Tera Aitbar Chahiay By Ana Ilyas

About this novel

Tera Aitbar Chahiay (Urdu: تیرا اعتبار چاہیے) by Ana Ilyas is an Urdu family romance about Izza, a working single mother of two little boys. She keeps refusing her parents’ attempts to find her a husband, and one evening her mother Atiya Begum comes in with a glass of milk and yet another rishta.

“Ammi, how many times do I have to say I don’t want to marry?” Izza asks. Can’t her parents see that her life works fine without a man? Atiya Begum knows the answer will be no again, but she tries anyway: a woman can’t live alone in this society. Izza calls that an old-fashioned idea; women today can do anything. Her mother answers that a woman is still a woman in every age, and reading a few books doesn’t make her a match for every vulture outside.

ماں بن کر عورت مضبوط بھی ہو جاتی ہے، اور سب سے زیادہ کمزور بھی۔

Izza thinks back to the night before, when her son Haadi suddenly fell ill and started vomiting so badly that she couldn’t cope. It was her father who rushed with her to the hospital at two in the morning, talking to doctors and running to the dispensary for medicine, while she stood in a corner crying. She isn’t a timid girl. Being a mother has made her braver than most, and for her sons Saad and Haadi she has become a storm against the world. But she is also weak when her children hurt. Right now she has her father to lean on, but what if he weren’t there?

Still, she asks her mother a fair question: who will accept her together with her children? Atiya Begum says they will keep the boys. Izza refuses outright. Her father is a heart patient, her mother’s own health isn’t good, and she will never leave her sons to grow up without her.

The opening is honest and moving, about motherhood, a woman’s independence, and how hard it is to trust again. The title means “I need your trust”, and it tells you what any future partner will have to earn.

You can read Tera Aitbar Chahiay online here or download the complete PDF for free. More by Ana Ilyas: Har Martaba Tu Chahiay, Ishq Mein Hari and Muhabbat K Jugnu, or see all Ana Ilyas novels.