The Final Landscape

Under a month-long lockdown in Kashmir, the streets are deserted, the stone-throwing protesters are locked away in their homes, and winter is settling on the valley. In a dialogue with himself, an aging artist creates the illusion of company while he pontificates over the utility of his art in a place of perpetual war. The dialogue deepens as the artist’s mind digresses between legends and newspaper headlines, pondering the creative ways the people of Kashmir carve out freedom in the interstices of spaces that imprison them.

Originally published by Mountain Ink, the story explores the resistant possibility of art, imagines a moment of isolation, and subverts it in its execution.

— Raaza Jamshed for Guernica Global Spotlights

He was losing count of the days now. It was a month-old lockdown and the September sun had just begun to smile readily at the mountain peaks.

“What day is it today?” wishing to be