Kashmir, Where The Divine Welcomes Poem by Mystic Qalandar

If hospitality had a home,
it would be in Kashmir—
not as a custom,
but as a remembrance
of how the Divine receives every soul.

In that valley,
no one arrives by chance.
Each guest is sent—
a quiet sign of the Beloved,
received not as other,
but as one already known.

Mehmaan-nawazi is not practiced here;
it is remembered—
as though every heart carries
a trace of a forgotten noor.

A cup of kahwa is offered
not merely to warm the body,
but to dissolve the distance between souls.
And in the sharing of wazwan,
one truth is silently spoken:
nothing we hold was ever ours alone.

Here, hospitality is not an act—
it is a state of being:
a heart that sees itself
in every face it welcomes.

This is the secret the rivers whisper
as they pass through the valley—
not only across the land,
but through the soul:
To welcome another
is to remember
that you have always been welcomed.

— MyKoul