​Marriages are made in heaven and celebrated on earth they say. Well, my experience compels me to respectfully disagree. Nobody could have conceived a union as improbable as ours – the coming together of two mad souls; determined to reshape the world - not with artillery and armour but with love, compassion, and a touch of revolutionary poetry.

Yes that’s right. Two souls born in different parts of the world, divided by the most fortified border on the face of the earth, and hailing from two entirely separate backgrounds, somehow found each other and chose to walk into the bond of matrimony. I was 24; he was 43.

I was born in the affluent city of Lahore and raised in Pakistan’s picturesque capital, Islamabad, the daughter of an economist father and a politician mother. He was the son of Maisuma, a neighbourhood in Srinagar – a city that has known conflict for over seven decades. It’s a place where every street bears the weight of history, grief, and resilience, yet remains strikingly beautiful.

For more than 70 years, Kashmiris have struggled with the unresolved question of their homeland’s fate—whether it should be independent or align with India or Pakistan—a conflict that has persisted since the subcontinent gained independence from British rule in 1947.

When we met, in that fateful summer of 2005, I was aspiring to become a painter, while he was laying down his arms in the hope for peace, after spending decades fighting a war for the independence of his land.

​The chance meeting

Mohammad Yasin Malik, the leader of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) a pro-independence group that wants Kashmir to be separate from both India and Pakistan, was visiting Islamabad that year on one of his politico-diplomatic trips. He was invited to a luncheon by a civil society in the capital, where I was accompanying my mother, then the President of Pakistan Muslim League’s Women Chapter.

Candidly recalling, I had attended the event without much enthusiasm, merely as a formality. As an introvert, I never had much patience for ceremonial gatherings. I was considering leaving early, and now often wonder how different my life would have been had I done so. But I didn’t – because out of nowhere, Yasin began reciting a couplet from Pakistani poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz

In that moment, the gathering transformed from a polite social affair into something altogether different – a space charged with conviction, with the desire to turn the world upside down. I cannot speak for others, but my heart pounded with every word Yasin spoke. I felt the spirit of freedom awaken inside me. By the time his poem ended, I had already begun to believe in whatever this man believed in, for he believed it with an unshakable, divine conviction.

As the afternoon ended, we exchanged a few words. He asked for my number; which I shared absentmindedly, assuming he was just being polite. How could a man like him ever find time to call a girl like me? I wondered. But he did. And not just once. His calls became a regular part of my life.

An unlikely proposal

We spoke of poetry and revolution, of spring and autumn, of life and death and what they truly meant. In these conversations, he never struck me as a politician, let alone a fighter. He seemed to me a simple man chasing the mirage of an ideal world – one where injustice, tyranny and oppression did not exist, where no child was considered lesser than another.

And so, these conversations continued, one after another, until the day he proposed to me.

I was taken aback – perhaps even annoyed. But the surprise and anger faded when Yasin convinced both me and my mother that he wasn’t speaking on a whim; he was serious.

Everyone I knew, and many I didn’t, rushed to advise me against this marriage. It didn’t take a genius to see that no bed of roses awaited me, only a path laden with thorns. This will be the worst decision of your life, they said. You’d be mad to say yes, they said.

And mad enough, I was.

I accepted Yasin’s proposal, and before I knew it, I was a married woman, packing my belongings to fly to Srinagar – to a land I had only read about in poems and novels, a place often called heaven on earth.

The beauty of Kashmir

​The days with Yasin, for as long as they lasted, were a mixture of romance and hardship. I found Kashmir to be the most breathtaking place on earth – its beauty beyond anything poets and writers had ever managed to capture. No words, no verses, no paintings could do justice to its splendour.

But even more beautiful than the land were its people. They welcomed me with open hearts, showering me with love, warmth, an honour I had never known. They embraced me as a daughter of Pakistan, from a neighbouring Muslim country viewed with great respect.

Yasin took me on long drives across Kashmir, showing me places only a local – one who has spent years navigating its every corner – would know. He led me to hidden caves in the mountains, untouched valleys where nature remained pristine, and points where the river roared with untamed force.

