Ghulam Mohammad Khan
Arifa’s fingers trembled as she tucked a loose strand of hair beneath her scarf, the motion sharp with a quiet desperation. The kitchen floor gleamed under her furious scrubbing, the water swirling in murky spirals—dirt, fear, something unspeakable dissolving into the grout. This house no longer feels like mine, she thought, the rhythm of the brush against tile echoing the uneasy pulse in her veins. Outside, the wind carried whispers of masked figures holding glinting scissors and phantom sprays.
The braid-chopping had slithered into their lives like a venomous folktale turned real. It began that autumn, when the air itself seemed heavy with unrest, political slogans rotting into silence, markets shrinking like withered fruit, and now this: a new terror, stalking only the women. The first victim had been a girl from beyond the marshes, a place Arifa had never seen but could picture in vivid, shuddering detail—thickets of wild cannabis swaying drowsily, the acrid scent of burning trash rising from the pits. They said the men came masked, not with guns but with something worse: a hiss of spray, then nothingness. When the girl awoke, her braid lay coiled beside her like a severed limb. A message. A mockery. Look what we can take.
Now the dread had roots. It crept into morning chai gossip, into the way mothers clutched their daughters’ wrists too tightly at twilight. Arifa scrubbed harder, as if she could scour away the image burned behind her eyelids—her own hair, shorn and discarded, a trophy for shadows. Somewhere, beyond the cracked kitchen window, a crow cawed. Laughter or a warning? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
The count had crossed two hundred now—two hundred braids strewn like gutted snakes across pillows, market alleys, riverbanks. No fingerprints, no footprints, just the lingering stench of chemicals and the echo of scissors snick-snicking in the dark. The town’s fear had a pulse now, throbbing in sync with the frantic thud-thud of Arifa’s heart each time she touched her hair.
Politicians plastered reward posters over bullet-riddled walls, their promises bloated and useless as rotten fruit. Forgotten were the murdered boys—their mothers’ wails drowned out by the more gossip-worthy horror.
Her wedding loomed like a spectre in the next autumn’s haze. She should’ve been dreaming of embroidered shawls, of henna blooming on her palms—but all she saw was her hair, her glorious, waist-length hair, hacked off and left to wither in the dirt. It wasn’t vanity. It was the violation of it. The spray that stole consciousness, the hands (cold? calloused?) that would grip her scalp, the society that would whisper, “What was she doing out there?” as if shame clung to severed strands like pollen.
That autumn, the rituals unravelled. No more balancing the samovar of noon-chai on her head, the copper kettle’s heat seeping into her scalp as she would carry it to the harvest fields. The men’s laughter rang hollow across the gold-stubbled land— “Why so frightened, Arifa? The choppers only want pretty girls!”—their jokes laced with something darker. Even the Jhelum now hissed treachery. She scrubbed clothes at home, her knuckles raw, the river’s song beyond the backyard warping into a taunt: Come, Arifa. Dip your braid in my current. Let’s see how long you keep it.
It happened three lanes away—three lanes—a distance Arifa could measure in footsteps, in the scent of Zareen’s mother’s turmeric stew wafting through the alleyways. The rooftop of the firewood hut, where Zareen had knelt, slicing tomatoes, their crimson flesh splayed on sun-blistered tin, became another altar of violation. They came from behind—shadows congealing into shape, the hiss of spray, then nothing. When Zareen awoke, her braid lay curled beside the drying tomatoes, a grotesque parody of harvest.
Six months. Hundreds of women. Zero arrests. The government’s promises curdled in the air, thick as the smoke from burning chinar leaves. Yet the town had its own forensic experts now: clusters of men and women thronging Zareen’s courtyard, dissecting the crime with the fervour of detectives. “They must’ve climbed the wall using the apricot tree,” a neighbour declared, as if tracing the path of ghosts. Women huddled closer, their whispers laced with myth and steel. “My cousin in Anantnag says they tuck knives under their pherans,” one muttered. Another unravelled her hair, revealing a pair of iron pincers glinting like a scorpion’s tail. “Let them try me,” she hissed, but her fingers trembled as she tucked the weapon back into her bun.
