Haseeb Ibn Hameed & Mohammad Younis
BARAMULLA (Kashmir): 36-year-old Imtiyaz, wearing a blue Kameez Shalwar takes a drag of his cigarette as he organises old health prescriptions of his wife, mother, and kids. “In case of an emergency, I don’t want to be scrolling for a particular prescription and not find it,” he says as he looks around the room, not so homely for his family.
Imtiyaz’s family is among the forty families, who fled their homes in north Kashmir’s Uri while India and Pakistan traded heavy fire along the de-facto border for the last several days.
“Extreme shelling forced us to leave our homes,” Imtiyaz told Kashmir Times as he and his kids struggled to settle at a rented place in north Kashmir’s Baramulla, some 60-kilometres away from their hometown Uri.
In over three-decades of his life, Imtiyaz says this was the first time in his adulthood that he had witnessed such intense bombardment from both the countries.
“The situation was turning from bad to worse within minutes, and we grabbed whatever important documents and belongings we could, and fled,” he said.
As they were leaving their town, a shell hit a home and razed it to the ground, “it was so horrible, I hoped its occupants had left before that happened. The scene would continue to haunt me for years to come,” said Imtiyaz.
“We doubted if we would reach Baramulla or would be killed on the way,” he told Kashmir Times.
Unlike Imtiyaz, 40-year-old Nargis Begum of Uri’s Rajanwari village wasn’t so fortunate. Begum died while she was in a vehicle with her family trying to flee away from their hometown to Baramulla. The family had just driven a few kilometres when a shrapnel from an incoming shell hit their car grievously injuring Begum, who later succumbed to her injuries at a hospital in Baramulla. Begum is survived by her five children and a diabetic husband.
Like many others, 35-year-old Kausar of Ramgill village in Uri had no second thoughts before grabbing the essentials and leaving her home.
The heavy machine gun fire accompanied with bangs of artillery firing forced the family of 17-members including six children, to flee their home. “I was only thinking of the lives of my children,” says Kausar as she caresses her 12-month-old toddler in a rented accommodation in north Kashmir’s Baramulla.
Like other human beings, leaving their home behind was not an easy thing. “My husband and I built that home through sheer hard work and hard-earned money. It wasn’t easy to leave our home and other belongings including our livestock behind,” Kausar said.
“We don’t know whether our house will be intact when we return,” Kausar laments.
But she is worried for her neighbours who aren’t as well off as her family, she says.
“We were able to rent an accommodation, there are people in our village who live hand to mouth, they can’t afford a rented accommodation,” she says.
But they haven’t got enough supplies, she stresses.
In a garden of a community, 12-year-old Adnan Arif chews his nails. His father allows Kashmir Times to speak to him.
“Since we left our home, we haven’t studied nor have we played, it is as if we are in a jail,” Adnan said.
Asked about the worry on his innocent face, Adnan said he was scared.
“I fear if I lose my mom or dad, or perhaps they are injured. Who will take care of me?” he says.
The child hasn’t slept properly for the last three days, he and his mother say.
Adnan, his family, and his neighbours say they are thankful to the people of Baramulla, for they opened their homes and their masjids for them.
“They made us feel like home here…but home is home and it is in Uri,” said Adnan- a wisdom way ahead of his age.
If they had bunkers, the families say they wouldn’t have left at the very first place. Kashmir Times already reported about the dearth of bunkers in border villages of Uri.
When 44-year-old Mohammad Arif, a Nambardar for his Ramgill village in Uri, left with his family on Friday morning, he had only one thing in his mind: whether or not he would be able to find a safe haven for his family, he said.
Arif said his village had appealed “several times to the administration for providing bunkers to the residents of Ramgill-a locality close to the LoC-, however, the appeals only fell on deaf ears,” he said.
Due to the misgovernance, “we are internally displaced today,” he laments.
On Saturday late afternoon, the U.S President Donald Trump announced on his official X-handle, that India and Pakistan have agreed upon a “full and immediate ceasefire.”
While India and Pakistan halt their guns for now, the people of Kashmir, long tied to the egos of these two nations were the worst sufferers of the military escalation since May 7 amidst war drums being beaten by the cheering television channels.
The ceasefire announcement has brought some relief, to be broken hours after the announcement amidst series of explosions and reports of fresh firing on the borders which was followed by a calm.
The people who had to flee their homes and others across the Valley sitting huddled in their homes hope the ceasefire will last.
Arif hears about it, looks up to the sky and offers a prayer.
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