Wani Novel By Noor Malik

About this novel

Wani (Urdu: ونی) by Noor Malik is a long Urdu novel about Maryam, married into the Malik family as the price of her brother’s crime. She is brought home to Malik Villa straight from the graveyard, and the novel follows her life in a house that sees her as a debt.

It opens on a dark February day, the sky so heavy with black clouds that morning looks like night. For some people today is a day of happiness, Noor Malik writes, and for others it has taken the colour out of their whole lives. Everyone has left the graveyard, and only four people are still weeping there, among them Dar Ji and Arham Malik.

بھائی کے گناہ کی سزا، اور ایک لڑکی جو قید پرندے کی طرح رہ گئی۔

Maryam sits silent the whole way back. She’s paying for someone else’s sin, and she knows it. When the cars pull through the gates of Malik Villa, Mrs Malik drags her out of the car by the arm, her fingers digging in. “Your brother killed my son,” she says, “and your brother wasn’t punished for it. My son never got justice. They saw a rich family and married you to my son.” It’s a pity, she adds, that Maryam won’t live long enough to enjoy it, because here she’ll be like a bird in a cage.

Mrs Malik pulls Maryam into the house and calls Sakina, the old servant, who appears instantly. Her orders: show the murderer’s sister a room that isn’t fit to live in.

Noor Malik builds the novel around wani, the custom of handing over a girl to settle a blood feud, and the pages that follow are about whether Maryam can find any place for herself in a house that sees her only as an enemy. It’s 547 pages long.

You can read Wani online here or download the complete PDF for free. For another story about the same custom, read the shorter Wanni by Noor Sehar. More by Noor Malik is on the Noor Malik novels page.