Adhoori Muhabbat By Hamna Tanveer

About this novel

Adhoori Mohabbat by Hamna Tanveer is a powerful Urdu social novel based on a true story about a daughter seen as a burden. It shows the lasting damage that unfair thinking does to an innocent life.

Hamna Tanveer opens with a clear message. This novel is a real story, she says, about the ignorant belief that a daughter is a burden. A wrong mindset, and the unfair behaviour that comes from it, can deeply affect the whole life of an innocent child.

She reminds readers that parents are the first people a child meets after opening their eyes in this world. A child learns the meaning of love from them, from their behaviour, their words and their care. When those same people push a child away, a little girl who has not yet seen the world outside her home grows up afraid and withdrawn, shrinking into herself.

The writer then quotes Surah Ash-Shura, in which Allah says that the kingdom of the heavens and the earth belongs to Him alone. He creates what He wills, giving daughters to whom He wills and sons to whom He wills, or both, and He makes barren whom He wills. Both sons and daughters are Allah’s blessings, she writes, and the world needs both men and women, because each depends on the other.

She goes on to criticise a society where families celebrate the birth of a son but hide their faces when a daughter is born, and where wives are taunted for having girls even though they have no control over it. Quoting Surah An-Nahl about those whose faces darken at the news of a daughter, she points out that this was the practice of the age of ignorance, yet Muslims today still turn away from the Quran on this matter. From this strong introduction, Adhoori Mohabbat promises an emotional story about a daughter’s longing for her parents’ love.

بیٹی بوجھ نہیں، اللہ کی رحمت ہے۔

Read more by Hamna Tanveer: Mere Maula, Tum Bin Jeena Mumkin Nahi and Shab e Chiragh, or see all Hamna Tanveer novels and the latest Urdu novels.