Tell Me Your Name by Samaa Chaudhary

About this novelette

Tell Me Your Name (Urdu: ٹیل می یور نیم) by Samaa Chaudhary is a short, complete Urdu horror novelette and a mysterious love story. It is narrated by a man who grew up in a house haunted by black magic and jinns, and he is still searching for answers.

The narrator introduces himself: he is Naveed Iqbal, living in America for many years, but Pakistani by nationality and origin. At a very young age he witnessed events that changed not only his life but the lives of people in his city. In Pakistan, he explains, kala ilm and jadu were very common, often used out of plain jealousy and family grudges. He didn’t understand any of it as a child, but one day it seemed to have reached his own home. Someone had cast a spell and buried a cloth in the empty ground behind their house, and for forty nights straight, he says, there was a rain of blood – so much that it ran like a stream through the house. His mother lived through all of it alone, because his father was abroad in America.

Naveed was fifteen then, living with his mother and his elderly grandfather, the three of them leading a simple, happy life. Dada used to tell him stories. A Hafiz-e-Quran, he wanted Naveed to become an aalim; at first Naveed resisted, but life, he says, eventually makes you do the work you were created for.

چالیس راتوں کی خونی بارش، اور دادا کی آیتوں کا سہارا۔

The story then gives an exact date: Thursday, 3 May 2011, 2:25 in the afternoon. “Dada Abbu, yeh jinn kya hote hain?” Naveed asks innocently. His grandfather, Karamullah Hafiz, isn’t surprised – these things are being talked about at home every day now. He explains that jinns are one of Allah’s hidden creations, made from fire, just as humans are made from clay and angels from light, and that they are mentioned in the Quran and Hadith and can take different forms. Naveed asks whether there are different kinds, because Ammi says evil jinns have come into their house. His grandfather pulls the fifteen-year-old close and reassures him: as long as I am here, they can do nothing to our home.

Samaa Chaudhary blends horror with faith and family, building fear slowly through a child’s eyes. Fans of short Urdu horror stories will enjoy this one.

You can read Tell Me Your Name online here or download the complete PDF for free. More by Samaa Chaudhary: Phiray Darbadar Teri Chah Lye, Ishq Ki Pheli Barish and Dadi Ki Hukumat, or see all Samaa Chaudhary novels and more horror novels.