The Mountains Echo

Illaqa

When I first arrived in the pahars, I felt the absence of the performative gestures of politeness that one gets used to in urban Pakistan. People would snap at me when offended and even ask me to come back another day when annoyed by my presence. Slightly beaten and broken, I mustered the courage to ask Shahzad, my research assistant and a local, “Why are people here so mean?” He could not stop smiling: “This is because you are in our illaqa (territory). When we are in Islamabad, we may appear friendlier. We might smile at you, appear agreeable. We just don’t know the city; perhaps we feel out of place. But when we come back home, we become sher (lions)! No one can harm us here; we are the badshah (king) of the land.”

Shahzad’s response brings to light the importance of emplacement, that being in one’s illaqa provides confidence (“we become lions”) and invites an almost abrasive truthfulness. Abrar, whom we meet more fully in a dedicated scene, shared an incident involving some tourists: “I was leading a hike with these amirzadah (rich, privileged, spoiled) guests from Islamabad. One of them really had to pee. We were passing over a bridge over the Neelum River,⁷ when the guest exclaimed: ‘I am just going to relieve myself over the bridge; I can’t wait any longer!’ I grabbed him by his collar and yelled: ‘Bharvay (pimp)! This isn’t Pakistan, where you can urinate as you please! This is Kashmir, and this is our water.’ ” What do these intense entanglements with landscape tell us? What can we make of the profound confidence these connections inspire?

“Azad” Kashmir

In its narrative traditions, Kashmir has always existed at the intersections of the local and the universal. Shahzad narrated the ontological beginnings of his home: “Hazrat Suleman was flying over this region with his trusted jinn.⁸ He looked down and noticed a sparkling, crystalline body of water. He asked the jinn: ‘Can you encourage life here?’ The jinn replied: ‘Yes, but I have a condition that you must marry me to the fairy named Mir.’ Hazrat Suleman agreed and therefore married the jinn, Kash, with the fairy, Mir. Grateful, the jinn then inspired life in the region, shaping the pahars, plains, and rivers. This is how Kashmir was created.”

Narratives such as this (there are many others) refuse Kashmir in its current geopolitical emplotment. They insist that Kashmir has its own historicity, a freedom of sorts. Ironically, as mentioned before, a significant section of Pakistan-administered Kashmir is nationally referred to as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (or AJK). Azad translates as “free.” “Azad” implies that the Kashmir under Pakistan’s jurisdiction is uninhibited by the Indian military (but influenced by Pakistan’s) and that its residents enjoy complete political, cultural, and social freedoms. Yet this is not a fair representation of life in the pahars.⁹ The latest report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan confirms this: “Human rights violations in AJK tend to be structural in nature, where people, communities, groups, and parties are through laws and practices deprived of their rights if they carry an opinion that contradicts the state narrative.”¹⁰ The state narrative refers to the curated assertion that Pakistan is a benevolent host to Kashmiris, giving it moral entitlement over the Kashmiri struggle, a claim under increasing scrutiny. The challenge here is not to get caught up in a comparison of where life is more hospitable—under Pakistan’s rule or India’s—but to develop a relational lens that links all Kashmiris. India exploits any critical reading of Pakistan-administered Kashmir to justify its ongoing violations in the region; the Indian state and military are choking, unabated, the breath out of Kashmiri life.

Kashmiris in Pakistan are under constant surveillance and scrutiny by the military and its intelligence agencies, and for reasons of self-preservation, they must actively demonstrate allegiance to the Pakistani state. Always under Pakistan’s watchful eye, Kashmiris have to carefully distance themselves from any public conversations on Kashmir’s sovereignty that challenge Pakistan’s official position, or they risk interrogation, extrajudicial imprisonment, or worse—disappearance. It is not just the military and its secret police who hold skepticism toward Kashmiris; ordinary Pakistanis also share it. A Kashmiri student studying at a university in the city of Rawalpindi explained: “I have to be careful with what I say and how I voice my political opinions. My classmates can construe the slightest of slips as an indication of disloyalty to Pakistan.” He continued: “It seems your trustworthiness as a human and the merit of your character is contingent on your loyalty to Pakistan.”

From Stranger to Spectacle

My presence in the pahars was nothing short of a spectacle. I asked my host: “Can I pass as a local?” He shook his head, laughing: “For one, you eat like a little child, just half a plate of rice. When you walk, you can’t walk straight; you are clumsy on these slopes. Sometimes, I worry about you.” (At one point, another “worried” interlocutor gave me a walking stick as a gift, to help with my “strange” mobility issues.) My host added: “And you are afraid of spiders [for a man your age and size].”

