Kabi To Pas Mary Aao by Aymen Nauman

About this novel

Kabhi Toh Paas Mere Aao (Urdu: کبھی تو پاس میرے آؤ) by Aymen Nauman is an Urdu romance that opens in a graveyard at night with a mysterious figure. Wrapped in a black chadar, it searches the graves by torchlight, and then the story cuts to a Pashtun haveli whose bride has vanished.

The figure steps out from behind a banyan tree, torch held tight, and checks grave after grave until finding the one it’s looking for. “Haan, yahi hai woh.” Hours pass in the effort to recite something over it, until the last part of the night begins and there’s little time left before dawn. The work has to be finished today, whatever happens. Finally the figure finds a spade, sets to work, and a few moments after the last words are spoken, a light bursts out of the grave and it cracks open. Under the chadar, a triumphant smile.

ایک آدھی رات کی قبر، ایک سجی ہوئی حویلی، اور ایک غائب دلہن۔

Then Aymen Nauman takes you somewhere bright and noisy. The haveli of the Khan family has been decorated like a bride for a wedding the whole area is talking about. The family’s traditional swing, used for generations, stands on the stage covered in roses and marigolds, with carpets and bolsters laid out on either side. Dadi Begum sits on her takht in white and gold, every inch the matriarch, and sends her elder daughter-in-law Mizna to see how the bride is getting on.

Nafeesa Begum is the first to sense something is wrong when a pale face appears at the door. “Amma Begum, the bride isn’t in her room,” comes the news. Every corner of the haveli has been searched. In her sharp Pashto-accented Urdu, Amma Begum demands to know whether this is someone’s idea of a joke.

It’s a long novel, 697 pages, with a supernatural thread running through a family romance.

You can read Kabhi Toh Paas Mere Aao online here or download the complete PDF for free. More by Aymen Nauman: Tu Kitni Masoom Hai, and the rest on the Aymen Nauman novels page.