Plot Summary

This story is about a sadist who preys on young adolescent boys, kills them and then throws the body in public places to scare off people.

That’s the gist of it. But the way the story opens and progresses just hooks you up from the first paragraph. We meet Hameed who is selling jadi booti in order to keep an eye on a banquet hall. He is working independently on a case which is a surprise because we hardly ever see Hameed not following Faridi’s orders. Faridi is working on another case, the one where young men are brutally killed.

Being the hasty man that he is, he does make a silly mistake of entering the banquet hall without telling Faridi.

And he’s caught.

Thankfully, Faridi rescues him, seizing the whole building that is one of the many places that are makeshift casinos. Coincidentally, they also find a young man’s dead body in the building. So, the two cases are connected afterall.

This is just the beginning of a very scary case, and engaging criminal tale.

Review

This story has many witty lines and funny banter between Hameed and Faridi, something that makes Ibn-e-Safi one of my most favourite Urdu writers. At times, it feels like the sole purpose of Hameed’s life is to torture Faridi, and the banter gets hilarious at times. It also has a very elaborated and creative idea of alternative reproduction system. That whole conversation is just too funny. We see a glimpse of Israr Ahmad Narwi, the funny man that Ibn-e-Safi once was. At the same time, he also explains the pros and cons of being a man who doesn’t like woman, who never seeks companionship of the fairer gender, who curbs his desires per his strong willpower. Ibn-e-Safi will make you laugh and he will make you ponder over littlest things of life; that’s the beauty of his writing.

An enjoyable read.

 

That concludes the review for Pathar Ki Cheekh. What do others feels about this one?

Shabana Mukhtar