Dhal Chuki Shab e Hijar By Isha Gill

About this novel

Dhal Chuki Shab E Hijr (Urdu: ڈھل چکی شبِ ہجر) by Isha Gill is a complete Urdu romance about Sahir, a devoted daughter caring for her father. She looks after her widowed father, Hayat Sahib, while quietly carrying the memory of a man who once walked out of her life.

The novel opens with a sweet father-daughter tussle. “That’s enough, Baba – now I won’t listen to a single excuse. If you have to take this medicine, then you have to take it,” Sahir says firmly. Hayat Sahib smiles affectionately: “You know you’re my beloved princess.” “Ji, Abba Huzoor, I know very well – but in the matter of medicine, you won’t get any butter from me; I won’t let you skip a single dose.” She hands him the medicine and water and goes to prepare lunch. Hayat Sahib sighs and swallows the pill along with a bitter thought: if Sahir had been this stubborn back then, she would never have lost someone forever.

Isha Gill then fills in the family’s story. Every evening Sahir and her father have tea together in the lawn. While her mother, Sameera Begum, was alive, it was the family routine; after her death, Hayat Sahib stopped having evening tea, but gradually the habit returned. Sameera Begum and Hayat Sahib were cousins and loved each other deeply. After her death, the three of them – Hayat Sahib, Sahir and her brother Kaif – became each other’s whole world. Kaif then went to Dubai, settled a business there and has no plans to marry yet. Sahir, after a long gap following her mother’s death, went back to university and has now done her MA. Five years have passed, Kaif is still settled abroad, and Sahir has made her home the limit of her world.

باپ کی خدمت، بھائی کی دوری، اور دل میں بسا ایک بچھڑا ہوا شخص۔

At night, after giving her father his medicine, she sits in her room trying to read, but one person she still can’t forget keeps returning to her thoughts. A voice echoes in her memory: “One day I’ll set fire to all these books of yours!” – and later, “Since I don’t have flowers, you’ll have to accept this leaf instead.” Her eyes fill as she touches a dried leaf kept between the pages of her book – then her phone rings. It’s Kaif, smiling on a video call: “How’s my dear sister?”

Isha Gill writes with quiet emotion about family duty and lost love, and the title – “the night of separation has passed” – promises a hopeful turn.

You can read Dhal Chuki Shab E Hijr online here or download the complete PDF for free. More by Isha Gill: Ishq Nasheen, Kar Meri Chahat Qubool and Tu Man Talbat, or see all Isha Gill novels.