The Homecoming

‘I wonder how the fabric of my life came apart so quickly. It was a rich fabric, something I’d taken great pains and over three decades to weave. We might each recover individually, but the richness of the fabric is gone.’

Javed Sharif returns home to Srinagar for his father’s eighty-fourth birthday. He returns with a sense of well-being, despite troubles, the violence and the bitterly cold weather. Unexpectedly, his dreams of retiring and settling in Kashmir again are shattered by a knock on the door on the day of the birthday party and, as he watches his life unravel, his world will never be the same again.

The Homecoming is the story of one family, but also of the many families in Kashmir whose lives have been destroyed by decades of violence and uncertainty. Deeply moving and disturbingly honest, this is a haunting tale that is political yet profoundly personal, and tells of the pain and suffering that is a result of the cruelty—and ultimately the indifference—of the state.