Tu Ishq Mera by Ayesha Jabeen

About this novel

Tu Ishq Mera (Urdu: تُو عشق میرا) by Ayesha Jabeen is a romantic Urdu novel that begins on a wedding night with a cruel confession. Hadia has married the man she has loved since childhood, and he tells her he never wanted this marriage.

The room smells of red roses and candles. Hadia sits on the bed in her bridal lehenga, the kind of bride who looks saadgi itself on ordinary days and beautiful enough today to stop anyone’s breath. Her aunt, now her mother-in-law, holds her hennaed hands and tells her that everyone in this house loves her and that she is its izzat now. Hadia answers with complete confidence that they will never have a complaint. She means it. These are her own people.

Outside, Ali sits in a black sherwani while his friends and cousins (Haider, Abdullah, his brother-in-law Arshad Bhai) tease him the way grooms always get teased. His elder sister Maryam Aapi finally sends him in.

بچپن کی محبت سے شادی ہوئی، مگر پہلی ہی رات دل کا دروازہ بند ملا۔

Then everything changes. Ali shuts the door and the warmth goes out of the room. He reminds her that he told her not to agree to this marriage, and that now she can see what happens when people don’t listen. When she reaches for him he says there’s no place for her in his heart or in his room. Hadia spends her first night as a married woman sitting out in the cold beyond the glass door, crying until she falls asleep. In the morning, so that no one will guess, Ali hurries her inside before his sister knocks.

Ayesha Jabeen writes this in long, emotional paragraphs, and the 414-page story is about whether Hadia’s ishq can survive Ali’s coldness, and why he is so set against her in the first place.

You can read Tu Ishq Mera online here or download the complete PDF for free. If you like novels that open on a wedding day gone wrong, read Maqsoom by Huma Waqas next, or browse our romantic Urdu novels.