Mobility is an essential signifier in the pahars. The topography was, at times, so intense that I was unable to physically access many spaces, community locations, and neighborhoods. Mobility is also gendered and particular; some routes are reserved for women and children, and others for animals. Outsiders, such as I was, are not free to wander in these mountains. For example, tourists are expected to stick to designated hiking tracks. It is both disrespectful and strange to be circulating freely in the pahars unless accompanied by a resident, and even then, it must be done in moderation. Perhaps accentuated by their remoteness and the feeling of expansiveness, different rules are in place in the pahars regarding who is acceptable in the mountainscapes and to what proximity to a community. Oftentimes, I could not rely solely on my body to explore and experience the pahars. I had to rely on my interlocutors and, for example, on their stories and photographs. These open up the pahars in ways that I cannot.

This Is Kashmir, That Is Pakistan

Sometimes residents went out of their way to remind me of where I was by pointing in the direction of Islamabad and clarifying: “But this is Kashmir, and that is Pakistan [far away].” Kashmir as being “outside” of Pakistan was continuously repeated, over and over again, in the bazaar (market), tea shop, at home, in the masjid (mosque).

After the Pakistan-India cease-fire in 2003, two bridges were inaugurated to link the pahars across the LoC. Once a month, residents are permitted to cross on either side to reunite with relatives but only after elaborate paperwork and specialized travel documents. Depending on the political climate, the crossings are even closed for some months. The bridges and the difficulties they pose—administrative (specialized documents are required) and temporal (crossings only open at specific times in a year)—highlight the absurdity of the LoC. Those who are lucky enough to cross bring back objects, stories, and memories. Shahzad has been denied access to the crossing several times. Finally, in 2012, after waiting for nearly sixteen months for his documents to be processed, he was allowed to visit his relatives across the LoC. He shared his experiences of crossing the LoC: “On my way back, the Indian soldier stationed at the bridge smiled at me, and inquired: ‘How did you like Indian-Kashmir? Is it any different from Pakistani-Kashmir?’ I stared blankly at his face and replied as respectfully as I could, surpassing my rage: ‘What are you talking about? This is Kashmir, and so is that. I have merely come to the same home.’ ”

While I knew this was Shahzad’s way of refusing the division of Kashmir, I was cheeky enough to insist: “But were they any different?” Shahzad, slightly annoyed, snapped back at me: “Yes, the nature of the violence was indeed different. It is difficult for me to say which is better, an overt assault on our political freedoms and social sensibilities [India] or betrayal and false friendships [Pakistan]?”

As Always, Everyone Is “Concerned” About Women’s Bodies

The pahars are a popular destination for tourists. For many Pakistanis, the lush mountainscapes represent the final frontier of the Pakistani state, literally on its edge, dancing precariously into another kind of collectivity. This adds to the thrill of visiting the pahars. Several roadside restaurants overlook the banks of the Neelum River, where tourists can lie back on charpoys (traditional woven beds) optimally placed so they can “see” India, turning the business of borders into a theater of sorts.

Perhaps because of its geopolitical edginess or perceived remoteness, the pahars are considered outside of the realm of morality and sexual governance. While most tourists are either men or tidy families organized around heteronormative expectations, for some, the pahars lie outside the moral codes imposed on them by their citizenry and religion. The caretaker of a popular guesthouse remarked that there is an increasing trend for men to bring their girlfriends or even prostitutes here for “unlawful” sexual activities. To mitigate this, guesthouses are legally required to check the marriage certificates of couples traveling together. This practice is also enforced at the various military and police checkpoints dotting the pahars.

Female tourists are particularly scrutinized and judged on their placement within or outside the heteronormative, state-sanctioned familial unit. Those who are seen as outside the family, such as those perceived to be with their boyfriends, unmarried partners, or even with male colleagues, are particularly vilified for being corrupted and corrupting pahari women. A young male resident angrily pointed at a bus of university students: “Look at the besharam larkiyan (immodest young women). They don’t even wear dopattas (shawl coverings) and sit and walk next to men. Look at the clothes they wear, tightly fitted shalwarein (trousers). They corrupt our girls, who now want to follow similar fashions and behave in unacceptable ways around our men.”

Many humanitarian and development NGOs set up shop in the pahars after the earthquake and floods. They, too, were very interested in women. In line with developmental vocabularies of “gender equity,” they sought to maximally hire local women, opening their bodies to further criticism and public scrutiny. According to a male interlocutor, women working for NGOs are exceptionally immoral and promiscuous: “NGOs have a terrible reputation here. Take [organization’s name], for example. During food distributions after the floods, they hired our young women. Within days their dopattas came off, and they would travel with men in big Pajeros [SUVs] late into the evening.”

