Sada By Salman

About this afsana

Sada by Salman is a short, emotional Urdu afsana written around April Fool’s Day, about friendship and sadness. It is about a voice that stays with you long after someone is gone, and the title means a call.

It opens in the season of patjhar. Cruel winds shake a tree until its dry leaves fall in heaps onto a grave beneath it, and beside that grave stands Abeera, dressed in black, lost in a silent conversation of questions and answers. The falling leaves make a strange sound, a sada, that no one else seems to hear. For Abeera it is the sound of a memory, and it pulls her into tears.

Then the story goes back in time. It is late October, the days when summer takes its last breath and autumn slowly begins. Salman reminds us that this is the way of nature: every night ends in a morning, every hardship is followed by ease, and every sorrow by some happiness. One afternoon Abeera and her close friend, a girl named Sada, are sitting on a bench in a park under that same tree, watching the leaves fall. Sada says that if you really listen, the leaves sound sad, as if they are mourning the tree they are being separated from.

Sada believes that when a person is sad, the whole world looks sad to them, from the setting sun to a cloud breaking into rain. Abeera puts a hand on her shoulder and pleads with her, as her best friend, to free herself from this chadar of udaasi and let a little happiness in. Sada only gives her a long, quiet look. Abeera has been trying to cheer her up for a long time, but Sada finds a new reason to be sad in everything. It is a quiet, reflective read that makes you wonder what the April Fool’s twist will be.

کچھ صدائیں کانوں سے نہیں، دل سے سنی جاتی ہیں۔

Read more by the same writer: Piyasa Kavwa, Talsum Araa and Cinderella, or see all Salman Daieem novels and more Urdu afsanay.