Heading west outside of Lahore, gaps begin to show in the endless alleys of houses and the city gives way to green farmland. Small markets cling to the roadside. A few brick furnaces reach up from the flat ground. And without the razor wire cutting across the fields, it would be almost impossible to tell where one country becomes another. However, the lines drawn into the earth here tell a story of scars, of unity, pride and loss.

This is the Punjab border region, about 23 kilometers away from crowded streets of the city. Through the trading village of Wagah, the road wears its way through the evening sun to where it ends at checkpoints and iron doors. At the Wagah-Attari Border Crossing the story of two countries is played out every evening.

Mostly, when this story is told it is about empires and martyrs, about the forces of gods and governments. But as the grass on the plains that bends to only the will of the winds, it is a story that is told in millions of individual ways by the people and families forever tied to it. For my wife’s grandmother, it is a story that has constantly shaped the world around her; a story that it retold every day, until a new chapter is finished or renewed.

Zarina Anwar was born in the 1930’s, when India was still under the British Empire. She grew up in Lahore when Punjab was still undivided, hearing powerful men talk about “independence,” about creating a new “Muslim nation.” It wasn’t until 1947, when she was already a teenager, that this rift finally opened up. On Aug. 14, Pakistan became its own country, at the time including East and West Pakistan (now Pakistan and Bangladesh). India separated from the empire the next day. Overnight, she was a citizen of a country that had never existed; her city and state divided by religious and cultural violence, as well as a line drawn by men who had never set foot there. As the summer and following months dragged on, she was witness to one of the largest migrations in human history, (many passing through the gates at Wagah-Attari) as Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims fought over rights to land and narrative.

The land became Pakistan. The language became Urdu. The law and custom of the country - Islamic.

The wounds left by this time period never healed and reopened again in 1965, when fighting between India and Pakistan broke out over an argument on control of the land. While most of the fighting and bloodshed was contained to the Northern part of the country known as Kashmir, skirmishes erupted occasionally along large stretches of the relatively fresh border. War had embedded itself as a defining element of life - echos of it coming back again in 1971, when East Pakistan fought to become Bangladesh. Fallout from this time would puncture through later years, as sporadic conflict would break out between rival countries and religious ideologies.

This is the history written between the line that separates Pakistani and Indian Punjab at the Wagah-Attari Border Crossing, where special forces of the two countries play-act the conflict in a theater of the absurd for tourists, children and patriots of either side.

Being tourist - including the our family which had never left the streets of their own city - we had to go. We met up with another relative, a retired high-ranking member of the Pakistani Military, without whom getting to the flag lowering ceremony at the border would have been nearly impossible. Besides his strict sense of military time being able to keep in check the Desi predisposition to a loose interpretation of timeframes and deadlines, his ranking allowed us to pass through security checkpoints clogging the other traffic and tourist vans along the road. Even this border, open since 1959, has seen eruptions of violence from extremists.

As you drive across the plains that provide each country with much of the grains they consume, dust obscures the horizon. A giant flag bearing the white and green moon and crescent arise to break the monotony of the landscape, casting its shadow over everything. It seems out of place until the orange and green of India crest the line of sight, rising above a stadium for thousands made in a style grand and long-since past. At this border national pride is measured in the length of flagpoles; strength measured in crowd sizes; and the conflict contained to stylized kicks, spins and salutes.

Each day, as evening falls setting the sky alight with swirls of blues and reds, members of the Pakistan Rangers and the Indian Border Security Forces lower their respective flags to ceremony and chants from the crowd. Soldiers from each side quickly dart here and there. They kick their legs high above their heads; raise fists into the air; yell; and execute maneuvers with military precision. Each perceived display of machismo is matched and returned. Crowds yell the slogans of their country.

Despite the fact that the ceremonies commemorate a history of conflict, they also point to a different truth about the region. The soldiers selected for this ceremony are elite, chosen specifically for this. They are a picture of the best each country has to offer. And though, when crowds gather, they pretend to mock and argue, at the end of the day these soldiers share sweets and other goods on national holidays. While conflict has defined much of the region and governments still hurl threats at each other, on the ground people live with each other. Farmers and workers cross here each day to trade and tend fields on the other side of a line drawn up less than 100 years ago.

We watched the ceremony together. I waved a plastic flag that I bought for a few rupees. People sang and chanted for the long life of their country. Indians, less than a few hundred of feet away did they same. For us there, it was more of a celebrate of the land than of the forces that conspired to create it.

As we left the ceremony, the sun was setting; the lights of Lahore growing brighter in the distance. The road only goes two directions: back into Pakistan or further into India towards Amritsar. Walking past families, soldiers and others, you could look across the field and see both countries clearly, though separated by wire fences and years of history.