Baition k Kabil Nahi Mashra By Zairi

About this novel

Baition K Kabil Nahi Mashra (Urdu: بیٹیوں کے قابل نہیں معاشرہ) by Zairi is a short social Urdu novel about a married daughter’s hidden pain. Her parents can feel her suffering even when she won’t say it, and the title means a society not worthy of its daughters.

It opens with a knock at the door. Nuzhat Begum turns off the tap, leaves the dishes and opens it to find her daughter Samavia standing there. For a moment she just stares; then mother and daughter hold each other tightly and cry like people who have been apart for years. Samavia’s father gently scolds his wife for keeping the tired girl standing at the door, but his own eyes fill up as soon as he sees her, and he quickly composes his face and walks away.

ماں کی نظر بیٹی کی ہنسی کے پیچھے چھپا درد پہچان لیتی ہے۔

A year ago Samavia was married to her Phuppo’s son Noman, and she went abroad with him. Now she has come home for a few days with his permission. Her father dropped everything at the office and rushed to the airport the moment Noman called to say she was landing. Samavia is the only child of Murtaza and Nuzhat, so loved that her father used to say that even if parents had seven children, one would still be the favourite.

The next morning Samavia finds her mother chopping vegetables in the kitchen and complains, laughing, that she should have woken her to help. Now she’s a married woman, she says, she knows how to do everything. But Nuzhat has already sensed the pain behind that laugh. When she asks whether Noman really looks after her, Samavia says yes, of course, with her head lowered. Nuzhat is so lost in her daughter’s face that she cuts her own hand without noticing.

Zairi writes simply and from the heart about marriage, silence and the things daughters hide to protect their parents. It’s a short, moving read.

You can read Baition K Kabil Nahi Mashra online here or download the complete PDF for free. For more short social stories, read Marad by Zainab Shamim and Zard Mosam Kay Dukh by Sumaira Shareef Toor.