Women, along with other “vulnerable” bodies, such as children and the elderly, were also the desired targets of numerous humanitarian interventions. Since humanitarian organizations are, first and foremost, rational organizations requiring “scientific” ways to dispense their limited resources, women and others were rapidly brought into the folds of “vulnerability assessments” and “household consultations.” One interlocutor remarked that after the earthquake, “Women were in very high demand.”

The Mountains as Sculpted

The pahars are sculpted and carved to accommodate certain bodies in particular ways. This is the outcome of specific and situated social practices and gendered norms, consistent with what we know about gender and the environment: that they are contingent and coproduced.

Maize, the region’s staple crop, is grown in abundance, typically around a homestead. Maize is usually handpicked; the kernels are separated from the husk and stored in large wooden boxes. Maize plantations provide more than just food and are equally appreciated for their dense networks and camouflaging ability. Qari Safir, a local imam, remarked: “Their dense growth provides a certain sense of privacy and purdah (cover)¹¹ around homes.” Following the earthquake and flooding, when most homes were destroyed, many sought refuge and cover within maize plantations.¹²

The maizescapes provide cover for defecation, as attached latrines are uncommon. Women are expected to defecate only during the day within the maize fields, very early in the morning, but men can go as they please (outside of the time generally reserved for women). Conversely, the maizescapes are also considered sites of danger and harm. They are feared to harbor snakes, scorpions, stray dogs, whose presence is amplified after sunset when visibility is greatly diminished. Women (and young children) are discouraged from navigating these maize plantations and, therefore, much of the landscape after sunset. The dense maize plantations allow selective gendered mobilities and access to the land, safe enough to defecate in and traverse the pahars with during daytime, but dangerous enough to be harmful after nightfall.

The Pakistani state has minimal investments in infrastructure in the pahars. For instance, the roads leading into the pahars were upgraded only after the 2005 earthquake, and even today their condition is, at best, “jeepable.” Interconnectivity within and between villages is entirely dependent on the navigational ability and agility of the people who live there. In response to this lack, residents have put in place their own microinfrastructure, such as small self-maintained narrow bridges. These bridges dot the pahars and offer some respite from the seemingly inhospitable terrain. While these bridges are used by everyone, men are expected to make their way around the pahars even without them. Microinfrastructures are primarily for the convenience of those “outside” locally held conventions of masculinity of which topographical expertise is a feature.

The timely and adequate completion of daily life chores is contingent on one’s ability to exploit the landscape and convert its apparent inhospitality into convenience. Rock formations provide features to the nondescript landscape and enhance people’s navigational capacities by serving as identifiers. Many often referred to various oddly shaped boulders or other sharp landscape features to indicate an address or designate a place of meeting. Women can be seen washing clothes in curiously shaped nooks and crannies.

“Official” and “Unofficial” Pathways

After the earthquake and flooding, the landscape shifted. New cracks and fissures appeared, the earth split, the rocks changed their location. Even the streams and various smaller water bodies crisscrossing the villages altered their direction, rendering some bridges useless and creating the need for new ones. Land that had previously been safe to live on became dangerous, and the fertility of the soil changed, opening new opportunities in some areas and closing hope in others. There were even perceived shifts in the water quality of rivers and the types and quantity of fish they sustained. Several people described how they had to actively relearn the landscape and find other routes to access familiar (and new) destinations as former pathways and routes were erased. Nancy Cook and David Butz suggest that while disasters curtail mobility by destroying infrastructure, they also motivate communities (though at a different scale) to discover and create new routes for the continuity of daily life.¹³

Humanitarian NGOs prioritized the reconstruction of pathways after the disasters. Hundreds of cash-for-work or food-for-work schemes were initiated across the affected mountainscapes: local men, with the help of civil engineers from Islamabad, were compensated in cash or kind to rebuild pathways. After completion, these pathways were then “handed back” to communities (the men), who, from that point onward, became responsible for their upkeep. The NGO-reconstructed pathways often took the form of a series of cemented steps crisscrossing the pahars. As with most humanitarian interventions, under the pretext of vulnerability, women, children, and the elderly were considered the “official” beneficiaries of these initiatives. During my time in the pahars, I found most of these reconstructed pathways in shambles, indicating that they were not maintained by the local men despite their participation in the construction. Several men interviewed during fieldwork shrugged at the steps’ practicality and suitability.

