Meri Eid Tum Sajan By Ana Ilyas

About this novelette

Meri Eid Tum Sajan (Urdu: میری عید تم ساجن) by Ana Ilyas is an Urdu family romance about a man asked to marry his late brother’s young widow. Haashib’s parents want him to marry Abrah, Sarim’s widow, but he refuses to see his bhabhi as anything else.

The novel opens mid-argument. “Mummy, please, ye mere liye mumkin nahi.” Haashib is sick of the same subject every day. His mother Shagufta tries to make him understand that this isn’t one life but two: Abrah’s and her little girl’s. Haashib says he can’t give Abrah the place people expect, and for him she is still Sarim’s wife. His father Asfand Sahib, silent until now, corrects him: not wife, widow. Haashib says it would shame him to death: how could he face Sarim tomorrow if he married his own bhabhi?

بھائی کی بیوہ، ماں کی ضد، اور ایک رشتہ جو دل ماننے کو تیار نہیں۔

Ana Ilyas then fills in what happened. Abrah was only young, living happily with Sarim, when a car accident took him. The two brothers were all the family had, and the loss shook everyone. Sarim left behind his wife and their daughter Inaya. Before anyone had recovered, Shagufta, with Abrah’s parents’ agreement, decided Haashib and Abrah should marry; she couldn’t bear the thought of Abrah and the child leaving the house. And there’s another complication: Haashib has been engaged for seven years to Saniya, his chacha‘s daughter. She’s his best friend, but neither of them has ever felt for the other what a marriage needs, which is why they’ve kept putting it off.

It’s 107 pages, a family drama about duty, grief and whether love can grow where it was never planned.

You can read Meri Eid Tum Sajan online here or download the complete PDF for free. More by Ana Ilyas: Teri Yad Ki Aanch, Mohabbat Ki Chaon and Teri Chahat Ka Hisar, all on the Ana Ilyas novels page.