Letters Beyond Borders
Writer: Masum
Blog: EditorPost
The first letter arrived on a winter morning.
No fancy envelope, no sender's name — just a crisp paper that read:
"They drew lines on maps, not on hearts. I never hated your country… because I loved you first."
The letter was from Arshad, a young man from Lahore.
The recipient? Meher, a woman from Amritsar.
They never met on Instagram.
They never FaceTimed.
Their relationship bloomed the old-fashioned way — through handwritten letters that crossed barbed wires and broken histories.
Chapter 2: A Love Not Found in GPS
Meher's grandfather was a survivor of the Partition — he fled Lahore during the riots.
Arshad's grandmother left India the same year, during the chaos of independence.
They were raised on stories of pain, blood, betrayal.
But Arshad and Meher met at a global youth seminar in Istanbul.
Strangers first. Then collaborators. Then, something deeper.
A shared poem.
A midnight tea break.
A casual, “You remind me of someone I’ve never met.”
That’s how it began.
Chapter 3: Words Carried by Wind
Back home, phone calls were risky.
Social media connections? Monitored.
So they wrote letters.
Arshad wrote with deep metaphors:
“Every time I dip my pen in ink, I feel like I’m touching your soul.”
Meher responded with warm sarcasm:
“Don’t romanticize your handwriting, it’s barely readable. But your heart? Clear.”
Their letters weren’t political — but personal.
They didn’t talk about Kashmir, or governments —
They talked about poetry, their mothers’ cooking, the shared scent of mustard fields in spring.
Chapter 4: Silence from the Other Side
In April 2025, a terrorist attack shook Kashmir.
The Indian government blamed Pakistan. Tensions rose. Borders sealed tighter than before.
And suddenly… Arshad’s letters stopped coming.
No texts. No explanation.
Only silence.
Meher waited.
She asked old contacts. She visited the post office daily.
But nothing.
"Maybe they jailed him," she thought.
"Maybe he’s scared. Or maybe… he’s gone."
But something inside her refused to forget.
Chapter 5: When Peace Found a Microphone
Months passed.
One day, during a televised peace summit in Geneva, a young Pakistani speaker stood up.
He said:
“I had a friend in India.
I wrote her letters when the world didn't allow us to speak.
She was never the enemy.
She was my only silence in this noisy war.”
Meher froze.
It was Arshad.
Older. Tired. But his voice still carried the same calm she fell in love with.
She didn’t cry. She smiled.
Some silences are answers too.
Epilogue: Love Without Borders
They never married.
Never lived together.
But they kept writing.
A letter a month.
A life in paragraphs.
Governments changed. Borders fluctuated.
But in two homes — one in Lahore, one in Amritsar — a wooden box of letters kept growing.
Because sometimes, the greatest rebellions are not protests…
But two people loving across barbed wire, inked in patience.
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