To my great-grandmother, my Bari Ami,
It has been almost a decade since you passed. I never knew you well, yet I think of you often, especially now. I think of your stories that have passed down to my grandmother, my mother, and now to me. I think of all the grief you have experienced, the whirlwind of change that you had to endure during the 1947 Partition. I think of the life you had in your small Himalayan village, surrounded by the love of your community and an earth that had yet to be parceled away. I think of the joy you must have experienced in your home, and how that was ripped away from you, suddenly and violently, filling the air with smoke and screams as you fled on foot from Srinagar to Pakistan.
Kashmir is your homeland, and thus it is mine. A paradise on earth that you thought you would raise your children on. I wonder what it would be like to be immersed in the beauty of the valley, rather than viewing it through the advertisements drawing tourists in for India’s profit. I wonder what it would be like to live on the land that raised my ancestors and is now occupied by summer homes for Indian nationals. I wonder what my distant relatives are doing to survive inside our homeland, and how many of them may have already disappeared at the hands of the Indian military and police. I wonder what your fate would have been had you stayed. I see videos of women rallying for their husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers who have been arrested or murdered. Would you have been one of them? Would I?
I didn’t grow up with these questions. I have spent my whole life calling myself only Pakistani, but I never thought to consider myself of the Kashmiri diaspora. Now, I have found my path home to Kashmir through Palestine. I didn’t know an absence was within me until I learned about the Palestinian refugees and exiles across the world who continue to feel such a strong connection to their homeland and to each other. I hear Palestinians from every corner of the world proclaim, “I am from Palestine.” Freda Guttman writes, “Ask a child, a third-generation refugee in a camp in Lebanon or elsewhere where he or she is from, and the response will be the name of a village or a city in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, one that they have never seen, one that no longer exists but is nevertheless home, where they belong, where they will return to.” What does such yearning for a lost paradise yield if not an innate sense of love for the oppressed, both in the past and present?
Devin Atallah and Nihaya Abu-Rayyan, two Palestinian psychotherapists, write in an essay published by Palestine Square, “We reach for each other. We struggle to dig and lift each other out of the rubble.” Despite the physical separation of the Palestinian people, the relationships they have with the community, even with people on the other side of the world, are strong. This community stands together, supporting and loving each other. Palestinian society experiences pain and joy and resistance together in a collective spirit, and this strengthens their sumud, their steadfastness, a profound sense of defiance to hold on when the odds are stacked against them. You didn’t know what sumud was, but you certainly had it. I have heard stories of your strength and fire from my mother. She told me how you felt strongly for the Palestinians. Married off at 21 without a formal education, you were able to recognize your shared experiences and parallel suffering. You were able to recognize the interconnectedness of these oppressive regimes decades prior to this Israeli genocide of Palestinians, during which many continually deny the intimate relationship between colonial powers. I hope you knew that your will to survive, to exist despite designs of death, was resistance against this system. You are, alongside so many Palestinians and Kashmiris, models of sumud.
A collective Palestinian identity and sense of kinship that transcends borders is inspirational, and I have faith we can also build this with the Kashmiri diaspora. Reading about the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) prior to the Oslo Accords, I learned about the various initiatives and welfare services to advance free healthcare, women’s literacy, cultural preservation, education, etc. The Palestine Martyrs Works Society, or SAMED, was entirely dedicated to promoting self-sufficiency, combatting employment discrimination, providing vocational training, and developing agriculture. Abu Ala, former SAMED Director, expressed that “the institution was ‘just about breaking even.’ It is not a profit-making enterprise, despite its remarkable economic growth, because it remains primarily an institution committed to serving the Palestinian people.” I was in awe of the PLO’s unity and ability to establish a community-oriented, anti-capitalist organizing structure that encouraged Palestinian communities to recognize their role in securing a liberated Palestinian future. This grassroots organizing is something that all peoples should embody. The Palestinian people challenge Western concepts of individualism, capitalism, imperialism, etc., and they are able to do so without abiding by Western colonial borders. Scattered, dispossessed, and tremendously under-resourced, it was principled conviction and love that held and continues to hold them. This should serve as a source of inspiration for the Kashmiri diaspora to remember the love that guided your generation.
In your village, there was a strong sense of collectivism. How can we bring these ideas to the broader community? How can we come together and provide a space for Kashmiris across the world to connect with their identity and one another, — to uplift the grassroots, the “everyday” people, and secure a path toward freedom? Our family has largely assimilated to our Pakistani and Punjabi environment with little retention of your culture. I did not grow up with Kashmiri culture, cuisine, or language. But now, I am trying to learn. I am studying the history you have lived through, and I hope to learn your mother tongue. I wonder how we can work to revitalize Kashmiri culture amongst the diaspora and maintain strong ties to our heritage and our people.
I thought about this at the Brown University student encampment, just one encampment of dozens across North America. I wish you were able to see the outpour of support for Palestine. Students across the country and even the world have initiated incredibly organized actions. I feel an immense amount of pride in my co-strugglers as we move as one united force against the U.S. and Israeli war machine. I felt solidarity as we circled University Hall, chanting and singing even as we became breathless. I felt love as I locked hands with my student comrades as we learned dabke and waved our keffiyehs. I felt comradery during teach-ins, dinners donated by generous community members, and the nights I would walk by tents and hear encampers chat and giggle and yawn and snore. When negotiations were finally happening with the administration, after decades of activist efforts by Brown students, after 61 student arrests this academic year, after a week-long hunger strike, after countless protests, I felt hope surge around me, radiating from my peers.
At the same time, I was thinking about the pain Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing. The encampment was a space to feel the heartbreak and grief we felt after over 200 days of genocide. Via the Internet, we have witnessed months of Palestinian pain, of Palestinian men digging through the rubble searching for their children’s bodies, of Palestinian women holding their babies and pregnant bellies close with no access to healthcare or water, of Palestinian children missing limbs and parents, of Palestinian journalists despairing over the loss of each of their family members. It is so painful to see pictures and videos of their suffering without being able to transport myself through my screen to help. It is so painful to remember that a fellow Brown student was shot within the so-called safety of U.S. borders just for existing as a Palestinian. I think of the strong connection I have with the people of Kashmir, people with whom I share ethnic DNA but who are from a land in which I have never stepped foot. I feel for the Palestinians and the Kashmiris and the Sudanese and the Uyghers and the Rohingya and the Tamils and the Romani and the Black Americans and every other group that has and continues to endure unreasonable pain because of the colonial and imperial world we live in. I have felt helpless. Student protests are gaining incredible traction, yet the genocide continues, and the media has begun to focus on us students rather than the very reason we are protesting. My first college protest was for Palestine. And now, as I graduate, there are no universities left in Gaza.
Despair and rage is emanating from the world. I wish you could be here to feel the anti-colonial energy surging. The refusal to stay quiet. I am overwhelmed with emotions when I hear my Palestinian peers and see videos of Palestinians in Gaza describing the way their hearts have filled with hope. I see that hope radiating across the globe, and it fortifies my stance and commitment to the cause. There will be a free Palestine in my lifetime. And there will be an azad (free) Kashmir. I will make sure of it. I only wish you were alive to see it. The path home to a free Kashmir is through a liberated Palestine, and Bari Ami, we are almost there.
Author and their great-grandmother.