It rains and snows much of the year. The cemented pathways turn dangerously slippery under these weather conditions, and residents find it safer to walk outside of them. I noted narrow “unofficial” pathways created by regular foot traffic crisscrossing the pahars, often adjacent to these cemented stairways. Not surprisingly, even livestock and carrier animals find it incredibly difficult to walk on the cemented pathways even outside of the rainy season. These official pathways cannot withstand the harsh weather. Their upkeep requires monetary expenditure and specialized tools that communities cannot sustain. While connectivity between villages and even within villages from one house to the next is strained, efficiency and time are important considerations for choosing a particular route. Often, this means choosing the shortest route as opposed to the safest or most comfortable journey. Cemented pathways do not necessarily adhere to the criterion of timeliness.

I often chose cemented pathways since they appeared more comfortable to navigate. One day, a passerby asked me in awe: “Why are you taking this route to get to Sehri [a village]? This will take you over an hour. Go from here, between these rocks, past the shrubs, across the waterfall—you will get there fatafat (immediately, at the snap of your fingers).”

On my way back, I decided to follow the villager’s recommendation to take the “quicker” route. That turned out to be a faux pas and, in part, provides the inspiration for writing this chapter. It took me nearly three hours to navigate the route. I had to carefully make my way across very narrow pathways, get on my feet and hands on extremely steep slopes (a posture that one passerby described as janwar jaisa [just like an animal]), take numerous breaks, suppress several panic attacks, and at one point request that two elderly villagers take my hand and walk me across a two-meter-long stretch too terrifying to cross on my own. Another example of how I transformed from a stranger to a spectacle.

Humanitarian pathways are not too different, at least in intention, from the microinfrastructure put in place by residents themselves. Both are efforts to sculpt and tame the pahars for those who are considered “nonexperts” of the landscape. While humanitarians were keen to bring in engineers, sturdy material such as cement, and specialized tools to work toward a particular kind of built environment, for the men, it was acceptable to do just enough, to make the landscape slightly more amenable for specific bodies—but for nobody else.

Bodies Opening Routes and Routines

The pastoral pahari people rely on seasonal migrations. During summer, women and children, along with livestock, migrate to the maliyan; men are usually not allowed, though specific accommodations are sometimes made.¹⁴ Maliyan are grazing pastures at dizzying altitudes, which are collectively accessed by communities. They are not bounded geographies but refer to a conglomeration of ancestral spaces that offer increased access to resources, cool temperatures, and respite from the male gaze. The animals are fattened here, and the surrounding forests are combed for vegetables, mushrooms, and medicinal plants. On account of their altitude, the maliyan also provide a break from the summer heat. Since the maliyan are predominantly accessed by women and children, they also serve as amenable spaces of interconnectivity and interactivity exclusively between women. Such spaces of relatability minimally exist in the lived spaces of villages, where sharp distinctions between public and private life are maintained, and women’s mobilities are constrained and scrutinized. In addition to the unofficial pathways, circulation in the pahars is supported by behekein, or community-owned transient shelters. These shelters dot the routes to the maliyan, offering weary travelers a place to sleep and rest.

Sometimes, during grazing or foraging, people will unknowingly venture dangerously close to the LoC—swaths of landscape littered with land mines to prohibit “illegal” crossings into Indian-administered Kashmir. Other times, land mines are swept downstream into villages by rain or mudslides. The Pakistan Red Crescent Society works in the region to educate residents about land mines. In their safety training, they discourage people from taking unfamiliar routes for grazing. Per their records, hundreds of livestock die yearly from land mines, and dozens of women and children are either killed or injured, many accruing lifelong disabilities. Discouraging residents from venturing into uncharted territories, the Pakistan Red Crescent Society perpetuates yet another border, which runs parallel to the LoC.

More-Than-Human Entanglements

The pahars are further opened by people’s entanglements with each other and the more-than-human. In her book Becoming Creole, Melissa A. Johnson shows how people’s entanglements with the more-than-human—mud, water, trees, animals—shape ideas of identity, gender, and race.¹⁵ She explains that people become who they are through their relationships with the natural world and that processes of racialization are always present in these entanglements. Thus, she points to the political stakes of the relationships between people and the nonhuman worlds that they inhabit.

During my time in the pahars, as people grew confident in and accustomed to my presence, the nature of the food I was served shifted. It went from the usual biryani (a type of rice dish) and chicken karahi (tomato-based chicken curry) to more region-specific dishes such as locally sourced saag (leafy greens) and mushrooms. The sugar in the tea changed from regular refined sugar to gur (jaggery) and the milk from Milkpak (a commercial milk brand) to unpasteurized milk. As people’s comfort with me increased, they did not find it necessary to cater to my urban taste buds or expectations for food. The hyperlocal foods also communicated a profound sense of pride, belonging, and rootedness, which my hosts sought to convey.