Arifa watched; her own braid heavy as a noose. The braid-choppers weren’t just thieves of hair; they were surgeons of fear, slicing deeper than flesh. Each attack was a lesson: You are never safe. Not in your home, not on your roof, not in your backyard. Anywhere. Everywhere. That night, she dreamed of Zareen’s locks twisting into vines, strangling the throat of the town.
The dread had settled into Arifa’s bones now, a low hum of unease that never quite left. Every shadow stretched too long, every rustle in the wind carried the phantom snip of scissors. The town had become a fever dream—whispers of witches lurking in abandoned orchards, spirits slipping through the cracks of locked doors. And then there was the neighbour who vanished for a week, only to return bloodied and bruised, accused of being the braid-chopper. “It wasn’t me!” he had pleaded, but the mob had already decided. Truth didn’t matter—only the hunger for a culprit did. Now, back in his village, they called him “Braid-Chopper” in jest, but the laughter was edged with something darker.
Winter loomed, and with it, the clang of hammers as carpenters worked on the new tin roof of Arifa’s two-story home. Strangers—men from distant villages, their dialects rough and unfamiliar—moved through the house like shadows. One of them, a broad-shouldered man with sun-leathered skin, couldn’t take his eyes off her. His gaze clung like sap, sticky and inescapable. She felt it as she served tea, the way his eyes traced the curve of her neck, the fall of her braid over her shoulder. He thinks I don’t notice. But she did.
She was engaged. She should have been safe, wrapped in the armour of a promised marriage. Yet here she was, hyperaware of every glance, every unnecessary complaint he made just to keep her lingering near the worksite. “The nails are too short,” he’d grumble. “The wood is warped.” Excuses. She played along, cool as the lotus leaf that sheds rain, never letting his words soak in. But beneath the indifference, something prickled—was it fear? Or something worse, the uneasy thrill of being seen, even when the seeing felt dangerous?
The town had turned every stranger into a suspect. Women clutched their braids like amulets, eyeing unknown men with a mix of terror and accusation. The carpenter didn’t understand that. Or maybe he did, and didn’t care.
The midday sun glinted off the river’s skin, fracturing the light into jagged shards. Arifa’s fingers worked furiously over the copper tash-tari, scrubbing until her knuckles burned. A loose lock of hair slithered free, brushing her cheek like a spider’s leg. She flinched. Zareen’s braid, left among the tomatoes. The neighbour’s bloodied face. Two hundred women—two hundred strands of fear. Her breath hitched. The soapy plate slipped from her grip, swallowed by the Jhelum with a mocking plink.
“Dafa!” The curse tore from her throat.
Then—footsteps. The carpenter appeared at the riverbank, a toothpick between his lips, his shadow stretching toward her like an accusation. He perched on the top step, grinning down at her with the ease of a man who’d never known fear.
“You cook well,” he said.
The lie was automatic. “I only serve. It’s my mother.” Her voice was brittle, but her hands kept moving—scrub, rinse, stack. Don’t look up. Don’t give him an opening.
His next words slithered through the air. “I may not come back after the work is done. Thought I should tell you—you’re pretty. Can we talk over the phone when I’m gone?”
Her spine straightened. “Behave, or I’ll tell my mother and have you thrown out. I’m engaged. You’ve no manners.”
A chuckle. Then, so casual it froze her blood: “I’m a braid-chopper, you know. Don’t tell anyone.”
The world narrowed to a pinprick.
“BRAID CHOPPER! BRAID CHOPPER!”
Her scream ripped through the valley, bouncing off the water, the trees, the tin roofs. Somewhere, a crow took flight.
The air erupted in chaos.
