It was time to say goodbye. Standing under the searing sun, Saira, wearing a black net burqa, tightly held her husband Farhan’s hand, trying to stay together for a few more moments at the main border checkpoint between India and Pakistan.

Named after Attari village on the Indian side and Wagah across the border, this crossing has for years served as one of the few gateways for people to travel between the neighbours. But the Attari-Wagah border is now the latest place where India and Pakistan divide their citizens, including thousands of families with some members who are Indian, and others Pakistani.

Saira and Farhan had travelled overnight from New Delhi, with their nine-month-old boy Azlan tucked in his mother’s lap after India ordered almost all Pakistani citizens to leave the country by Tuesday, following a deadly attack in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has blamed on Pakistan. Islamabad has denied the allegation.

Like thousands of other couples, Saira, from Karachi, fell in love with New Delhi’s Farhan on Facebook three years ago. They were married, and Saira moved to New Delhi.

But as Saira and Farhan looked at each other on Tuesday, their eyes moist, a border guard rushed them to get on with it. At the checkpoint guarded by barbed wire and barricades, their only identity is the one defined by the colours of their passports: Saira’s green and Farhan’s blue.

“We shall meet soon,” Farhan told Saira, as he kissed his infant son’s cheeks, preparing for Saira and Azlan to step across the border. “Insha Allah, very soon. I will pray for you both.”