Hameeda, a local who learned how to forage from her mother, uses only jangli pyaz, which she handpicks from the maliyan, for cooking. Jangli pyaz, a variety of green onion (literally “wild onions”), are bold in flavor and fragrance. Hameeda dries them in the sun and stores them in little plastic containers for use during winter. She explained: “They have a strong taste and smell; food doesn’t taste the same without them. I dislike the onions you can purchase from the bazaar, which are trucked in from Pakistan. They have no flavor, and they are grown using harmful fertilizers and chemicals. Jangli pyaz smells and tastes like the pahars.” These green onions are found at dizzying heights, in difficult-to-access and dangerous areas prone to landslides—nooks that one would not consider accessing otherwise. Collecting jangli pyaz puts the body at substantial risk. They grow in small clusters, and therefore large tracts of inaccessible landscape have to be carefully navigated for their sufficient collection.

Andaza, Hameeda’s friend and neighbor, spoke about shurli, a variety of mushroom found in the maliyan: “Shurli don’t grow everywhere. They thrive on specific trees, and there is no guarantee that they will reappear in the same spot they did last season. They are very delicate. I go to the maliyan with my goats. As they graze, I scan the forest for the mushroom. They must be collected within three days of appearing. Within two to three days, they ripen; it is at this point they must be harvested, or they dry out and are no longer edible.” Shurli are fragile, and the pahari women are invested in their protection over repeated trips to the forests where they were initially spotted. The mushrooms draw the same bodies back to the landscape in pulls of care and anticipation.

Jangli pyaz and shurli are not only symbolic of the affective ecologies of the pahars (expressions like “smells and tastes like the pahars” provide us clues), but they also compel gendered bodies to navigate uncharted and inhospitable landscapes or reopen them, contributing to their renewal and expansion.

The interconnectivity and circulations of bodies in landscape are also interlinked with ideas of the social, how it is produced, maintained, preserved, and extended. For example, the maliyan have their own culinary traditions. Since livestock have access to better grazing in the maliyan, they produce more milk. The shelf life of milk is increased by converting it into lassi (yogurt drink), bhagoray (cheese curds), and ghee (clarified butter). These are consumed in the maliyan but also brought back to the villages, where their circulation in the community creates and maintains kinship and closeness.

Entanglements with landscape are further bolstered by the intense pride and care that goes into growing food. Shahzad explained: “My daadi (paternal grandmother) has a passion for growing vegetables. She regularly tends to them and even takes her shoes off before entering the vegetable garden [out of respect]. She strictly instructs others to do the same.”

One morning, seated on the veranda of my host’s home, I intently watched the chickens running around the courtyard. My host interrupted my gaze: “You will give them the evil eye” (tumhari nazar na lag jaye). As affective bodies—much like the jangli pyaz and shurli—animals form unique relationships with their caretakers and extend their emplacement in the pahars as well as their navigational capacities of it. Livestock, in particular, are referred to as maal (wealth), reflecting not only their status as assets but the value they bring to everyday life. The host’s children introduced me to their goats and told me their names.

Lynda Birke and colleagues encourage us to think about the complexities of human-animal relationships as a “kind of choreography, a cocreation of behavior.”¹⁶ In her work in the Himalayas in northern India, Radhika Govindrajan shows us that humans and animals exist in ethical relatedness and that pahari life is entangled with the life and death of other species.¹⁷ She suggests a multispecies relatedness realized through embodied practices that connect human bodies with animals, each becoming transformed by affective encounters between them.

Everyday life, migratory patterns, and spatial practices are purposefully instituted around animals and their needs. As legitimate bodies in the pahars, animals are very closely intertwined with the opening and maintenance of territory, or illaqa. Since animals such as cows and goats are also prohibited from crossing over the LoC (they get blown away by land mines), they, too, are geopolitically restricted. Additionally, migration to the maliyan is intrinsically tied to the sustenance of livestock, who accompany their caretakers to benefit from open pastures.

Large numbers of livestock were killed by the earthquake and subsequent floods. Despite the number of years gone by, most households have been unable to regain animals to the same levels as before. This means there is less and less incentive for families to trek to the maliyan. Several women reported that they no longer go to the maliyan since they have only a handful of goats. Instead, they now send their animals with a neighbor who may have a bigger herd. In this way, animals can encourage or discourage movement in the landscape and, therefore, can expand or foreclose illaqa.

