Srinagar, July 22 -- The story begins with an absence.

Kashmir remembers its movers and shakers, but it has almost forgotten the man who stopped traffic in London, baffled scientists at the University of London, walked barefoot across burning coals before physicians, inspired Roald Dahl and rose to become one of Europe's most celebrated illusionists.

His name was Kuda Bux.

He was born Khudah Bukhsh in 1905 in Akhnoor, then part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, into what he later described as a prosperous Kashmiri family, rooted in Pampore, whose livelihood came from saffron cultivation.

That single biographical detail appears repeatedly in books, newspapers and archival records. But the valley that celebrates its poets, sai...