Yakeen ka safer story collection by Anwar Ul Haq

About this afsana

Yakeen Ka Safar (Urdu: یقین کا سفر) is a short collection of Urdu stories and afsanay by Muhammad Anwar ul Haq, written in a sincere style. It is named after its opening story, Yakeen Ka Safar, the journey of faith, and also includes Baghawat and other short pieces.

The title story, Yakeen Ka Safar (“a journey of faith”), is told by a policeman. Through the bars of the lock-up he watches a young prisoner pray. The man is twenty-five or twenty-six, good-looking, and was brought in two days ago in a murder case. In a few days he’ll be sent to jail after court proceedings. The case against him is strong, and everyone expects that after one or two hearings he will be sentenced to death.

سلاخوں کے پیچھے بھی کوئی سکون سے سجدہ کر سکتا ہے؟

The narrator admits that he is a hard man, and from the first day his tone with the prisoner was harsh. Yet the young man always has a gentle smile on his lips. He treats the policeman with respect, as an elder, and speaks softly and politely. Within two days, the narrator says, even a man as tough as he is has been won over by the prisoner’s good manners. Now, as the young man finishes his salam and raises his hands in dua, the policeman keeps watching and wondering where such calm comes from in a man facing the gallows. Who is he, really, and is he guilty at all?

The question of yakeen, faith that holds even when everything seems lost, sits at the heart of the story, and it’s the kind of piece that stays with you after a short read. The other stories in the collection are just as brief, which makes the book ideal for reading in one sitting.

You can read Yakeen Ka Safar online here or download the complete PDF for free. For more short stories, browse our Urdu Afsana collection, or read Khud Sy Khuda Tak by Eman Shaikh.