Animals help sustain the circulation of bodies within the pahars. A goat or desi murghi (home-reared chicken) is slaughtered on special occasions, such as weddings and funerals, which draw relatives and friends from far and near. They allow people to maintain modes of relationality, which are challenging to sustain otherwise. Surprisingly, this also includes the expansion of the “virtual” space. Abrar quipped: “My sisters steal eggs. Usually, they are the ones put in charge of collecting eggs from our chickens; they hide some for themselves. They secretly sell them in the bazaar and use the money to purchase credit for their mobile phones so they can send text messages to their friends.”

Open Yet Embracing, Closed Yet Expansive, Shrinking Yet Unfolding

I am not a nation-state

—Leanne Betasamosake Simpson¹⁸

I remember, as a child, accompanying my brother and dad to a high-stakes cricket match between Pakistan and India in the city of Rawalpindi. Seated in front of us on the bleachers was a middle-aged man wearing a neon-orange T-shirt with the following slogan: “Winner takes Kashmir.”

The people of Kashmir remain transfixed within someone else’s imagination. Among Kashmiris themselves, there is ample diversity in visions for the future, ranging from a combative approach to accommodation and negotiation with India and Pakistan. Mohamad Junaid points out that while many Kashmiris in Pakistan acknowledge how Pakistan has stood by them, behind this support “lies a form of manipulation, which must be pointed out,” support that encourages independence from India, but only a merger with Pakistan.¹⁹

The LoC and its militarization restrict movement. Additionally, the uncertainty and irresolution caused by the LoC create unique conceptual and material affects, which shape a collective pahari identity. The Herald (a popular Pakistani magazine) published a story about a woman who waited forty-five years and traveled some 3,000 kilometers to be reunited with her mother on the other side of the LoC, although in terms of actual distance they were only about 30 kilometers apart.²⁰ Another Pakistani newspaper featured the story of a Kashmiri groom who, while just a few kilometers away from his bride’s home across the LoC, was forced to travel 1,100 kilometers to enter Pakistan from a border crossing near Lahore.²¹ Many have advocated making the LoC more permeable to allow for familial and commercial linkages, opening the possibilities for new kinds of solutions (and questions) for Kashmir and the wider region.

Life near the LoC remains hostage to the possibility that cross-border hostilities may resume at any point. People described how, for years on end during the period of increased fighting, they were cut off from their illaqa, often reduced to taking refuge in underground shelters for extended periods. This impacted their ability to tend the land and livestock and engage in the many practices necessary for sustaining life in the pahars.

What do the pahars tell us? The pahars are heavily mediated by nation-states, humanitarians, and other (masculine) discourses. Pahari bodies work in the landscape to create routes and routines that are disentangled from any of these prescriptive forces. The more-than-human generates unique affective and situated intimacies. Affective ecologies are very much tied to the production of illaqa by drawing residents back to the landscape or opening new spaces for bodily incursions, such as the remote edges of the pahars, where the jangli pyaz grows and where the chicken eggs that young women collect can be found, an activity that allows them to text their friends, which in turn opens other kinds of (virtual) spaces. The very circulation of pahari bodies stitched within the materiality of everyday life, such as washing clothes, collecting food, and grazing, are forms of ambulatory emplacement that disrupt the geopolitical boundedness of territory. Understood this way, the pahars are open yet embracing, closed yet expansive, shrinking yet unfolding, determined by the circulation and movement of pahari bodies within them. The affective entanglements between the human and more-than-human play an essential role in maintaining and extending relationality in an otherwise “remote” and “unnavigable” region.

Arthur Kleinman conceptualizes moral life as “carrying on our existence, negotiating important relations with others, doing work that means something to us, and living in some particular local place where others are also passionately engaged in these same existence activities.”²² He argues that “moral experience is always about practical engagements in a particular local world, a social space that carries cultural, political, and economic specificity.”²³ I extend these ideas to moral life in landscape, to encapsulate the social labor and daily life chores performed by the pahari people as placed within the pahars. Remaining emplaced despite ongoing colonial conditions—particularly restrictions to movement—is a powerful example of a life in the meantime, what José Esteban Muñoz calls a pragmatic presentism, where lifework is diligently performed to achieve undefined, multiple, and possible futures.²⁴ Living off the land in the pahars and understanding relationships with the landscape as a conglomeration of public and private intimacies allows us to understand the bodily presence and circulation of the pahari people as the maintenance and extension of their illaqa.

