Mama mo qissa | Tale

misbah hayat
3 min readNov 4, 2023

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The snow-peaked mountains were never truly silent. After a long day of harvesting in the fields everyone retired to their homes by the evening that is how life was pretty much. We lived in a time when there were no phones TVs or even clocks to tell us what time it was. Our lives revolved around the vast fields, we used to work in huge fields all day long, planting seeds, harvesting and storing winter food for the cattle, looking after the cattle as well as doing house chores that was our life. We used to wake up at dusk and finish all our work by dawn, this is how slow life was but along with that, there were a lot of hidden creatures living with us side by side. By dawn when the world would go silent and dark they would come out of their shadows at night and lurk around in the silent valleys of the mountains.

There are numerous stories of the creatures which were Jinns, Bilasho ( witches ), Han ilchin ( one-eyed monsters), and a lot more. This story is of my mother, a story of my childhood, our mother narrates how she left the house for her morning prayers, it was pitch black and she was alone, she always had to pass by vast fields of the Gareep ( a person’s name) who had just harvested potatoes in the evening. She saw a man in the field as she was passing by and thought it was Gareep, he woke up early to put the potatoes aside and do his chores for the day but as she got closer to the wooden poles in the field the man started getting taller and taller. His body stretched weirdly and kept growing. She had no choice or other way but to pass by the man in the field, the more she got closer, the taller the man became, and soon she realized it was the one-eyed monster. She held her breath and her legs were shaking terribly, she walked past the monster silently and held her breath so swiftly that it never noticed. these creatures in the past days were very normal, they would be lying around in the paths of people who used to go for morning prayers or these creatures would be scared of a very sophisticated clan called Datu-singh-kuz. This clan in particular were quite spiritually enlightened so the creatures were scared of the family members of this clan and we happen to be Datu-singh-kuz.

Story credits : My naani

Read more about the traditions, culture of Hunza, and poetry stayed tuned me. to connect with me catch me on Instagram @_tales_of_thelost. bringing you indigenous stories straight from the mighty mountains of the north! along with my passion for writing, I love taking pictures too.

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misbah hayat

Bringing you indigenous tales from the northern Pakistan ! creative writer | poet Follow up to read more stories about the culture and people of Hunza.