Habib Sheikh’s book “Silent Knock,”

Silent Knock (Short Stories)
Author: Habib Sheikh
Reviewer: Naeem Ashraf

Habib Sheikh’s book “Silent Knock,” comprising 46 short stories, was published in Pakistan this year. I am grateful to Habib Sheikh Sahib for specially sending me this book last month with his autograph, from Toronto to Calgary. The author himself has written the introduction to the book, titled ‘Preface to Preface.’ In this essay, he beautifully and interestingly narrates the story of his creative journey, a story spanning half a century. As Hafeez Jalandhari said:

“Whatever Hafeez’s contribution to the refinement and perfection of art, it is a story of half a century, not just a couple of years. Although Habib Sheikh’s creative gestation spanned four to five decades, its creative delivery was expertly and lovingly handled by a skilled physician, Dr. Khalid Sohail.”

Regarding the background of his works, Habib Sheikh writes in the introduction to the book: “One reason for my writing is also the sensitivity of my nature. Rabia Al-Rabaa wrote somewhere in her book ‘Dera of Dervishes’: ‘How beautiful this illness of being sensitive is.’ Because of this illness, I have ignored individual suffering and embraced collective suffering. I consider raising my voice against oppression and injustice a human, ethical, and religious duty, and for this purpose, I let ink bleed from my pen and scatter some colors on paper.”

The ‘Foreword’ to the book was written by the renowned physician, writer, and poet Dr. Khalid Sohail, titled “My Literary Friend Habib Sheikh.” Dr. Khalid Sohail writes about the author and his works: “When we seriously study Habib Sheikh’s works, we realize that he also possesses a compassionate heart, like the sensitive, conscious, and conscientious poets, writers, and intellectuals of his era. This heart throbs loudly seeing the injustices faced by the oppressed and helpless in various societies around the world. And it urges him to write against this oppression, violence, and exploitation. Habib Sheikh dreams some dreams about all humanity, transcending race, color, religion, language, and nationality. Those dreams are dreams of peace, dreams of harmony, dreams of equality, and dreams of humanity.”

Habib Sheikh’s themes are replete with the bitter realities of life. These include religious oppression, social oppression, and the devastations of war. Besides, there are stories that excellently portray human psychology, human weaknesses, and emotions. Coercion, oppression, exploitation, and violence, whether in a religious form, a social form, or in the form of wars imposed on weaker nations for political objectives, are unacceptable in any way. When we read Habib Sheikh’s stories in “Silent Knock,” we can feel the pain hidden in his heart for the weaker sections of society, the oppressed, and the helpless. His story “Hang the Sweeper” is an excellent example of religious extremism. Regarding blasphemy, religious traders have made Pakistani society so violent that eighty percent of those who fall victim to it are killed by religious mobs before facing any law. These mobs themselves become the plaintiff, lawyer, witness, and judge, killing the accused with stones, sticks, or bullets, and then publicly incinerate them. The tragedy is that law enforcement agencies appear helpless and governments appear silent spectators before these religious mobs. And an even greater tragedy is that the brutal blasphemy law supports these mobs. In ‘Hang the Sweeper,’ Sohail Masih is tried for blasphemy for fifteen years. Finally, the Supreme Court acquits Sohail Masih with honor after the crime is not proven. But after serving fifteen years of unjust imprisonment and coming out of jail, religious mobs surround him. Sohail Masih runs back to the local police station and pleads with the police to send him back to jail. “Vultures and Doll,” “Chains and Religious Card,” and “Using Religion to Control People and Gain Financial Benefits” are masterpieces on topics such as these.

