Rabail By Shanila Arman
- Writer
- Shanila Arman
- Language
- Urdu
- Length
- 523 pages
- Format
- Status
- Complete
Free · 2.7 MB · read in your browser or save to your phone
About this novel
Rabail (Urdu: رابیل) is an Urdu novel by Shanila Arman, over 500 pages in this PDF. It opens in a silent courtroom. The woman in the dock stands still as a statue, eyes fixed on nothing. Asked whether she has anything to say in her defence, she answers only “No”. Asked whether she accepts that she killed her own son, Asad Soomro, she says “Yes.”
On the strength of the evidence, the witnesses and her own confession, the judge sentences Bibi Rabail to be hanged on 19 April and breaks the nib of his pen. The story then cuts to a house at three in the morning, where Naghma shakes Tabinda Baji awake, and from there it works its way towards the question the opening leaves hanging: how a mother came to stand in that dock.
