Ibn E Adam Bint E Adam by Fatina Khan

About this novel

Ibn E Adam Bint E Adam (Urdu: ابنِ آدم بنتِ آدم) by Fatina Khan is a complete Urdu novel that opens in the Heera Mandi of Lahore with Tarabai. She is the most famous dancer of the bazaar, and her story runs alongside that of a restless young man in Karachi.

The novel begins with a few lines of verse about sweet dreams, wedding music and henna-coloured hands. Then we meet her: eyes lowered, fully dressed, ghungroos tied around her ankles – the living meaning of “neither fully hidden nor fully seen” – lighting up the gathering. It is past midnight, yet in Lahore’s Bazaar-e-Husn it feels as if evening hasn’t even begun. Tablas beat and anklets jingle everywhere, and outside Tarabai’s kotha the crowd is as thick as ever, for this kotha is the most famous in the bazaar, and Tarabai its most celebrated dancer.

Fatina Khan describes the world without glamour. Here, she writes, thieves and policemen sit side by side watching the performance, and anyone with a heavy enough pocket can come. Money rains down as Tarabai dances; she is used to it all, and to collecting praise from the men watching, a practised smile always on her lips. She arrived only a short while ago, but her beauty and skill have made her name. Yet when the song ends and she turns back to her room – with the old lines “I was sure such nights would come, and that we would meet someday” still hanging in the air – her smile disappears as she climbs the stairs, and a tear falls to the ground, unseen and unvalued.

چمکتی محفل کے پیچھے ایک ٹوٹا ہوا دل، اور سیڑھیوں پر گرا ایک آنسو۔

The scene then shifts to Karachi, before sunrise. In one of the city’s posh areas, a young man is out jogging, running as if he isn’t fully in his senses, until he finds himself far from his palace-like home. A message tone on his phone brings him back to reality – and he realises he has ended up exactly where he never wanted to come. He quickly turns back, perhaps because his prayer to never face a certain someone hasn’t been accepted.

Fatina Khan writes about dignity, hidden pain and the lives society refuses to see, and the title reminds readers that every person is a child of Adam. Readers should know the novel is set partly in a red-light district and deals with mature themes, though the opening is not explicit.

You can read Ibn E Adam Bint E Adam online here or download the complete PDF for free. You may also like Kaif E Baharan and Hoor E Jannat, or browse more Urdu novels.