The story “Sharmeeli” presents a tale of social oppression, where a landlord’s son, in broad daylight, violates the honor of a poor tenant farmer’s daughter and effortlessly escapes the hands of the compliant law of our powerful elite, roaming free. The stories “You Are Not My Daughter Anymore!”, “Untouchable Muslim,” “Where Are My Spindles?”, “A Pleasant Evening of Separation,” “Heartthrob,” “The Girl with Flowers,” and “Moth” are keenly observed depictions of social and cultural oppression. War is not a solution to any problem; rather, wars have always been a great tragedy for humanity. Reading Habib Sheikh’s stories, it feels as if war and the resulting sorrows, pains, and tragedies deeply disturb him. The story ‘ISIS’s Daughter’ is the tale of Laila, a girl who becomes a victim of the calamity of war, fleeing from Raqqa, Syria, to Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. ISIS’s jihadist fighters turn women captured as spoils of war into sexual slaves and subject them to sexual assault. Captured women sometimes become pregnant. Laila is one of these unfortunate women who becomes pregnant while being sexually abused by ISIS jihadist fighters during captivity and gives birth to a baby girl in prison. But after three years, she somehow escapes from the clutches of ISIS and reaches her hometown of Sulaymaniyah, but now she also has her two-year-old daughter with her. Laila’s parents refuse to accept her daughter. However, Laila finds the daughter’s father, who accepts his daughter on the condition that she becomes a female jihadist. At this, Laila decides to rejoin the brutal jihadist fighters of ISIS for the sake of her daughter. ‘The Shadow of an Iraqi Child,’ ‘Second Love,’ ‘The Warrior’s Last Moments,’ ‘A Stone,’ ‘The Power of a Slingshot,’ ‘Indian Inside,’ and ‘Destructive Gift’ are heartbreaking and thought-provoking stories based on the devastations of war.

Perhaps the only story written on the theme of love, “A Meter of Ocean,” is a beautiful story. The main character loved a girl, but they could not marry, and both lovers married according to their parents’ wishes. When the main character’s wife passes away, his dormant love for his childhood beloved reawakens. He travels to her city to meet her and finds her. In their meeting, she tells him that she is not happy with her marriage because there is a third person between her and her husband, who is her co-wife. In short, the beloved gets a divorce and marries the main character. But after marriage, he reveals to the beloved that there is also a third person here, and that is the love for his deceased wife. Besides, the title story “Silent Knock,” which is placed at the end of the book in terms of order, is on the theme of the transience of life. Its essence is that “death” is the biggest reality of our life, which always arrives without a knock.

The beauty of Habib Sheikh’s stories lies in their conciseness, simple style, and easily understandable language. The narrative concept and structure of the stories are beautiful. Although here and there, as some stories reach their climax, one feels a certain incompleteness in their endings. Nevertheless, this is the author’s style and manner of expression, which will become more refined after writing more stories. This is Habib Sheikh’s first book of short stories. In this respect, it is a commendable creation. I welcome him to the ranks of creators and congratulate him on bestowing the collection of short stories “Silent Knock” upon Urdu literature.

Writer’s Profile
Naeem Ashraf is an accomplished translator. Born on November 7, 1964, in the
Samahni Valley of Kashmir, Ashraf attended the University of Engineering and
Technology (UET) Lahore and the Virtual University (VU) of Pakistan, where he
earned a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and a master’s in business

administration, respectively. He served in the Pakistan Army for 28 years, retiring as a Colonel in 2012.
Following his military service, he dedicated himself to his lifelong passion for literature, focusing on
translation. Over the past decade, he has translated nine fiction and non-fiction books between English
and Urdu. His books have been published by Sang-e-Meel Publications and is available through Amazon
in the United States and Canada. Ashraf also co-authored the book Literary Love Letters with Dr. Khalid
Sohail. For the past five years, Ashraf has been a regular contributor to the Urdu e-
magazine humsub.com.pk. A collection of his selected Urdu articles from the platform, titled Inheraf 
(Divergence), is slated for publication this year. For the past two years, he has worked as an interpreter in
Canada besides managing his own business. Ashraf currently resides in Alberta, Canada. He can be
reached at munasajk@gmail.com.