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Love Letter

[dropcap]J[/dropcap]aved had started seeing a girl in the ninth grade. It started off innocently as these things often do. Her house was close to their school, so he would walk her home each day. Meaning, he’d stay on one side of the road and she on the other side with her giggling friends. This was all the time they had with each other.

The association grew—exchanging looks, exchanging food, exchanging letters. She would bring him home-cooked food as he usually only carried biscuits to school. It was first love.

In 1992, Javed turned seventeen. He was in the eleventh grade. He and his girlfriend had been dating a few years. But now they were in separate schools, so the letter-writing had increased. Urdu was the language of choice, the language of love.

Javed lived in a village in Anantnag, often called Islamabad locally. One morning, after getting a new letter from his beloved, he was all set to show it to his friend who lived in a neighbouring village. It was a beautiful letter, with Urdu poetry that his girlfriend had penned specially for him. As half the fun of young love was showing off to your pals, Javed wanted to begin his regular post-mortem of the letter with his friend. Or he wished to make him jealous … who is to say? But the actual reason Javed wanted to leave home that day was because he had heard early in the morning at the kāndur’s—the baker’s—that a crackdown was going to happen in his village.

Crackdowns were carried out by army troops in Kashmir to look for militants. All the men of an area would be called out with their identity cards. After a preliminary check, they would be paraded in front of a mukhbir—an informant of the army. One by one, the men would be brought in front of a row of jeeps, one of which the mukhbir would be sitting in. If he recognized any man with affiliations to the tạhrīk—the armed movement—he pressed the car horn. The person’s face would be covered and he would be sent to the interrogation centre. Some men made it back home after getting interrogated, beaten up or tortured. Most never returned.

Just a year before, Javed had been made to strip down completely during one such crackdown. That memory still haunted him, and he wanted to stay as far away as possible this time around.

So, he got ready, put his beloved’s letter in the front pocket of his shirt for good luck and left the house. But he was too late. It was 8 a.m., and the army had already arrived. They started their routine—knocking on doors and yelling commands for the men to vacate houses. Soon Javed was standing in line with the rest of the men of the village. The crackdown had begun.

One by one, the men were checked by the army, their possessions examined, their identity cards scrutinized. If they passed this round, they would be sent off for the identification parade with the mukhbir, which would mean standing in the sun for hours at end. Javed desperately wanted to get out of here, but he was stuck for good. As he waited for his turn, he watched his father being sent off for round two.

Finally, Javed’s turn arrived. The soldier patted him down from head to toe. He felt his front pocket. Javed gulped. He didn’t want to part with his letter. The soldier got the folded piece of paper out and opened it.

All written in Urdu.

He looked at Javed suspiciously and asked him, ‘What is this?’

Javed couldn’t think of what to say apart from the truth. He stammered, ‘Love letter.’

The soldier raised his eyebrows in surprise. He went and discussed the situation with the other soldiers. They kept looking back at Javed and then at the letter inquisitively.

Javed was a bundle of nerves. ‘They don’t believe me. They probably think it’s some militant code,’ he panicked.

Javed wondered if he could ask for help from the elders around him; maybe one of them could back him up that the letter indeed was penned for a lover. But telling them about his love life seemed like a fate far worse. If his father got a whiff of this afterwards, Javed would probably never get to see his girlfriend again. So, he simply waited. Finally, the soldier returned and gave Javed’s letter back to him. Javed was about to join his father, when the soldier asked him to stay back. The soldiers finished with the rest of the men. All of them were sent off for identification by the mukhbir. All except Javed.

The four soldiers approached him. Javed trembled. ‘This is how I go … over a damned love letter,’ he thought.

But instead of hurting Javed, all four soldiers sat down in a circle on the grass. They gestured, asking him to join them.

He sat down tentatively. They took off their helmets and kept their guns aside. Under those heavy helmets, they were young men. Twenty-two or twenty-three maybe?

Javed couldn’t think about their age when his life was on the line.

‘What is this new game?’ Javed wondered as the soldiers got comfortable. Then one of them spoke. ‘Ab suna apna love letter.’

Recite your love letter now.

Javed stared in shock. Surely he was dreaming. Surely they were pulling his leg. This was a ploy to humiliate him. But no. The soldiers were genuinely interested in him and his missive. It wasn’t each day during these searches and crackdowns that they came across declarations of love. Quite the opposite, actually. It seemed that they wanted a break from the crackdown as much as Javed did. Javed—because he found them traumatizing; the soldiers—because they were exhausted. Javed was taken aback by the turn of events. He also knew that complying was his only way out. He didn’t want to test fate by refusing the soldiers’ request. So, he took out his girlfriend’s love letter—his prized possession—and started reading it. Slow and succinct.

Line by line.

Javed saw the soldiers around him open up. They laughed and giggled like love-struck teenagers as he continued. Maybe the letter spoke of their own longings. Maybe they had someone they wanted to get letters from, too.

They didn’t understand the Urdu properly, so after reading each line of the poem, Javed would translate it in great detail. That way, he also bought himself more time. The longer he was here, the longer he wasn’t over there with the rest of the men.

Javed wasn’t used to seeing the softer side of the army. He had always seen the soldiers as formidable creatures, as beings he was supposed to be afraid of. ‘Don’t get on the wrong side of soldiers’ had been drilled into him at home. But here they were— soldiers—happily following his adolescent romance as though it held within it a Bollywood film monologue.

And did Javed put on a show for them! He painted a grand picture, gesticulating wildly and enunciating words with a flourish. They were eating out of the palm of his hand. So much so, they decided to arrange tea for themselves and him. A little chai and charcha.

