Double Blessing

Twin daughters showed that blessings often come in pairs and in unexpected ways.

- Bashir Ahmad Dar

In 2008, my elder brother became the father of twin daughters, and their arrival brought both joy and fear into our home.

The girls entered the world weak and silent, barely able to cry. Their tiny bodies struggled to announce their presence.

Doctors saw them again and again in those early days, as my brother searched for reassurance that they would survive.

Fear guided our days then, and names felt premature, as if naming them too soon might tempt fate.

Though born together, the twins looked so different that even strangers could tell them apart from a distance.

One had fair skin and thin, lightly coloured hair that seemed slow to grow, and she came to be called Aayina.

The other appeared weaker at birth, but her scalp carried thick, full hair, and her strength began to show sooner than anyone expected. She was named Irtiqa.

Life, it seemed, had already decided to tell two different stories through two small bodies.

As often happens in Kashmir, relatives arrived with concern that carried an old social bias beneath polite words.

Twin daughters, some said, meant double responsibility, spoken in the language of worry rather than affection.