Asifa spent the day repeating a crippled search for her husband that ended, each time, in between the two rows of troops that had seized the bridge in our neighborhood. The world outside had been reduced to 900 meters — about half a mile — into which my aunt would disappear every couple of hours. Inside, we paced restlessly until she would return, quieter than the last time.

Late that evening, we remembered we still owned an aged radio that sometimes worked when placed at the right angle. I carried it into the living room, where my mother, my aunt and I waited in silence for the song to end. Then a stranger’s voice on Radio Kashmir broke the news to us: “Modi sarkar ne aaj riyasat-e- Jammu Kashmir ko daffa 370 ke tehat hasil khususi ayeeni taraji ko khatam karne ka faisla kiya hai” (“Modi government has decided to abolish the special status granted to the state of Jammu and Kashmir by Article 370 of the constitution.”)

There it was: the annexation of our land, and of the life that has survived upon that land. We looked at one another as the stranger’s voice continued to pronounce our fate, and wept. My mother gulped her tears and said, to no one in particular, “Kashmir has been finished off.”

The days that followed were spent in the lonely presence of what we now knew, and the vast absence of the freedom to respond to it. Time was measured by listening to the frequency of scattered traffic and planning the next hunt for news. But we remained trapped inside a sensation of stillness even as we climbed stairs and paced gardens. Home had turned into a large waiting room.

After dark, a battle would begin between the wild, stray dogs that claim the streets of our neighborhood for sleep and the troops that occupy it at every corner. The old gang of dogs barked, in chorus and in revolt, at the silent march of the half-masked, fully armed soldiers prying on their ground. Once the barks stretched into howls, it meant the soldiers were returning from the farther end of the road.

A few miles from my home, in the inner city, where the protests are more intense and the oppression harsher, the orbit of siege was made from tear gas and chili grenades, lead pellets and aerial fire. The soldiers barged into homes and stole teenage boys from their sleep. From dawn to dusk, Kashmir lies naked under the gaze and practice of almost a million Indian troops and policemen.

Four days into the siege, a local newspaper made it home. Beiga wanted me to search for reports on how the world had responded. But there were none, and for the first time in a weeklong daze, we felt a sensation of familiarity.