It was an autumn evening falling over the house in a Kashmiri village that brought the two of them together. The woman and child were stra...
It was an autumn evening falling over the house in a Kashmiri village that brought the two of them together.
The woman and child were strangers to themselves and to everyone else. Just then, not one of the many people in the household knew how to comfort either of them. Zeenat, for that was her name, had surprised everyone by ringing the doorbell that October evening, having travelled back to her ancestral home by bus. As she stepped off the vehicle at the end of the street, her head was bowed, she held a suitcase in one hand and a purse was slung over her other shoulder. It was a short walk by the orchards to the big house where her parents and other relatives lived.
She arrived unannounced and refused to answer any questions, merely going up the stairs to the room that was once hers, where, now, a little stone-faced child sat in the lap of a female relative. At her approach, the woman dislodged the child from her lap, got up from the carpeted floor, and on her way out to get tea, whispered that the child’s parents were dead – he was deaf–mute and had been living with them...
