Short Story: The Shepherdess by Younis Ahmad Kaloo

Younis Ahmad Kaloo’s short story captures the first meeting of the protagonist and a shepherdess beautifully, in a tender narrative that is liberally peppered with joy and excitement.

Out of a few other reasons that Qais thought could trigger peacelessness in him in so refreshing a season like a summer, black magic made a fleeting appearance before being discarded as impossible. The place where he lived was inhabited by ten or fifteen households situated quite a distance from each other. The only occasions when these families got together were marriages, deaths, and daily prayers in a mosque built in the middle of the village. But, in the past couple of years, his village witnessed neither a death nor a marriage, and the mosque, too, seemed to attract a negligible number of worshippers. As a result, who did what in one’s house hardly made it to others’.  So, it made no sense that someone could be jealous of Qais or his family and use sorcery against them. 

Qais returned to the real world that comprised his room, an almirah full of books, particularly the one in his hands, and a notebook lying beside him from which a metal nib poked out. His sortie into his imagination to know why he couldn’t be at peace in his room that he so loved before a week or so ago bore no fruit. So, he held the book in his left hand, plucked the pen from his notebook with the other, and walked out of his room.