In Kashmir: Writing Under Occupation
by Ather Zia
I.
August in Kashmir

Photo Credit: TAUSEEF MUSTAFA/AFP/Getty Images
is a siege on steroids
India wrapped in saffron
Pakistan awash in green
Kashmir as always
soaks in blood
red of its old and young
those being born
and those not yet
II.
the partition
has become a stone in hand
answering bullets
that kill and blind
every day –
in Kashmir
mothers live to wait
for the disappeared
fathers survive
only to bury the killed
all epitaphs read
Azadi Azadi Azadi
III.
the blood-soaked rags
drying in Dilli and Lahore
are fresh in Lal Chowk
here,
the slaughterhouse is open –

Photo Credit: Faisal Khan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Kashmiri bodies hung
on hooks blinded eyes,
tender tongued radical
meat branded Azadi
is the venison of nations
hungry
IV.
i returned home to broken gutters
spilling onto doorsteps,
bullet-casings, old bones
she had kept the roses
from the garden gutted by grenades,
winter had razed the rest
she never bid him goodbye,
her eyes red from the teargas,
in Kashmir
lovers are suspected of seeking Azadi
Ather Zia is a poet and a political anthropologist who teaches Anthropology and Gender Studies at University of Northern Colorado Greeley. She is the founder editor of Kashmir Lit.