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SYED NISSAR H GILANI

The letter arrived in the summer of 1964, a brittle, five-week-old ghost of a message from Rawalpindi. Heavily censored and bearing the marks of a journey across a newly drawn border, it brought my father the devastating news of his father’s passing. S. Syed Ahmad Gilani, a man he had not seen since childhood, had succumbed to a cardiac arrest while en route to Murree, a brief escape from the scorching Punjab heat. A long-trusted friend from Kashmir, who had accompanied him on his journey, performed the final, heartbreaking duty of bringing his body to downtown Rawalpindi for last rites.

That condolence letter informed us that hundreds of Kashmiri migrants had joined the “Nimaz-i-jinaza,” a testament to the community he had found in a land so far from h

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