Other Worlds: Life in Kashmir

Nosheen Shafi, front center, and her sisters in 2003, long after their family immigrated to America.

By AQSA HAIDER

Vast lands, green mountains, and gorgeous sunrises are a common sight for people living in Azad Kashmir, a region near northern Pakistan. But with this beauty, there is also a lot of hardship. All in all, life in Kashmir is quite different from life in America.

“I liked my life there,” said Nosheen Shafi, who resided in Azad Kashmir for 19 years. “It was very simple, very straight-forward. I loved the food, the culture. It was just a simpler life there compared to America.”

But living in Azad Kashmir was, without a doubt, “difficult,” according to Shahid Haider. “It was hard to earn money, you know?” he said. “The jobs there were difficult but the pay was very low.” Haider was a former electrician who went to work after he finished his school day at 4 p.m. On weekends, he would wake up early and work for eight hours. “It was a dangerous job, but we needed the money,” he said.

Haider lived with his mother and three siblings: a younger brother and sister and an older brother, who was also an electrician. Haider’s father was murdered while Haider was only in 3rd grade.

“My mother was a teacher, so we didn’t see her often,” Haider said. “Me and my older brother also worked to get food on our table.”

Much like Haider, Shafi also found her life to be quite difficult. She was the 5th oldest in a family of nine siblings. 

Shafi said, “I always found myself having company, which I greatly enjoyed, but it’s hard living with ten other people.” She often felt “overwhelmed” by having so many siblings; it was a “blessing but a curse” at the same time, she said.

Shafi had to wake up early in the morning since it took a while for everyone to finish up in the bathrooms. Her mother would make tea and breakfast for the whole family while everyone else got up and ready for school. Her father was a math teacher.

“My father would always rush us out of the door,” she said. “Our schools were very close together. I used to go to school with five of my siblings. My four older sisters had already started working.”

“My father wanted to be a doctor, which was originally what he was studying for,” she added. “But to continue studying, he had to pay a lot of money, which he couldn’t afford with the low pay in Kashmir that barely met our family needs.” 

One time for Eid, her sisters wanted makeup to celebrate. “My father went out to buy us makeup and jewelry, but we could only afford bangles for my sisters,” she said. “My brothers didn’t get anything.”

Fatima Haider had similar experiences with Kashmir’s hard but simple life.

“Every day I would wake up early to go to the local fountain to get water, since fresh water came in the morning,” she said. “We’d take empty gallon containers, like three or four at a time, and fill them up.”

Fatima would make the trek with one other family member. “We had to pick one bottle up and then walk ahead with it before putting it down and doing the same with the other,” she said. “It was too heavy to carry two at once.”

There was no internet at the time, only toys and the company of others to keep her entertained. “I feel like I was more social and more used to talking to people,” she said. “I didn’t have anything other to do than talk.”

The electricity often goes out in Azad Kashmir, making charging phones, watching TV, and using the air conditioner suddenly impossible.

“The temperatures are always so high, especially during the summer,” said Fatima. “It feels unbearable when the power goes out for ten minutes up to an hour.”

While lives are already hard in Kashmir due to the region’s poverty, it’s even harder being a parent. 

“I would always work for hours making food, washing clothes, washing dishes,” said Nasim Dutt, the mother of Nosheen Shafi. “I rarely had time to do things for myself since I was always busy doing work around the house.”

“I remember days that we’d have to skip meals since we wouldn’t even get enough money,” she said. “Sometimes we’d ask the older daughters to go to our neighbors and ask for a bit of food. I was a close friend, so she’d help us out a bit.”

Dutt believes that raising kids in Kashmir is much more challenging compared to raising kids in America. “I don’t regret migrating to America,” she said. “I wanted the future for my kids and their kids to be better than how my life was.”