I’m Putha from a refugee camp in Jammu in the southern part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. My family was part of an exodus from Kashmir after killing and violence aimed at Hindis. My father’s job was to ensure that bodies were cremated to bone. If children of the deceased weren’t available, he pierced skulls with a sharp stick in a sacred Hindu rite. My job was to drag home government-issued rice bags. At night, lanterns from inside the tents glowed the color of dark honey, a calm occasionally disturbed by the sound of a yapping dog. Once I returned, I watched my mother stir a half-cup of lentils into a pot of boiling water. The lentils sank to the bottom and then floated to the top. She told me, “You must get away from this place.”
“Why would I want to leave you?”
She stirred the lentils and rolled an onion between the palms of her hands to make it easier to slice. “There is nothing here but sorrow.” She slapped me across my face. My father came home that evening and vomited inside the front door the color of curry.
One night my mother had to go to the camp hospital to pick up my father, who had cut his forehead at a gravesite. I remained in the tent. My eyes fell upon one of my father’s empty bottles. I picked it up and smelled its sourness. It was an unbearably warm evening. When my parents returned, I knew there’d be a fight.
For a moment, I rolled the bottle over my body and felt the cool glass against my skin. Then I blew inside the bottle until my breath answered. It was the sound from inside the tent of my body.