Divided by Borders, Separated in Death

Divided by Borders, Separated in Death



A FAMILY STOOD ONLY A FEW HUNDRED YARDS AWAY FROM RAJA LIAQUAT’S COFFIN,
YET THE BORDER DENIED HIM EVEN A FINAL GOODBYE.
Raja Liaquat Khan’s final journey did not begin from a home filled with family. It began from a hospital room in Srinagar, where silence settled long before his funeral prayers. On April 26, a heart attack took him away at the age of fifty. But death was not the only tragedy that day. The greater tragedy was that his family could not touch him one last time. His funeral became a story of grief divided by borders, fear and decades of separation.

Across the Line of Control in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan, his brothers waited with eyes fixed on the other side of the river. Only a few hundred yards separated them from Liaquat’s coffin. Yet that short distance had become impossible to cross. Soldiers, fences, fear and decades of conflict stood between a brother and his brother’s funeral. The crossing points across the LoC, once used by divided Kashmiri families to meet their loved ones, had been shut down by the Indian government since 2019, hence families separated by the conflict have been left with only memories, distant voices and painful glimpses across the divide.

Liaquat belonged to Keran in Kupwara district, a village divided by the 300-foot-wide Kishanganga River, known as the Neelum River AJK, Pakistan. On one side lived his relatives in AJK. On the other side stood the home where he had spent his life. His father had crossed into AJK in 1989 during the violence, taking one wife and several children with him. Liaquat stayed behind with his mother. Since then, the family had lived in fragments, scattered by a confict they never chose. Years passed children grew old without meeting their uncles. Mothers died without embracing their sons again. Yet the family never stopped hoping that one day the crossings would reopen.

When his body was brought to the riverbank for the funeral, hundreds gathered on both sides of the Kishanganga. The mourners in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir
carried the coffin slowly along the edge of the water. On the opposite bank, his brothers stood helplessly, watching every step. Their cries echoed through the valley. Some called out his name. Others simply wept in silence.
Then came the moment that shattered everyone present. The cloth covering Liaquat’s face was gently lifted so his family across the river could see him for one final time. His brothers raised trembling hands toward the coffin, as if love alone could cross the border. But no embrace came. No final kiss touched his forehead. No brother could place a shoulder beneath his coffin. They could only stand there, broken by helplessness, watching their loved one disappear forever on the other side of the river.

The river flowed quietly between them cold. Indifferent. It had witnessed years of separation before this day. But even the mountains seemed heavy with sorrow as the funeral prayers began near the riverbank.
Liaquat’s funeral became more than the burial of one man. It became the burial of countless reunions that never happened. It became the story of divided Kashmiri families who have spent decades waving across rivers instead of embracing each other. Families who watch weddings from afar. Families who mourn through binoculars. Families who have learned that even grief can be imprisoned.

That day, the funeral of Raja Liaquat Khan became more than  the burial of one man. It became the funeral of reunions that never happened. A funeral of divided families. A funeral of unfnished goodbyes.

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