Srinagar, Aug. 1 -- By Aabroo Hussain

On a narrow lane in Peer Mitha, drums beat softly as mourners gather outside a heritage house older than the country surrounding it.

Ashiq Hussain stands in the doorway, watching men bear black banners toward the Karbala Complex, where the neighbourhood's Imambaras hold decades of grief and devotion inside walls worn smooth by generations of hands.

Hussain has lived here his whole life. His father did too, and his grandfather before him. "We have spent generations here in Peer Mitha," he says. "We would not live anywhere else. The comfort here is belonging."

That sentence captures something larger than one family's attachment to one street. It describes how a small, often overlooked community has ...