HAQ-E-SHUFAA (right of pre-emption) is a chapter from an Urdu book MAN TARASH written by Masoud Akhtar Khan. This chapter is reviewed in English by the scribe in the following manner:
The crux of this chapter reflects of the world of cannibalism where cannibals abound with their savage, man-eater and barbaric instincts. It is a tale of how a cannibal woman claims for food the dead body of her own infant as her right of pre-emption, as the tribe attacks her to grab it in absence of her husband, chief of the clan.
The sensational and sensitive part of this narrative in cannibalism is that this powerless young woman has a dead baby glued and clutched to her heart and arms as she cries in torture and despair to rescue her deceased infant from the attacking and kidnapping hoods and goons.
Bewildered and bewitched, she baffles to believe in villains of malice and malignity grounding and surrounding her all over and all around. Agonized and antagonized amid savages and scoundrels, so helpless and hapless is she of her safety, security and savage right to dead child. Calamity ridden and terror driven, she goes helter skelter to save her sanctity from the haunting and heading lunatics of lust.
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Beyond irony of fate is such an inexpressible and incomprehensible tragedy of turmoil that maniacs of lust and luxuria know no sisters or daughters. Looming over her close vicinity horrendously are many hounds of horror hovering and barking, deadly and daunting, alarming and appalling all set to afflict and attack helpless and defenceless with nobody to call and no one to listen to the lone and the lonely.
During traumatic and monstrous ordeal meted by cannibal tribesmen to the first lady of this cannibal tribe, her husband being chief of the clan, she goes down the memory lane to reminiscence the good old days when all was so great and groovy for this tribe and their village.
She recalled during prevailing dreads amid worst hunger and driest thirst how beautiful was their village with spells of rains and pools of water, greenery and pleasantry all over and sun shining over the tribal horizon with all its bounties when calamity struck the village amid vociferous alarms of sheer helplessness…
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Parvez Jamil contributes to media on literary, educational, social, civic, community, national and international affairs.
