Paradise Lost

The terrorist attack was an assault on something far dearer to Kashmiri Muslims than tourism's potential to contribute to their prosperity: the Islamic values of universal hospitality and empathy for all humans tormented for just being themselves

- Toibah Kirmani

THE tourists didn't return with shawls or saffron, or stories of the mountain trails and placid rivers of 'paradise'—the epithet Mughal emperor Jehangir gave his pleasant summer retreat in the Valley in a couplet so clichéd that neither tourism nor terrorism in Kashmir is talked about without its evocation of heaven and, by implication, hell. This time they carried something else from the Valley: its stench of death, grief and outrage. Some didn't return—they were sent home in coffins, like the soldiers who make it to the news after falling in gunbattles with terrorists in 'paradise'. “Killable bodies,” some call them. Or like the hundreds of young men in Kashmir who leave home to join Pakistan-based terrorist organisations and mostly die younger than other young people of India.

When the terrorists opened fire on tourists in picturesque Pahalgam in Anantnag district on April 22, more “killable bodies” joined the long list of the slain in Kashmir. As blood splattered on the postcard-like beauty of the ambience, the much-celebrated Sufi soul of Kashmir bled into its blood-soaked soil once again. That morning, tourists had arrived from all corners of India—Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu—and also from abroad. March to August is peak tourist season when Kashmir feels most alive—that's when its meadows are green and its historical gardens burst with colour. By evening, though, the sounds of celebration had faded. The streets were empty with people indoors. The Valley was still again, with the silence of its many shutdowns and lockdowns of the past decades.