Send us a textThe story “Kashmir Valley’s Soofiya Bano” was written by Humra Quraishi. Set against the backdrop of the devastating floods in the valley in 2014, we learn from the story about the painful search of a mother for her missing son. The son was arrested and then he fell into the black hole of the security apparatus. The story starts with the description of the flooded Srinagar home of academic Agha Ashraf Ali, father of Agha Shahid Ali, the well-known poet, and his wife from Awadh, with a nostalgic touch. This part is real and not fiction. One family’s tragic end, which is actual history, is then mingled with the fictional account of the destruction of another family, a family of an imagined mother and her son. The real is thus combined with the magical, or as the author calls it, we are all ‘flowing along with our destiny.’

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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