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Short Story

Redemption

Abbas Zaidi tells us of the human condition in Lahore.

In its last few days, April becomes a strange time of the year: the sweet but fading memory of the cool of the spring and the fear of the coming inferno of summer create a mix of nostalgia and premonition. In this ambivalence, married couples and lovers desperately seek solitude and oneness before the heat and the never-ending electricity outages separate them till the monsoon ends their drought three months later. It was on one of those pre-summer nights that Akbar found himself standing at the gate of a mango garden, some distance from home, wondering, ‘Why am I here, at this time of the night?’

Akbar studied the mango trees without thinking of an answer. The flowers on them had turned reddish brown. In a couple of weeks mangoes would start appearing in their place.

…