Srinagar, Aug. 29 -- By Zobiya Bhat

The first news of a killing has a way of changing the air in a room.

Someone reads the headline aloud, a name becomes a face, and questions follow about the life that has ended and the circumstances that brought it there.

When such news returns often enough, the mind begins to place it somewhere else, perhaps at the edge of consciousness, where it can be seen without being fully felt.

This is one of the strange accommodations of living with violence. The heart does not necessarily become harder. It may simply learn to close a door that once stood open.

Kashmir has lived for decades with this difficult architecture of memory.

Violence has entered homes through photographs, names, absences and stori...