Fourteen people. Fourteen lives are built in cities across the world, far from the country they carry inside them. They have arrived in Pahalgam in February — in the cold and the snow and the particular hush of the Himalayas — for reasons they would each describe differently if asked. But underneath every different answer is the same one: they are here because they are looking for someone. Because the life they have built is extraordinary in almost every way, and is missing one thing. Because the people who love them refused, in the end, to let them keep pretending that this was fine.

This is who they are.