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In old pictures, Srinagar is elegant; latticed houses, mosques, and temples admiring each other from the banks of theriver Jhelum; people strolling on the seven wooden bridges spanning it, wandering into old bazaars selling spices, lovingly embroidered shawls and carpets, and samovars with intricate engravings, or stepping with a prayer and an expectation into
a medieval shrine flaunting verses from the Quran and poems of mystics on windows and facades, and the gende greens and blues of papier mache interiors. But elegance is granted little space in an age of wars. Those wooden bridges have either collapsed or were murdered. Their skeletons remain, in the shadow of new arcs of concrete.
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