Dafa E Man by Ayesha Ghazi

About this novel

Dafa E Man (Urdu: دفاعِ مَن) by Ayesha Sikandar Ghazi is an Urdu suspense novel set partly in the green hills of Kashmir. It opens in the office of a powerful man who has just learned that two girls he thought were gone are still alive.

Feroz Bakht, a member of the National Assembly who uses this office for his “personal business”, stops his rocking chair and stares at his man, Ahmed. “Where are they?” Ahmed repeats: in Kashmir. Feroz can’t believe it. Weren’t both of them supposed to be dead? Ahmed spreads photographs on the desk. One shows a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl in a long black skirt and a scarf wrapped like the local women, carrying firewood, with goats around her. The other shows a little girl of about ten. They look alike, clearly sisters.

ایک طاقتور مجرم، ایک ڈری ہوئی لڑکی — اور کشمیر کی وادیوں میں چھپا ایک راز۔

Feroz’s worry is obvious. If the girl is alive, why hasn’t she gone to the police? She knows what his men do, smuggling girls across the border, and she has proof against them. One word from her and they’re finished. Ahmed thinks she may be staying silent to protect her little sister, and adds that his sources say she is terrified, afraid even to talk to strangers. Feroz decides to go and deal with it himself. The writer then lays bare the empire behind him: politics on the surface, and underneath it drugs, weapons and human trafficking, protected by money and influence.

Ayesha Sikandar Ghazi builds tension from the first page. The title, roughly “defence of the self”, suggests a frightened girl who will have to find the courage to stand up to one of the most powerful men in the country.

You can read Dafa E Man online here or download the complete PDF for free. For more thrillers, try Ab E Kousar by Talat Rabab or Rakhail by Riaz Aqib Kohlar.