Srinagar, Aug. 15 -- By Syed Majid Gilani

I grew up watching soldiers empty a street within minutes, shopkeepers pull down shutters overnight, and a single hartal call silence a whole town by noon.

Closure was known to me way before 2020. A city standing still was something I had witnessed since my teenage years, so when the lockdown came, part of me recognized the outline before I understood what filled it.

Srinagar's roads went bare, its markets went dark, and its masjids stood without the crowds that had filled them my whole life.

On the surface, it looked like the shutdowns I already knew.

But the surface misled me, and working out why took the length of the pandemic. All the previous closures I had lived through had a source you...