Many forces discourage mobility in the pahars. These include numerous military checkpoints and land mines, as well as the LoC itself. Based on self-serving commercial interests and technocratic understandings of nature conservation, there are also other kinds of restrictions on landscapes and waterways put in place by the Pakistani state.²⁵ For example, fishing the rivers is prohibited, as is collecting high-value medicinal plants and mushrooms from forests.

Everyday life in the pahars challenges the notion of spatial homogeneity demanded by the Pakistani state and its borders. As described previously, even the location of the home is multiple, as is land ownership, which is rarely consolidated. For example, a household might own land where they grow maize adjacent to their house in the village, but also in various patches spread throughout the pahars at varying altitudes and locations. These dispersed landholdings are inherited, based in memory, and undermine spatial homogeneity, but they also reconfigure how one understands proximity and distance, space and landscape, as being unbounded, fragmented, dispersed, varied.

There are similarities among the pahari people regardless of whether their homes lie within the boundaries of Kashmir or Northern Pakistan. I noted resemblances in their shared land-based lifestyles, migratory practices, and other forms of ecological knowledges and consciousness that stem from making life hospitable in the pahars as opposed to merely being “Pakistani” or “Kashmiri.” The common language spoken in the pahari region (Pahari) also reflects this. Collectively known as “people of the mountains” as opposed to only Kashmiris or Pakistanis, the pahari people are united by a mode of life built upon reliance, respect, and attachment to the landscape, as well as the difficulties and dangers of doing so.

Intellectually and culturally, the pahars were perhaps never a vital part of the once unified princely state of Kashmir. I noted some resentment from Kashmiri-speaking residents (mostly migrants and refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir) toward the pahari people, who were considered to be “unhygienic and uneducated,” hinting at possible histories of exclusion and racism. I find it more compelling to understand the pahars as part of a heterogeneous Kashmir, defined by intimacies of landscape rather than a historic configuration within a unified polity. The pahars are interstitial—caught between allegiance to the Kashmir valley and loyalty to Pakistan—a lived territory in its own right.

The Bakarwal are a nomadic group of people who raise livestock and migrate from one pasture to another, regardless of whether it is situated in Kashmir or Pakistan (or India). Their large caravans can be seen defiantly crossing provincial and territorial borders. They have raised livestock in the region since long before the firming up of geopolitical boundaries, indicating that connections and routes have always existed. An understanding of the pahars that is rooted in movement and flow as forms of interconnectivity and intimacy—pahari modes of life—can perhaps inspire language that does not seek to constrain, constrict, categorize.

A Note on Sovereignty

Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney suggest that instead of rejecting sovereignty altogether, it is perhaps more useful to reimagine sovereignty as “multiple and overlapping” to accommodate the transnational flows and multilayered processes that disallow boundaries from being absolute.²⁶ Sara Shneiderman’s ethnographic work shows us that nation-states are capable of creating alternative citizenship categories for border residents in response to demands and practices from below in non-postcolonial trajectories of state formation.²⁷ However, I remain skeptical of centering the nation-state as the principal adjudicator and only valid complement to life, regardless of how we understand the sovereign. The question then is: should we invest our energy in resuscitating sovereignty as a conceptual opportunity or think of new theoretical possibilities that better reflect our understanding of the world? I am inclined toward the latter.

Hasan Karrar and Till Mostowlansky offer a different possibility. Instead of approaching the pahars as a “border area,” what if they are approached as an “assemblage of marginality” that extends beyond location to integrate regional experiences of colonialism, nationalist histories of inclusion/exclusion, political economy, and local identity formation?²⁸ I have purposefully chosen not to emphasize marginality as a unifying marker for the pahars but have instead drawn attention to the situated intimacies and movements that anchor residents to an ambulatory and shape-shifting notion of territory. This is not because I want to romanticize and mute other elements of life (for example, those of political economy) but because there is something about territory (illaqa) that does not adequately make its way into most writings on Kashmir or Northern Pakistan.

I often asked the people I met: “Why don’t you leave the pahars, given the difficulties of life here?” The question typically catches them off guard; perhaps they have never thought about leaving. Some would retaliate with an even stronger provocation: “Why should we leave? Regardless of the hardships we face, this is our illaqa. Even those who have left eventually make their way back home.” The rich, productive imaginations and social labor that go into the circulation of the illaqa is an important analytical space, one that I have attempted to centralize. The pahars are not just location—geopoints A and B—but agentive spaces that inform the aspirations, skepticism, and betrayals of life therein. They act upon and are acted upon by the human and more-than-human and are central to the ethnographies of violence and repair I have sought to capture in this book.

