Night in Kashmir, it took place between India and the battle of Pakistan

With the fall of the night, we can see at the distance of hills scattered with glowing white spots – homes tucked on the slopes of the Pakistani side of Kashmir. The city was behind us, on the Indian side, as well.

My friend was hoping. “Lights are a good sign,” he said. “It means that nothing is bad tonight.”

But when we settled at dinner, a declaration from a nearby mosque rang: “Citizens, especially in the border areas, are advised to stay at home.”

As if it was at a concert, the lights flabby on both sides of the border, and the darkness overcame the valley. The declaration seemed secular, but Kashmiri knew what it means.

The bombing was about to start.

I spent most of my career covering the disorders across Kashmir. At the end of the reporting trip on the controlline, I was looking to stay with my old friend, Irush Khawaja and his family in Garcot, a village on the Indian side.

The previous day, early on Wednesday, tensions between India and Pakistan erupted to a military conflict that would play with a confrontation that is playing in parallel.

It was the most clear-attracted global attention and worrying world leaders-as an advanced air participation, as India, Pakistan launched missiles and drones across the border of 2000 miles. The exchange of strikes between nuclear armed neighbors caused panic, but a relatively few victims.

The other, more brutal, was one concentrated in Kashmir. In villages and towns along the control line, the borders separating the Indian and Pakistani parts separating the region, an ancient artillery battle that bombed ordinary people in the middle.

The fighting was launched by a terrorist attack last month on the Indian side of Kashmir, in which 26 civilians were killed. India has accused Pakistan of responsibility for the attack, the claim that Pakistan denied.

The massacre was one of the worst attacks on Indian civilians for decades, and has sparked long hostilities. Since 1947, when Pakistan and India were formed at the end of the British colonial rule, the two countries have fought several wars on Kashmir, a region installed between them both fully called.

Kashmirion rarely had an opinion on their fate.

My friend and family knew what to do. They brought me up the top of the hill into a safe house where others already gathered. We barely arrived when the explosions began – sharp, rhythmic, intensifying. Send each keting a tremor through the walls.

Fourteen men, most of whom were from the friendly friend of my friend, were gathering on thin ranks in a corner room on the ground floor, silent except for anxiety whisper. Women and children were thrown into a concrete hideout behind the house.

Around 11:30 pm, one of the elderly people with a thick white beard asked a younger man to stand and read the Islamic call for prayer. It was not the normal time for that, but no one wondered about the idea.

The voice of the young man rose, trembling, but clear in the dark, as others repeated his words quietly and waited for bombing.

The younger men remained on their phones, sending text messages and relatives in other villages. “Are you safe?” I barely an hour after the bombing began, their phones lit up with reports that a woman was killed was not far from the place we wanted.

I said: “He is calm here,” pretending to calm down on the phone while she spoke to my wife, who returned to our house in Paramola, an hour and a half from the controlline. “I am in a very safe place.”

I was able to hear women in the nearby warehouse, chanting the Islamic Union – “There is no god but God …” – Every time a shell fell. Their voices did not crack. Every time an explosion explodes, my body tightening.

The bombing stopped at 6 am

It rained all night. The earth was wet and the sky was clear. When we came out, the first thing we saw was the Haji Bear corridor, which is part of the Bear Banglad Mountains. Some men, who speculate like military experts, have indicated the hills and estimated paths, in an attempt to understand how the shells fall.

Community leaders from the vicinity of the Indian Kashmir calculated 13 dead during the four bombing. Bir Mazar Shah, an official from the Pakistani team, said 11 people were killed Thursday evening.

The fighting is supposed to have ended now. India and Pakistan said on Saturday that they had agreed to a ceasefire, although after several hours there were reports that the bombing continued along the border.

But my night in the safe house will not leave me. Not because of fear – which passed. What remains is my appreciation for the stability of people along the control line: for those Kashmiris who live their entire lives in light of the danger and continue with that.

Alex Timely and Dia Ur Rishman The reports contributed.