In 1997, Salman Rushdie noted that English translations of Urdu and Hindi fiction were hard to come by. “The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told” contains twenty-five pieces, and although the title may be a stretch (there are some notable omissions, including Chughtai’s “Lihaaf” and Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Bu”) it signals a promising resurgence of Urdu literature. It’s as much about prostitution as it is about how we rewrite history.

Another of my favorite stories from the collection, Ghulam Abbas’s “Aanandi,” opens on a heated debate at a municipal council meeting about whether to expel the zanaan-e baazaari, the “women of the marketplace.” The story follows the prostitutes after a decision is made, with Abbas walking us through the ripple effects until we’re right back to where we started. It’s not just a commentary on illegal abortions, but a scathing indictment of the vast class (and caste) divides in India, which exist to this day. “Mutti Maalish” was published in 1967, but it’s included, in an English translation by Muhammad Umar Memon, in the 2017 book “ The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told.” Memon, who died last year, was an Urdu professor at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, and his translation is gripping and uncomfortable, which is likely how Chughtai wanted her story to be read. It’s the type of description that a native speaker, like myself, couldn’t imagine being effective in another language.Īs it turns out, in the hands of the right translator, it can be. After listening to an Urdu recording of the story, I nearly did, too. So obscene is Ratti Bai’s telling that the patient throws up. One entails standing on the woman’s belly and massaging it with your feet the other, more brutal method involves yanking the fetus out with your hand.

Toward the end of the late Indian writer Ismat Chughtai’s short story “Mutti Maalish,” Ratti Bai, a hospital maid, describes to an upper-class patient two methods of abortion used by poor women in India.

Pakistani urdu poem cartoon