BANDIPORA, India — In her dim living room, Zahida lies on the floor, under a blanket. She's often tired, she says, a consequence of the breast cancer she's getting treatment for.
"I'm not worried about my disease," she says. "The thought of going back to Pakistan is killing me."
She and her husband Bashir asked NPR not to use their family name for fear of retribution from the Indian government. Returning to Pakistan — the country where Zahida, 30, was born but hasn't lived for 14 years — wasn't even on her radar until India blamed Pakistan for a militant attack in late April in which gunmen killed 26 people, leading India to order Pakistanis out of the country. The attack took place in Indian-administered Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan territory divided between India and Pakistan, and claimed by both in its entirety.
India argued the group that initially claimed responsibility for the April 22 attack — the Resistance Front — was an indirect proxy for the Pakistani military. Indian police also said two of the gunmen were Pakistani nationals. Pakistan has denied any connection with the attack.
It was the worst attack against civilians in India in more than a decade. Eyewitnesses said that some of the gunmen deliberately targeted Hindu men. The victims, many of whom were visiting the area as tourists, came from across the country.
Shortly after the attack, the Indian government announced a series of punitive measures, including canceling visas of most Pakistani nationals in the country. Pakistan announced countermeasures, including expulsion of Indian nationals.
By the end of April — the deadline for Pakistanis to depart India — local media reported that more than 780 Pakistani nationals had left. The Indian government hasn't officially released numbers, but community leaders and Kashmiri politicians tell NPR a significant number of those deported from Kashmir were Pakistani wives of Indian nationals.
"They have been married for decades. Some of them are even grandmothers," says Mehbooba Mufti, who had served as chief minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, before the Indian government revoked the territory's autonomy in 2019. "Many think of themselves as Indian citizens. Where will they go now?"
Journalists recorded videos of weeping women leaving their adopted villages and towns, sometimes accompanied by dozens of relatives and neighbors seeing them off.
But Zahida didn't leave. She says she couldn't bring herself to tear her family apart.
"I cry all the time when I think about all this. My children cry too," Zahida says. "We are not at peace."
Zahida's marriage and move to India reflect something of the arc of Kashmir's own troubles.
Her husband Bashir is from Indian-administered Kashmir. He says he crossed into Pakistani-administered Kashmir more than two decades ago to receive training on weapons after an armed conflict broke out in the Himalayan valley against Indian rule in 1989.
But Bashir says he didn't end up doing any fighting. Soon after he crossed into Pakistan, he began working as a carpenter in a town in Pakistani-administered Kashmir called Athmuqam. His neighbors set him up with Zahida.
Zahida was among hundreds of Pakistani women who married Kashmiri militants, who later gave up their arms. Kashmiris across the Pakistan-India divide share cultural and family ties that have persisted despite seven decades of rivalry between the two nuclear-armed countries.
Zahida gave birth to the couple's first two daughters in Athmuqam. Then, in 2010, the government of India-administered Kashmir offered militants amnesty if they abandoned their weapons and returned home. Hundreds, including Bashir, took up the offer, and they returned with their Pakistani wives and children.
He went back to his hometown of Bandipora with Zahida and their two daughters. Zahida had another son in Bandipora, who acquired Indian nationality at birth.
Once in India, Zahida obtained an Indian national identity card. But like other spouses and children born in Pakistan, she says that her and her daughters' applications for Indian citizenship were never approved. Zahida says she let the matter go — she had no plans of leaving her husband's village, or his country.
Now that India has ordered Pakistanis out, Bashir says he goes to work every day, his mind buzzing with anxiety. "I think of my wife and daughters. I think of my young son, and who will take care of him if my wife and daughters are [forced to go] to Pakistan," he says.
When Indian authorities offered him amnesty more than a decade ago and allowed his Pakistani wife and daughters to settle in India, he says he thought it was a genuine offer. "Why are they backtracking on their own policy now?" he asks. "This is not right. This is an injustice to us."
India's Ministry of Home Affairs and Kashmir police did not immediately respond to NPR's requests for comment.
It's been around three weeks since the deadline for returning to Pakistan lapsed. Both countries conducted airstrikes in the days that followed that deadline. Bashir says his family hasn't received any calls or summons from immigration authorities. But he says when he thinks of the moment his wife and daughters may have to leave, he can no longer see a future. "Without them, my life will have no purpose," he says. "Whether I'm alive or dead, it's one and the same thing."
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