In those moments, I questioned every warning I had ever received. Every friend, every well-wisher who told me that marrying Yasin would be the worst decision of my life – how wrong they all seemed.

​However; there were the Indian security forces and the fascists, by whom I mean politicians from Indian-administered Kashmir, who would time and again remind me that my advisors had not been entirely wrong. Time and again, I was reminded of the risks they had warned me about.

I faced harassment, invasive body searches by security forces, and violent attacks by extremist mobs – marks of which my body still bears. I was locked up in my home during curfews, while my husband was imprisoned miles away. It was here that I first witnessed curfews being imposed, that my eyes felt the bitterness of tear gas, that I saw violence unfold against ordinary citizens in its most brutal form.

It was not only the state but also certain groups who were perpetrating this violence. I was heckled in conferences taking place in grand hotels, pelted with glass bottles and bricks outside Sufi shrines where I had gone to seek solace, and I was even attacked while leaving my home.

It was at times like these when I thought of the comfort of my home in Islamabad, of the security I had once taken for granted. But I also reminded myself that I was not facing these circumstances alone, rather all those beloved Kashmiris who had made me feel at home here were also facing the same, every single day. This thought gave me strength – it turned solitude into solidarity. We were all partners in oppression.

In 2012, we were blessed with a daughter, Raziyah Sultan. Even as an infant, she bore the brunt of the occupation, stripped of dignity in so-called ‘security checks’ that saw her diapers torn off. But she inherited her father’s resilience. She knew from the start: we are not a family that submits to tyranny.

Life in Maisuma was tough, but we stayed. Home is where the heart is. My heart was with Yasin, and so was Raziyah’s. We could not imagine a life without him, and we cherished every moment by his side, whether it was filled with warmth or hardship.

Modi’s rise to power

The political landscape was shifting. ​In 2013, Narendra Modi came to power in India. A hyper-nationalist, he brought with him a promise of silencing any voice of dissent, with particular animosity towards Muslims, and an even deeper hostility towards Kashmiris. When he ascended to power, Yasin had said “We know for us hard days have come”. His words turned out to be a prophecy.

Last year, under Modi’s watch, a Human Rights Watch report found ongoing extrajudicial killings in the region by Indian security forces, while others continued to face spurious terrorism charges—just as my husband did when he was arrested in 2019. The detention of human rights activist Muhammad Ahsan Untoo led UN experts to condemn his arrest, along with others, as part of a broader crackdown on journalists and human rights defenders.

The year Modi revoked Article 370—stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special autonomy—Yasin was arrested amid a sweeping crackdown. A curfew was imposed, and over 10,000 political prisoners were detained. Since then, I have neither seen him nor heard his voice.

Despite my repeated efforts, the Indian government has not allowed me even a phone call with Yasin. He has been sentenced to life in sham trial for a case that is three decades old – which pertains to pre reconciliation era and which accuses Yasin of sedition.

Yasin has been denied basic healthcare; which has seriously deteriorated his wellbeing. He has been administered medications which have damaged his critical organs and pushed him further into physical decline. I hear this all from the media and not from him.

Meeting in dreams

The days and nights continue to pass, with our meetings confined to dreams, where we hold on to the hope of reuniting one day in a world free from fear, oppression and injustice. In these dreams, I also see Raziyah taking up his mantle one day, and pursuing the goal of establishing an egalitarian society.

I’m a firm believer in divine fate. And today on the 35th Kashmir Solidarity Day, a day when people across the globe express solidarity with the Kashmiri people, I stand certain that things will change.

I am sure soon the day will come when I will no longer be a single mother, I will no longer have to run my household, my daughter and the political struggle for the release of my husband, I will no longer be subjected to stigmas which a single independent woman is associated with even in the 21st century, I will no longer be devoid on a shoulder to cry on in moments of pain and suffering like that of the passing away of my mother, and I will no longer be barren.

The sun will shine once again on Yasin, and God Willing many other Kashmiris too who are facing oppression just for demanding their right to self-determination.