The carpenter’s grin vanished the moment the first shout echoed off the riverbank. His eyes darted left, right—but the crowd was already surging toward him, a wave of fury and sticks and batons. He bolted, but the Jhelum’s banks offered no escape. Feet pounded behind him. Voices rose in a fevered chorus:
“BRAID CHOPPER! BRAID CHOPPER!”
Arifa stumbled back, her breath ragged. She wanted to scream, “No, wait—!” But the mob had taken the story from her. It wasn’t hers anymore. She melted into the shadows, her heart hammering, as the carpenter was swallowed by the frenzy.
A stick cracked against his ribs. A baton grazed his temple. Blood streaked his face, mixing with sweat and dirt. He gasped, trying to speak, but the crowd’s roar drowned him out. “I’m just—”A kick to the gut. “A carpenter—” A slap across the mouth. His fellow workers watched from the edges, their faces pale, but none dared step forward. Fear had made them cowards.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Police jeeps skidded to a halt, officers wading into the fray with curses and lathis. The town elders, sensing the tide turning, intervened—not out of mercy, but strategy. One climbed onto a truck bed, microphone in hand, his voice booming over the madness:
“CALM DOWN! WE CANNOT TAKE THE LAW INTO OUR OWN HANDS!”
The crowd hissed, but the elder pressed on, chest puffed with performative authority. “We will hand him over to the police. Every detail will be shared. Justice will prevail. Inshallah, this terror ends today!”
A ragged cheer went up. The carpenter, barely conscious, was dragged toward a police van, his blood smearing the dirt. The crowd parted like a satisfied beast, already weaving new myths: He had scissors in his pocket. He was seen near Zareen’s house. He smiled too much.
Arifa watched from the alley, her hands trembling.
She had started this.
And now she wondered—what had she unleashed?
The police took him away—broken, bleeding, barely recognisable. The crowd dispersed, their fury spent, their hunger for justice momentarily sated. But justice had not been served. The next morning, the state’s leading English daily ran the headline:
“A Carpenter Mistaken for Braid Chopper Beaten by Mob, Hospitalised in Critical Condition.”
The truth was printed in black and white, but who cared for the truth now? The braid-chopping did not stop. If anything, they grew bolder. North, then South. Town, then city. A far-flung hamlet where no one expected it. The attacks were no longer just crimes—they were a plague, spreading with no pattern, no cure.
The government’s promises grew louder, emptier. The lady minister held press conferences, her voice firm, her words rehearsed: “We are tightening security. We are forming special teams. This will end soon.” But it didn’t end. It never did.
Arifa suffered.
The fear had burrowed deep into her, a parasite she could not shake. Every time a strand of hair loosened from her scarf, her breath hitched. Every unfamiliar footstep outside her home made her fingers curl into fists. She did not understand why this was happening. She did not know who was behind it. Like all common people, she was never meant to know the cause—only to endure its effects.
Years passed. The terror outlived its own legend. It persisted like a pestilence, like the slow creep of winter frost. And then, one morning, as Arifa combed her hair before the mirror, she saw it—a streak of silver threading through her dark locks.
Grey hair.
She almost laughed. The braid-choppers had never taken her hair.
But time had.
Author Ghulam Mohammad Khan was born and raised in Sonawari town in Bandipora located alongside Wullar Lake. Ghulam Mohammad believes that literature is the most original and enduring repository of human memory. He loves the inherent intricacies of language and the endless possibilities of meaning. In his writing, he mainly focuses on mini-narratives, local practices and small-scale events that could otherwise be lost forever to the oblivion of untold histories. Ghulam Mohammad considers his hometown, faith, and family to be the most important things to him. His short stories have appeared in national and international magazines like Out of Print, Kitaab, Indian Literature, Muse India, Indian Review, Inverse Journal, Mountain Ink and more. His short story collection The Cankered Rose is his forthcoming work. Presently, he teaches as an Assistant Professor at HKM Degree College Bandipora, Kashmir.