Mann Ishqam By Haley Noor

About this novel

Mann Ishqam (Urdu: مَن عشقم) by Haley Noor is a romantic Urdu novel that starts near the end. Six years after they parted, a man sees the girl he loved again. She hasn’t changed: she is still masoom, still soft-hearted, still cries at small things. But she looks straight through him, and where he once saw mohabbat in her eyes there is only emptiness now.

Then the story goes back to the beginning. Haya is the only child of Malik Sarfraz Ahmed, a government employee, and Bushra Begum. She is in first year, comes home from the academy shouting “Mama, bhook lagi hai!”, and wants to become a doctor because that was her Baba Jani’s and her dadi’s dream. When her best friend Bakht (they have been together since ninth class) asks whether she has ever really loved anyone, Haya talks about the love between friends, between parents and children, and in ibadat. She says she wants nothing to do with the other kind of ishq, because she has only ever seen it bring people pain. The writer adds that naseeb was standing a little way off, smiling.

حیا محبت کے راستے سے ڈرتی ہے، مگر قسمت کے فیصلے کچھ اور ہیں۔

Outside the college gate is the other half of the story. Shah Meer and his friends Ali, Hassan and Alam are ameer baap ke bigray hue betay (rich men’s spoiled sons) with too much free time. Shah Meer is already bored of that game. The girl he can’t stop thinking about is the one who never looks up. Haya turns out to be the daughter of his father’s friend. The two families visit each other often, yet he had never seen her before. He messages her on Facebook from his sister’s phone, carefully polite. She replies that she doesn’t use Messenger, and when he pushes, she tells him he has no tameez. It’s a funny exchange, and it shows exactly who Haya is.

Haley Noor writes in short scenes, and the chats appear in the Roman Urdu young people really type, which makes the novel quick and easy to read. The six-year gap from the first chapter stays in the back of your mind the whole time: you know something goes wrong, and you keep reading to find out what.

You can read Mann Ishqam online here or download the complete PDF for free. For more ishq stories like this one, browse our Romantic Urdu novels.