For veteran journalist Ikhlaq Ahmed, if his newest collection of short stories titled Abhi Kuch Der Baqi Hay fails to hit home with a reader then it is an exercise in futility. In the foreword he writes, “What is a story without a message? … Without a message, a story is just like a beautiful melody which went unheard, a picture wrapped up and stored in the attic, a novel idea which no one could register. … If the message of the story is not delivered in all its fierceness then the whole exercise becomes futile.”

If one were to judge the book according to the remarks of another journalist, Wusatullah Khan, who also happens to be Ahmed’s friend of 34 years, Abhi Kuch Der Baqi Hay hits right home. According to Khan, who spoke about his friend’s latest work at the launch of Abhi Kuch Der Baqi Hay on the second day of the Urdu Conference, Ikhlaq Ahmed, the former editor of Urdu weekly Akhbar-i-Jehan, is a like a free-sized t-shirt — fit for all.

“Don’t be fooled by the author’s charm,” Khan warned the audience. “He is an excellent salesman. You will be left squirming with uneasiness and wondering how the author knew you better than you know yourself. You will never even know when he conned you out of your own hypocrisy and sold it to you. And when you come to realise what has happened you will be beside yourself with ambivalence.”

This is why Khan also advised that one should read Ahmed’s work when alone. “Because you wouldn’t want anyone to see the bruises your soul has when you have finished reading.” Another work launched at the conference was Saraab Manzil, a novel by A. Khayyam. His earlier works include short-story collections and literary criticism. The novel narrates the story of a middle-class family when one of the sons decides to depart for the ‘civilised’ world to make something of himself.

The protagonist, Farhan, persuades his parents to spend the money they had saved for his sister’s wedding to send him to the greener pastures of Holland, illegally. While Farhan makes ends meet by doing odd jobs in Holland, his family faces a tough time. His brother does not earn enough to support anyone besides his own wife and children and his retired father does not have money for a medical operation. The sister then begins to work in a factory where her boss harasses her.

The characters in the novel seem to be connected by a web of ‘greater deceit’ from which all of them suffer at one time or the other. While Abhi Kuch Der Baqi Hay explores the darker pastures of our bigoted hearts, Saraab Manzil depicts aftermath of decisions that have consequences greater than we imagined.

The writer is a Dawn staffer