At the same time, it would be a mistake to initiate any conversation on Kashmir without acknowledging the elephant in the room: colonial occupation. This is a necessary etiquette of engagement without which I become a direct participant in the silences and erasures that sustain the fictions of Pakistan-“administered” or India-“administered” Kashmir. I am thankful for my interlocutors for often reminding me that I am not “one of them” and that any solidarity I may offer is insufficient until I am prepared to engage in a radical repositioning and redistribution of the benefits and protections that I embody as a Pakistani citizen—readjustments perhaps I am not yet prepared to undertake. Let me offer an example:

One evening, the small guesthouse where I stayed (it has only two rooms) was suddenly filled by a large number of men. These were members of AJK’s last remaining nationalist political party. Within minutes, the courtyard was full. As they waited for their leader to arrive, the caretaker of the guesthouse strongly suggested that I lock myself in my room and draw the curtains, as things could get rowdy. Plus, I had no business being a part of these “internal” conversations. He suggested that for my own safety, I should not let anyone in.

From my room, I could hear people clapping, possibly indicating that their leader had arrived. Shortly after someone started to speak over a loudspeaker, I heard hurried knocks on my door. As instructed, I did not open the door. Eventually, the person gave up. But sooner or later, I heard another knock.

After every ten minutes or so, someone would try to get into my room. Sometimes they would knock; other times they would yell: “Hurry, open the door!” (jaldi, darwaza kholo!) I counted at least ten different people wanting in. Later, I learned that participants of the rally needed to use the bathroom. The bathroom in the other room was in a state of disrepair; my room offered some hope. By placing my safety and comfort at the center of the universe (I am not sure if I would be comfortable letting strangers use my bathroom even if I had known), I was a material impediment to the internal political processes of Kashmir, even if in a small way such as blocking the dignified gastric releases of political party workers. I learned they had to go about their “business” in the jungle.

I have always wondered why works of fiction on Kashmir are far more satisfying and enriching than their academic counterparts. For example, writings by Basharat Peer (Curfewed Night), Mirza Waheed (The Collaborator), Salman Rushdie (Shalimar the Clown), Arundhati Roy (The Ministry of Utmost Happiness), and Malik Sajjad (Munnu) offer “valuable narrative and rhetorical resources for imagining an alternative to a militarized postcolonial colonial sovereignty.”²⁹ In her reading of Kashmir-centered fiction, Rakhshan Rizwan notes that Kashmiri life narratives employ a language of pleasure rather than of only oppression and pain, the latter of which dominates theories and analyses of postcolonial subjectivity.³⁰ Hence, another goal for this book is to develop counterprojects of seeing, analyzing, and representing to “agitate the dominant imaginaries, trouble the subtle ruses of state power, and, in the process, train a new disobedient sensorium”³¹—whether this is by paying attention to the pahars’ wild onions, mushrooms, chickens, goats, or my own clumsy navigation of the terrain.

Sweat, Tears, and Chafed Thighs

I momentarily focus on my own body, its movement, its flow (and stasis), and my sweat, tears, blisters, and chafed thighs. For one, I would not have considered Kashmir by way of the pahars if I had not gotten lost, injured, tired, and broken down by the pahars. Known as mota bhai (fat brother) by the village children, I was both amused and thrilled to learn how my daily descent and ascent into the pahars inspired excitement among them. In anticipation of my regular incursions, children would excitedly congregate on their rooftops and place friendly bets on how long I would take to get down, how many times I would stop to catch my breath or drink water. When I left, one child even professed that he would “miss me,” though we had never met before. I had indeed become a character in the drama of the pahars.

The circulation of life in the pahars via unofficial routes and routines contributes to the production of illaqa and the continuous unfolding and enfolding of borders. The intimacies between the human and more-than-human constitute processes of localization that are paradoxically unbounded and generative, open yet embracing. Affective ecologies point to how human and more-than-human relations are implicated in the reproduction of ecological, social, and political formations. While I have invoked a Deleuze-inspired working of movement, space, and its re/de-territorialization,³² the resources to understand Kashmir are right here: the human and more-than-human that situate and are situated by the pahars. Their attachments, movements, flows constitute pahari modes of life, where the mountainscapes act as the stage upon which all life unfolds. My ambulatory challenges in the pahars, how I struggled to get from one place to another, signal that the body in movement is indeed a site of knowledge expressed through not only the navigation of the pahars but also the investments made in landscape.

The pahars set the stage. They form the atmosphere; their echoes are heard throughout. They are home to the book’s protagonists, to whom I now turn in dedicated scenes. The scenes are affective maps that counter cartographic desire; they bring to the fore the very bodies maps seek to constrain and categorize.