🌾 “Letters under the Neem Tree”

The sun rose slowly over the fields of Kot Meeran, painting them gold. Birds chattered in the neem trees. A soft breeze moved through the sugarcane like whispers, carrying with it the smell of earth still wet from last night’s rain.

For years, Zoya’s mornings had been the same: wake before dawn, tie her dupatta tight, fill clay pots at the well. Yet every morning felt different since she began finding the letters.

They were always there, tucked carefully into the hollow of the old neem tree that stood on the dusty path between her father’s fields and the village square. No name, no signature — just words that felt like light on her skin.

“Your laughter sounds like koel birds at dawn.”

“The color of your bangles stays with me long after the sun sets.”

“When I see you, the whole world feels softer.”

At first, she had ignored them, heart hammering, afraid. But curiosity bloomed where fear had lived. Each letter felt like rain on parched earth.

She began to write back. Nothing bold, just small replies on torn scraps:

“Who are you?”

“Why me?”

“The koel only sings because the world is quiet enough to hear.”

And always, the answer would come the next morning.

Zoya lived in a house of rules: daughters do not speak loudly; daughters do not question fathers; daughters do not fall in love. Her father, Chaudhry Latif, was the village elder. His word was law, heavy as the ancient locks on their doors.

She had no mother to whisper secrets to. Only her younger brother, Haroon, who still thought love was a story for the grown.

Every evening, after the sun dipped behind the fields, she would hear her father’s voice echo from the veranda, reminding her what was expected.

“Our honor is in silence. Remember that.”

But silence was heavy. And letters felt light.

One night, under the stubborn monsoon moon, Zoya heard something new in the neem tree’s rustling leaves. Footsteps. Careful, measured, like someone trying not to be heard.

She stepped closer, her sandals sinking into the soft earth.

A boy stood there, his hand still on the tree’s hollow. In the pale moonlight, she recognized him.

Ayaan.

The quiet boy from the weaver’s family. Always with ink on his fingers. Always looking away when she passed. His father wove cloth for the Chaudhry’s family, but they were still just weavers — respected, yet not equals.

Their eyes met, the silence stretched, as heavy as the humid night.

“It’s you?” she whispered.

Ayaan swallowed. “It’s me.”

She felt her heart stumble, then race ahead. She should have run back home, should have shouted for her father. But instead, she stood rooted like the tree itself.

Over the next weeks, they spoke in stolen moments. Always near the neem, always just a breath apart.

They talked of little things — the smell of wet earth, the warmth of summer mangoes, the lonely silence of village nights.

Ayaan confessed, his voice barely a whisper: “When I saw you first, you were laughing. I thought, if someone could laugh like that, maybe the world isn’t as cruel as it seems.”

Zoya smiled, then quickly hid it. “They’d never allow it, you know.”

“I know,” he said. But hope hung between them like mist.

One humid evening, as the monsoon clouds gathered low, her father found a scrap of paper she had hidden under her pillow.

The next morning, he confronted her. His face, usually carved from stone, burned red with anger.

“This ends now,” he thundered. “A Chaudhry’s daughter and a weaver’s son? Do you want shame for this house?”

Zoya trembled, words stuck like stones in her throat. Her father locked her in her room that night, the iron latch sealing more than wood.

Thunder rolled outside. Rain lashed the fields. And Zoya, eyes wet with more than rain, wrote one last letter.

“I wish we had met in another life. One where neem trees aren’t prisons, and love isn’t whispered in fear.”

She slipped it through her window, praying the wind would carry it to him.

The next morning, the neem tree stood quiet, leaves heavy with rain. No letter waited for her.

That evening, she heard her father’s voice outside. “The weaver’s family left before dawn. Gone.”

Gone.

She felt something inside her break quietly, like a clay pot dropped on wet earth.

Years later, the tree still stands. Village children tie threads around its trunk, praying for wishes they barely understand.

And some nights, when the koel sings, Zoya — now a wife, now a mother — walks past the neem tree and remembers a boy with ink-stained fingers.

❤️ Lesson:

Love can bloom even in places ruled by silence and fear. But in villages where honor weighs more than hearts, love often learns to live quietly — hidden, but never truly gone.

A Story by : Pir Ashfaq Ahmad