Hunderman, India-Toen I arrived for the first time in Hunderman, a village near Kargil in India-controlled Kashmir, I was struck by the silence in March. The inhabitants of the 500-year-old settlement believe that it dates from before the Mughal and British rich. Once a prominent stop on the historic Silk Road Trade Route, this village has witnessed centuries of history, which serves as a living proof of the rich heritage of the region. Yet Hunderman is more than a remnant of the past; It embodies the turbulent legacy of the India-Pakistan wars. Once part of Pakistan, the village suddenly became part of India in the war of 1971 when the region was cut in two by the line of control (LOC). Many villagers who had fled their houses at the time remained Pakistani citizens, while those who stayed at home became Indian citizens at night.
Nowadays, however, the city is perhaps best known for unlocked Hunderman -Museum of Memories, founded in 2015 by Brothers Baqir Ali and Mohammad Ilyas. Hidden in the destroyed stone houses of what is now a deserted part of the village, this unlikely museum keeps the objects, letters and everyday remains of lives interrupted by war. It is in this dilapidated archive that Hunderman keeps the memory alive – the traces guarantee those who disappear across the border.
While I navigate carefully through the narrow footpaths, I meet Baqir, 51, the owner and caretaker of the museum. “At that time about 16 families lived here, and there was the house of my uncle,” Baqir Tells me in Urdu While he points to a row of homeless huts. “When the shelling started, most of them ran to the Pakistani side with their families and only our family stayed. We never saw them again. Many thought they would return within a week or two as soon as things settled, but then we were decades for weeks.”
We arrive at a small wooden door that is mounted in a stone wall. Baqir produces an old -fashioned key and places it in an old lever locking mechanism for which Hunderman is known. “Over time we forget our past,” he continues. “This act of forgetting is also a blessing of Allah. If people are unable to forget, how can we about the misery of life such as wars? That’s why we started this project to convert these old houses into a museum – so that it reminds us of the love and pain of separation caused by borders.”
The shadow of the war appears great in the vague Senate of the museum. Jagged grenade fragments, a cracked helmet and remains of the battle that this mountain slope scars are arranged in rough wooden planks. In a corner is a mud-wrapped my safely encapsulated and horrifying find of Baqir’s older brother, Ilyas Ali, in a nearby field.
However, the heart of the museum is not the remains of war; It is the human stories. Baqir leads me to a second small room illuminated by a single window. Here under protective plastic letters, photos and personal notebooks have been donated by the inhabitants of the city. “These are our treasures,” he says softly. Next to the notebook is a black and white photo of two young men posing through the Drass River – one of them settled in Pakistan, explains Baqir, and the other lived in Hunderman until he died five years ago. The museum fill a series of other intimate objects. “There is one A few worn leather shoes left a man at the door, hoping to come back for them; A wedding dress that has been hurriedly left behind a newlywed bride, “Baqir continues.” These objects tell a story about divorce. “A framed letter, in particular, translated into English, attracts me. It is written by the uncle of Baqir. Now it’s here for our children to read.”
While we step outside the sun, I notice an older man on a stone step who warms himself up. Baqir introduces him as Mohammad Ali, 82, one of the oldest inhabitants of Hunderman. He greets me with a gap-open smile and eagerly presses a dried apricot in my hand.
The life of Mohammad was raised by the border shift. “My older brother visited that winter in Gilgit in Gilgit and he asked me to come along, but I was not in the mood,” he recalls. “Now I think I should have come with him. It is one of the biggest regret of my life.” In the chaotic wake of the war, neighbors were on either side of a hostile gap. The neighbors of Mohammad, a few, were also separated by the new border. Unable to reunite personally, they later divorced letters.
“We didn’t even think that this village would be India. By the time we found out, it was too late and the army would not let us go back. It was just no realistic anymore,” Mohammad continues. “Now we are all old. I just pray that we can hug our loved ones before dying.” He leads me to a vantage point on the edge of the settlement, a few minutes’ walk from the museum. “Look,” he says, who spreads an arm to the west. I can just distinguish a cluster from distant roofs behind the locomotive. “That is Brolmo, in Pakistan. My mother was born there.” Like many others here, Mohammad’s family has carrots on both sides of the border. His mother moved to Hunderman after marriage, but her parents and brothers and sisters stayed over the river.
“After the war she never saw her parents again,” says Mohammad softly. “She would stand here and stare at those hills, knowing that they were there somewhere.”
Yet Hunderman remains tied to his insulation. As with other Kashmiri villages controlled by India, which are often Subject to Internet Black -OutsThere is no mobile phone network; Residents are still walking to nearby army camps or raised Ridgelines to catch the faint signal – a routine that became even more risky after the Short reinforced conflict between India and Pakistan Earlier this month, when Mortar Fire and Drone Strikes again changed the line of control into a battlefield. Nevertheless, in the first decade, the museum has attracted a steady drop of visitors – curious travelers, scholars and those who are quietly seeking testimony. “We get tourists almost every day in the summer,” says Baqir.
The Museum of Memories is not compiled by professional archivists, but by the local residents of Hunderman. The exhibitions are not large monuments or plaques published by the government, but modest assets penetrated with personal significance. Landing these alleys, I feel an overwhelming empathy for the people who ever lived here and for those who still do, with the weight of history.
