Rahat Kurd and Sumayya Syed’s five-year exchange in The City That Is Leaving Forever: Kashmiri Letters is a poetic, sometimes-hilarious, and heartfelt book written through personal and political loss and upheaval. The exchange began in late 2014 and concluded in 2020, and is presented in the forms in which it took place: through emails and WhatsApp messages. The exchange itself is constantly affected by settler-colonial regimes, as curfews in Kashmir make it difficult and sometimes impossible for Syed to receive messages. Resistance courses through every letter, every photograph, and every poem.

The correspondence between Kurd and Syed through WhatsApp itself is incredibly poetic. Early in the book, as the two women talk about the impacts of the curfew in Kashmir in 2016, Syed writes: “Unfortunately I haven’t been able to compose poems, I am too overwhelmed. From the ground, resistance seems very tiresome and it is easiest to give in. But this is a long, long curfew, and people are in no mood to give in.” (10)

The book captures the real-time impact of major political events, including curfews in Kashmir, the scrapping of Article 370 by the Indian government in 2019, and lockdowns in Kashmir and Canada, through the perspective of two Kashmiri women. For most of this exchange, Kurd is in Vancouver, and Syed is in Srinagar, though the two women travel and meet in Kashmir over the course of the exchange after years of uncertainty on Kurd’s part of being able to travel back to Srinagar due to the curfew. Kurd and Syed are generous enough to give an insight into the love and care they share as friends and poetic colleagues.

Kurd and Syed often share poems of influence, with the most notable being the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali, and his collection The Country Without A Post Office. As Kurd attempts to send Syed a copy of her previous poetry collection Cosmophilia amidst the Indian government’s restrictions on sending mail, Syed echoes Shahid’s title of Kashmir being a “country without a post office.” Kurd and Syed’s title, The City That Is Leaving Forever, comes from a line from Shahid’s work in reference to Kashmir, which speaks to the depth of influence of Shahid on their work. In late 2019, as the curfew moves into its fifth month, Kurd writes journal entries addressed to Shahid: “Forget fate: only the lines of your poems hold any prescience.” (198) Seeing Kurd and Syed continuously return to Shahid’s work emphasizes the incredible impact his writing has on Kashmiri writers.

In addition to the turmoil and uncertainty of political happenings, there are many hilarious and heartwarming moments in the letters. A notable and relatable reoccurrence is that of forwarded WhatsApp images around Eid. Every Eid-ul-Azha, Kurd laughs at the cartoon sheep that circulates through family groups. In 2018, Kurd is finally able to travel to Kashmir (after a cancelled trip in 2016), and she and Syed meet in person. There is a beauty in the way the letters include messages like Syed asking Kurd if she would “fancy that kulfi right now.” (101) The messages leave off with Syed and Kurd’s meeting in person, and pick up again with love and connection once they part.

In The City That Is Leaving Forever, it is the digital realm that makes the exchange in real-time possible for Kurd and Syed. Their correspondence reveals the poetry constantly embedded in shared WhatsApp messages, photographs, emojis, and everyday anecdotes. This is a book that echoes and resonates with every page.

Manahil Bandukwala is a visual artist and writer. Her most recent forthcoming work is a collaborative piece with Liam Burke titled "Orbital Cultivation,” and is out with Collusion Books in 2021. She is Coordinating Editor for Arc Poetry, and Digital Content Editor for Canthius. She is a member of VII, an Ottawa-based creative writing collective. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.