They were two strangers who met at a police camp. Then for months, their paths crossed again and again. They were searching for their disappeared sons, picked up by police and security forces in the same week in 2003. In the waiting rooms where they sat for hours, hoping to get some news on their sons, they became friends.

One evening as they left for home after another restless day in their desperate search, they decided to become relatives. Abdul Rehman Paul married his daughter to Noor Mohammad Bhat’s son.

Today, their 16-month-old granddaughter Tayyaba has become an essential distraction from the mutual pain but the painful search continues.

“She picks up the pictures of both her uncles and kisses them. Ask her where her mamu (maternal uncle) whom she has never seen is, she will point to her heart,” Bhat says . “We bonded in grief and our grief is making the bond stronger. The marriage happened for a simple reason, we didn’t want to let go of the support system each one had become for the other,” Paul recalls.

The incessant talker Paul and the reclusive Bhat do the talking for each other. In fact, it is no longer “his son” and “my son” but “our missing sons.”

Their common story began in June 2003.

On June 21, 2003 a police party, accompanied by a surrendered militant, came to Bhat’s residence in Pattan some 27 km from Srinagar. They asked for his son, Mohd Ashraf, a stringer with a local daily.

... contd.