Two hundred years ago, my ancestors came to Kabul from Kashmir. The Kashmir of that era was no foreign territory; it was an organic part of a single, shared cultural sphere that united Kabul, Peshawar, and Kashmir under the legacy of the ancient Kabul Shahs. In that era, no line named Durand severed this land, and no artificial state named “Afghanistan” had yet been branded upon its forehead.
My ancestors, Persian-speaking Muslim princes from Kashmir, entered a world that still breathed as an indivisible whole. They arrived in a land where Persian was the absolute language of the court, administration, and intellectual thought, long before the sharp blade of colonial treaties and forced migrations tore this geography to pieces.
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