By Gowher Bhat
By the time Zara Khan returned to her parents’ home in Rajpora, South Kashmir, she had become tired of answering the simplest question: “How are you?” She never knew what to say. If she said she was fine, it felt like a lie, and if she admitted that she was not, she would have to explain years of pain that she no longer had the strength to put into words. For five years, she had tried to make her marriage work, hoping that patience, love and time would eventually bring her the life she had imagined. She had waited for a child, visited doctors, undergone tests and listened to countless suggestions from relatives. Somewhere along the way, however, the absence of a child had stopped being treated as a difficulty and had become a judgment on her worth.
Zara had married at thirty-two. In the beginning, she believed that marriage would give her a home where she could feel safe and understood. The first year passed quietly, and whenever someone asked about children, she was told not to worry. “You have just started your life together,” people would say. “There is plenty of time.” But as the months turned into years, the tone changed. Questions became more frequent, advice became sharper, and sympathy slowly disappeared. By the third year, people no longer asked gently. They asked as though Zara owed them an explanation.
She and her husband visited hospitals and met doctors. There were blood tests, scans and consultations, and she heard explanations about how difficulties in conceiving could have different causes and could involve either partner. Yet whatever the doctors said seemed to disappear once she returned home. In that house, the responsibility quietly returned to her.
“In that house, I was the problem,” she later said.
The words became harder to bear with each passing year. Some relatives called her useless. Others referred to her as fruitless, a word that stayed with her long after the people who said it had forgotten the conversation. At family gatherings, she learned to sit quietly because someone would eventually ask, “Five years and still nothing?” She would lower her eyes and pretend not to hear.
Her husband rarely defended her. When she complained, he would tell her to be patient, but patience slowly became another name for suffering.
At home, Zara worked constantly. She cooked, cleaned, washed clothes, looked after her husband and helped her parents-in-law whenever they needed her. She tried to make herself useful in every possible way, as if hard work could compensate for the one thing she could not control.
“Since I could not give them a child, I felt I had to make up for it with work,” she said. “Rest was not allowed.”
Even when she was exhausted, she continued. There was always something to do, and stopping often meant hearing another comment about what she had or had not contributed to the family.
Gradually, something inside her began to change. She stopped sleeping properly and often had little appetite. She spoke less, avoided conversations and spent long periods alone. At night, she wondered why she was the only one being questioned, why nobody asked whether her husband had been examined, and why a marriage seemed to have been reduced to the question of whether she could become a mother.
She remembered the times she had cared for her husband when he was unwell, looked after her parents-in-law and continued working even when she herself was struggling.
“When I needed understanding,” she said, “no one stood by me.”
One day, after another period of humiliation and emotional exhaustion, Zara harmed herself in a moment when the pain became too much to carry. She was rushed to medical emergency after losing consciousness.
“I was not trying to die,” she later said. “I just wanted the pain to stop.”
Her husband apologised, and for a brief period she allowed herself to believe that perhaps something might change. Perhaps he had finally understood what she had been going through. Perhaps the house would become kinder. But the old words and the old treatment eventually returned, and with them came the realisation that an apology could not repair a life that remained unchanged.
The final moment came during a family gathering. A relative, speaking openly in front of others, asked what the use was of keeping Zara in the house when she could not have children. She waited for someone to object, for her husband to say something, for even one person to tell the speaker that she had gone too far. Nobody did.
That silence hurt more than the words themselves.
That night, Zara packed a small bag. Before leaving, she looked around the room where she had spent five years trying to prove that she deserved to belong there.
“I am not a machine made to produce children,” she said quietly. “I am a human being.”
She left and returned to her parents.
Coming home gave her safety, but it did not immediately give her peace. She carried shame with her, even though she had done nothing wrong. Some people were kind, while others spoke to her as if her life had already come to an end. She spent many days indoors and avoided visitors. There were mornings when she did not want to get out of bed, and evenings when the house seemed too quiet.
Her parents tried not to put pressure on her, but they could see that simply bringing her home had not been enough. She needed something that could slowly bring her back into the world.
Her father eventually asked her to help him at the small cattle farm beside their house. It was not a large place, only a few animals and a simple shed that required regular care.
One morning, he came to her room.
“Come with me,” he said. “There is some work to do.”
Zara did not feel like going anywhere, but she followed him. Her father showed her where the fodder was kept and asked her to help carry it to the cattle. She began with small tasks. She carried grass, filled the feeding troughs, brought water and helped clean the shed.
The work was tiring, but there was something different about it. Nobody asked her when she would have a child. Nobody looked at her with pity. The animals knew nothing about her marriage, the hospital visits or the words that had followed her for years. They simply waited for food, water and care.
Slowly, the cattle farm became part of her daily routine. She began waking earlier, helping her father and spending more time outside the house. The work gave her something simple to concentrate on. Each morning brought the same quiet responsibilities. The cattle had to be fed, the shed had to be cleaned, grass had to be cut and water had to be carried. There was comfort in that ordinary rhythm. For once, her usefulness was not being measured by motherhood.
“When you care for something and see it depend on you,” Zara said, “you begin to remember that you also have value.”
Her recovery did not happen suddenly. There was no single morning when she woke up and felt completely free of the past. Some memories remained painful, and certain questions could still bring tears to her eyes. But she began speaking more with her parents, spending time at the cattle farm and slowly rebuilding a life around things that gave her a sense of purpose. She also began stitching clothes at home and earned a little money from the work. When she could, she sought counselling and learned to speak about feelings she had spent years hiding.
Her father noticed the change before she did. One evening, after they had finished feeding the cattle, he looked at her.
“You are smiling again.”
Zara smiled but said nothing for a moment.
“I think I am learning how to live again,” she replied.
The words surprised even her.
For years, Zara had believed that becoming a mother was the one thing that would complete her life. Then she had believed that losing the possibility of motherhood had taken everything away from her. Slowly, she began to understand that neither belief had truly belonged to her. Both had been shaped by the expectations of people around her.
There were other parts of her life too, parts that had been pushed into the background while everyone waited for her to become a mother. She was a daughter, a worker, a woman who could earn, care, create and make choices. She was also someone who had survived years she once thought she could not survive.
Zara does not say that she has forgotten what happened. She has not. Some wounds remain, and there are days when the past returns without warning. But she no longer spends her days trying to prove herself to the people who once judged her. She has begun to build a quieter life around work, family and the small responsibilities that give her a reason to get up each morning.
The cattle farm beside her parents’ home remains an ordinary place. For Zara, however, it became the place where something slowly changed. There, among the animals, the fodder and the daily work, she began to discover that healing did not have to arrive all at once. Sometimes it could begin with getting out of bed, carrying grass to the shed, filling a trough and staying long enough to see another day through.
“I am not fully healed,” she says. “But I am no longer broken.”
For a long time, Zara had believed that her life was waiting for something to make it complete.
Now she no longer waits in quite the same way. Her life has begun to move again, quietly and on her own terms. Each morning, she walks towards the cattle shed, where the animals are already waiting for her. She carries the grass, fills their troughs and begins the work of the day. It is an ordinary routine, but to Zara, it is a reminder that life can begin again in the smallest of ways.
Gowher Bhat is a columnist, freelance journalist, beta reader, book reviewer, avid reader, and educator from Kashmir, and a published author of both fiction and nonfiction. He serves as a senior columnist for several local newspapers across the Kashmir Valley.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Click here to access Wild Winds: The Borderless Anthology of Poems
Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles