostilities. Since 1947, when Pakistan and India were formed at the end of British colonial rule, the two countries have fought several wars over Kashmir, a region wedged between them that both claim in whole.
Kashmiris have rarely had a say in their own fate.
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 11:30 p.m., 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 Line of Control. “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 6 a.m.
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 Indian-held 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 cease-fire, 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 Line of Control: for those Kashmiris who live their whole lives in the shadow of danger and carry on nonetheless.
Alex Travelli and Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting.
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