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ow, at that time, being a doctor was a really reputable professional choice. There was only one doctor in the whole village, and his vocation also saved him from crackdowns. One of the soldiers walked up to his house and knocked on the door. When the doctor unlatched it tentatively, the soldier asked him to organize tea for all of them, including Javed.

The women didn’t want to serve tea to the soldiers, so the doctor appeared minutes later with a tray. Javed was mortified. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that he was being served by this man he looked up to. As the doctor started pouring out the tea, Javed sprang to his feet in protest. He offered his own services. The soldiers, who were treating him like their buddy, told him to sit down.

The doctor looked back and forth, confused. He didn’t know whether to proceed or stop. He was also shocked to witness the camaraderie between Javed and the soldiers. But then, he had learnt not to ask any questions.

Javed, who never would’ve thought of arguing with an army man, felt compelled to speak up before things got more awkward or heated. He gathered the courage to tell the soldiers that he held the doctor in high regard and couldn’t bear to be served by him. It would be disrespectful and go against his values.

The soldiers listened with reluctance and grudgingly saw his point of view. ‘No worries, love doctor,’ they said. ‘We’ll leave this doctor be.’ The soldiers laughed at their joke. Javed and the doctor did not. Javed prised the kettle out of the doctor’s hand and told him that he would gather the empty cups himself. The doctor gave Javed one last disapproving look and moved away. Javed poured the Lipton chai—what sweet tea is referred to as in Kashmir—into the cups and served the soldiers and himself.

At seventeen, when Javed didn’t think much of himself, being given more respect than the most respected man in the village was overwhelming. He wasn’t sure he liked it. He prayed that no one would hear about what had transpired this afternoon, and that the doctor kept his mouth shut.

The tea was slurped. The biscuits were eaten. Javed stuffed his letter back into his pocket, almost wishing there was more to it. This was not the post-mortem he had planned for, but it was what had presented itself. In the process, he had seen the soldiers transform—a fact that felt surreal to him.

Now the soldiers started putting their helmets back on. Once again they were turning into the formidable creatures that he knew so well. Just moments ago, they had appeared human to Javed. That moment was passing.

The soldiers probably wouldn’t speak of the events of the preceding hours to anyone. Javed wouldn’t speak of them either. A silent understanding had been reached between the two.

The crackdown was coming to a close. The men were trudging back home slowly, and Javed wasn’t part of the queue.

Javed bid adieu to the soldiers. They slapped him on the back like he was their pal and started making their way back to their team. Javed scrambled to collect the cups and got away from there before the onlookers could deduce anything more.

As he walked back home, his mind was racing. He was sure his father had reached. Javed was in for some drama for sure. He needed a backstory and fast. The storyteller he had become that day—it came to the fore again. A plan came to him faster than he had anticipated.

Javed reached home to find his mother hysterical. When she had asked his father about Javed, he had told her that he hadn’t seen him during the crackdown at all. On hearing this, his mother had almost collapsed. Surely her son hadn’t been picked up?

Before she could have a complete nervous breakdown, Javed arrived.

‘Where were you?’ she yelled.

Javed obviously couldn’t tell her that he had been saved because of a love letter. However, he had found the perfect alibi.

During crackdowns, the army would often take a man from the village—someone who knew the houses well—for talạ̄ shī—a quick and efficient search. Javed told his panic-stricken parents that he had been picked for talạ̄ shī this time around. Though initially sceptical, they came around to believing his story.

Javed was off the hook. He was force-fed nun-chai and tsoṭ— salty tea and bread. He had already had too much tea, but he couldn’t tell his mother this.

The day passed. Javed couldn’t make it to his friend’s village anymore. He would have to show him the letter the next day in school.

After this unusual crackdown, though Javed didn’t feel like a changed person—nor did he see the army in a kinder light—one thing did change. From that day onwards, Javed always carried a love letter in his pocket.

Just in case.

Reproduced here in arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers India Private Limited and Archipelago Books from the book Loal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land by Mehak Jamal, Copyright © 2025. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying is strictly prohibited.

About the Book

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[dropcap]A[/dropcap] rare collection of stories of love, longing and loss from a region that has witnessed decades of conflict, Loal Kashmir seeks to answer the question: what happens when you cannot communicate your longing to your beloved?

Loal, the Kashmiri word for love and affection, is the common thread running through all sixteen of these true-life narratives: Javed, on his way to show off his love letter to a friend, gets caught in a crackdown; newlywed Zara waits to be reunited with her husband in America, her visa application flagged indefinitely; Sagar and Aalmeen plan moments of stolen time during the uncertainty of militancy; Nadiya looks for Shahid from her window, coughing as caustic fumes of tear gas seep in; Khawar and Iqra struggle to reach each other when the abrogation of Article 370 leads to a shutdown across Kashmir.

While the waves of discord in the Valley have been cemented in history, what has been rendered invisible are the lived experiences of its inhabitants. Loal Kashmir, by gathering the tenderest of Kashmir’s tales–its accounts of love–attempts correcting this lapse.

Source: HarperCollins India

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About the Author

Mehak Jamal

Mehak Jamal is a filmmaker and writer. She was born and raised in Srinagar, Kashmir and has always wanted to tell stories from her homeland.
Mehak is a 2022 South Asia Speaks Fellow, awarded to outstanding emerging writers from the region. Her film Bad Egg premiered at the 19th Indian Film Festival Stuttgart and won the Audience Award. It went on to screen at multiple film festivals all over the world.
Mehak is a film alumnus of Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. She lives in Mumbai with her cat Ellie. Loal Kashmir is her first book.
Source: HarperCollins India