A Morning | Experienced by Kashmiri

“Don’t you dare take your f~~~~~~ car out through the gate or I’ll shoot you”, shouted the CRPF man through the slit of our gate. It was an ideal morning straight out from the pages of a novel the breeze was cool , the sun was out but it promised warmth instead of heat. The heat had already been surrendered to the advent of September. I had risen early. My feet had taken me straight to the bathroom for a bath that I wouldn’t need. After a breakfast that consisted of nothing but salt tea and leftover pieces of bread from the never-had Eid celebrations. It was a strange combination-this tea, it was rosy and almost shiny when you looked at it but it was salty to taste. How representative of the place it belongs to. The only thing that bothered me on such a beautiful morning was the morning itself , mornings herald days and the last three months had taught me to love the morning but fear the day. As I sat with a china cup in my hand my gaze wandered out of the window towards the skyline. High above the surrounding structures stood a minaret , a minaret of no or inconsequential beauty. No azan was sounded from it. But it was still built. The minaret belongs to the mosque , the mosque built over the resting place of Sheikh Dawood Sahib aka ‘Batamaal Saeb’ . A saint of the highest order whom a poet praised thus: