Pahalgam: As the poignant call for afternoon prayers rang out from a mosque, Owais Rashid and Sartaj Ashraf, friends and students of class 11, hurried towards their home on a deserted footpath along the banks of the Lidder River in this south Kashmir health resort town.

“Like Pulwama, the attack has changed Pahalgam forever,” a visibly upset Ashraf told The Wire, referring to the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing in which at least four dozen paramilitary troopers were killed. “Like them [the people of Pulwama], we will carry this stain for the rest of our lives”.

“It will take a long time to recover,” Rashid chipped in. “Pulwama also took time. But the wound it suffered could not heal. The image of Pahalgam has been blotted similarly. We used to say with pride that tourists have never been harmed here. That has changed forever.”

The main market of Pahalgam wore a deserted look on Thursday, two days after the attack in Baisaran left at least 26 civilians dead.

The two teenagers, who study at a government-run school in Pahalgam town, echoed the wider anxieties and fears of the residents of Kashmir, who are struggling to come to terms with the tragedy that struck on the afternoon of April 22 when a group of gunmen carried out the broad-daylight massacre of 26 civilians in the Baisaran meadow.

The Wire spoke on Thursday (April 24) with more than a dozen men and women, some of whom are directly connected to the tourism industry in Pahalgam, to understand the mood on the ground in the aftermath of the deadliest attack on tourists in Kashmir’s history.

Mohammad Abbas, 28, vividly recalled the looks of confusion on the faces of a group of tourists from Kolkata when they returned to the Sun Top Guest House, a budget lodge in Pahalgam, after a day of sightseeing, on the day of the attack.

Outside the guest house, which is located on the busy Pahalgam-Chandanwari road, one of the two routes used to ferry Hindu pilgrims to the high-altitude Amarnath cave, the buzz of tourists was replaced by a haunting silence when the tourists returned on Tuesday afternoon as the entire market had shut down.

Abbas poses for the camera outside a hotel in Pahalgam which, like many others, was abandoned by guests following the attack.

“They asked why the shops were closed as some of them had to buy shawls,” Abbas, an assistant manager at the guest house, said.

“Some minutes later, a few of them came out of their rooms with mobile phones in their hands. We lied to them that we had no idea what was going on. We couldn’t muster the courage to break the news to them,” he continued.

Within minutes, the terrorising sirens of ambulances filled the silence on the road outside the guest house, with some all-terrain vehicles and tractors also heading towards Baisaran to assist in evacuating the victims.

Abbas said that the tourists from Kolkata packed their bags and left for Srinagar at the crack of dawn on the next day.

As news of the attack spread across the country, most tourists holidaying in Pahalgam drove back to Srinagar in panic. Some tourists are believed to have ended their Kashmir trips midway and fled for their home states, leaving the tourism industry in a state of gloom.

At least seven hotels and lodges in Pahalgam visited by The Wire on Thursday, which were sold out for the month of April, were deserted and their owners were worried that the stains of innocent blood spilled in Baisaran would not fade away easily.

A group of journalists report live from Pahalgam’s main market. Across the road, a reporter can be seen doing a piece to camera.

Fayaz Ahmad, manager of the Jammu Kashmir Tourism Development Corporation in Pahalgam, said that 40 huts and a hotel operated by the government-run corporation were sold out for the month of April.

“All the guests who were staying in our properties fled after the attack and nearly all the bookings in April have been cancelled,” he said.

Even high-end properties in Pahalgam have recorded cancellations of bookings since the attack in Baisaran.

“Two days ago we were brimming with visitors and there was a waiting time of two or more hours. Now there’s no one here,” said a waiter at Cafe Wilo, an upscale coffee bar abutting Hotel Heevan, a four-star waterfront property on the banks of the Lidder River.

On Thursday afternoon, an eerie silence prevailed in Pahalgam’s once-bustling main market, which was punctuated by the occasional empty tourist taxi zipping past the road that divides the market into two, the lazy mooing and neighing of stray cows and horses, and the screams of nearly half a dozen reporters agitatedly doing pieces to camera.

A buffalo grazes lazily in the lawn of a temple in Pahalgam.

Two days after the carnage took place, all shops and restaurants, which used to be brimming with tourists, remained closed.

Some owners of hotels and lodges said they downgraded their staff in anticipation of a long dry spell.

A few kirana stores in Pahalgam had opened their shutters partially, but there were few customers around.

For the poor daily wage earners who eked out a living by giving horse rides or selling Kashmiri handicrafts and shawls to tourists, the tragedy has cast clouds of uncertainty over their livelihood.

On the roadside, local residents, small-time traders and some employees of hotels huddled in groups, angry over the senseless loss of lives and worried about the future of Kashmir’s top tourism destination at a time when the tourist season had started to gain momentum.

A popular cafe on the banks of the Lidder River in Pahalgam appears deserted on Thursday.

“My father quit his job in the police and opened a hotel. Even though I am still in school, I don’t see any future in this. Since the attack took place, I have had a severe headache and my heart is restless. Pahalgam was known as the safest place in Kashmir, but the attack has changed our identity,” Rashid, the class 11 student quoted above, said.

For a majority of people, the human cost of the tragedy outweighed the temporary pain caused by the loss of business.

A family from a south Indian state checked into a hotel on Thursday, unfazed by the terror spawned by the carnage in Baisaran.

“Tourists will return to Kashmir and Pahalgam, but how can we bring back those innocent people who were killed in Baisaran?” Mohammad Yusuf Lone, an adventure tour operator based in Pahalgam, said.

All photos by Jehangir Ali.

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