Ather Zia

Ather Zia

Ather Zia, Ph.D., is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and a columnist. She is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. Ather is the author of "Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir" (University of Washington Press 2019) and co-editor of "Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak" (Women Unlimited 2020), "Resisting Occupation in Kashmir" (Upenn 2018) and "A Desolation called Peace" (Harper Collins, May 2019). She has published a poetry collection "The Frame" (1999) and another collection is forthcoming in 2021. Ather's ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region.
Two Kashmiri Ghazals by Ather Zia

Two Kashmiri Ghazals by Ather Zia

June 26, 2021

Ather Zia recites two of her ghazals in Kashmiri for a people and their land, where the idea of a “prolonged longing” has emerged, such that time is always out of joint because space has been bent and constricted. It is in such spaces and under such circumstances where the poetic verse resists despair and gives form to grief, while sustaining hope. English transliteration courtesy of the poet, with photography by Masrat Zahra.

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“Remember, remember
13th of July,
Martyrs of Kashmir
and their sacrifice
who bore witness
with the crimson skies
Heroes of Kashmir
who paid the price.
Remember, remember
13th of July
Remember, remember
13th of July.”

—from: 13th of July, MC Kash

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