As the night fell we could see it in the distance hills dotted with sparkling white spots. The house is hidden on the slopes on the Pakistani side of Kashmir. The town behind us on the Indian side also sparkled.
My friend had hope. “The lights are a good sign,” he said. “That means nothing goes well tonight.”
However, once we settled for dinner, the announcement was made by a nearby mosque. “We recommend that citizens, especially in border areas, stay indoors.”
It was like a concert, lights on either side of the border flickered, darkness engulfed the valley. The announcement sounded mundane, but Kasimiris knew what it meant.
The fire was about to begin.
I have spent much of my career covering the anxiety of all Kashmir. At the end of my reporting trip at the Control Line, I was looking forward to staying with my old friend Irshad Kwaja and his family in Galkot, a village on the managed side of India.
The day before, early on Wednesday, tensions between India and Pakistan flare up in military conflicts that unfold when two parallel conflicts took place.
With the launch of missiles and drones at the 2,000-mile border shared by India and Pakistan, what attracted more prominent global attention and surprising world leaders was advanced aviation engagement. The exchange of strikes between nuclear-armed neighbours caused panic, but relatively few casualties.
The other was focused on Kashmir, the more cruel. In villages and towns along the line, borders separating the political parts of India and Pakistan's territory have slammed ordinary people, whose old-fashioned artillery battles were caught up in the middle.
The battle was triggered last month by a terrorist attack on the Indian side of Kashmir. There, 26 civilians were killed. India accused Pakistan of being responsible for the attack, which it allegedly denied.
The massacre was one of the worst attacks on Indian civilians in decades, rekindling long-standing hostility. When Pakistan and India were formed in 1947 at the end of British colonial rule, the two countries fought several wars over Kashmir.
Cassimiris rarely made a statement about their own destiny.
My friends and his family knew what to do. They led me up the hill and arrived at a safe house where others had already gathered. We were barely arriving when the explosion began – sharp, rhythmic, intensifying. Each sound sent a trembling trembling towards the wall.
Our 14 men, mostly my friends' large family, were silent, leaning into the thin mattress in the first floor corner room, with the exception of occasional uneasy whispers. The women and children were evacuated to a concrete bunker behind the house.
At about 11:30pm, an elder with a thick white beard asked the young man to recite an Islamic call for prayer. It wasn't a normal time, but no one questioned the idea.
The young man's voice rose and trembles in the dark as the others silently repeated his words, waiting for the fire.
The young man stayed on his mobile phone and texted his friends and relatives in other villages. “Are you safe?” Almost an hour after the shelling began, their phones were lit up with reports that the woman had been killed not too far from where we were evacuated.
“It's quiet here,” I said. I pretended to be calm on the phone and talked to my wife. “I'm in a very safe place.”
We could hear a woman from a bunker nearby reciting Islamic Shahada. “There is no other god than God…” – every time the shell lands. Their voices were not cracked. Every time the explosion blew my own body.
The fire stopped at 6am.
It was raining all night. The ground was wet and the sky was clear. When we left, the first thing we saw was Haji Pilpas, part of the Pil Panjal Mountains. Some of the men with me guessed like military experts, pointing out the hills and estimation trajectories, and trying to understand how the shells fell.
Community leaders in India's neighboring Kashmir districts have counted 13 deaths through four days of artillery fire. Pakistani official Pil Mazar Shah said 11 people had died on Thursday night alone.
The battle should have ended for now. India and Pakistan said on Saturday that they agreed to a ceasefire, but there were reports that they continued fired along the border several hours later.
But my nights in a safe house don't leave me. Not because of fear, it has passed. It was my respect for the indomitable spirit of those along the lines of control that remained.
Alex Travelli and Zia Ur-Rehman contributed their report.
