Someone Else’s Daughter

“Father, I want to eat apples… Uncle Liaqat doesn’t let me pluck them. He tells me to get lost and says it’s not my father’s orchard. But I want to eat apples too.”

The ten-year-old girl entered the mud house, which had no proper door, crying and almost running. She threw her old, patched cloth bag into the raw courtyard and rushed toward the single room. Sitting on a charpoy, Umar Deen felt her tug at his shirt as she stubbornly repeated her demand.

“It’s such a small thing,” he said gently. “Tomorrow I’ll bring apples for my beautiful Abaiha myself. Come, let’s eat together. Nek Bakhtey, make some more bread.”

Umar Deen calmed his daughter, and she ran outside happily to tell her friends.

“She’s innocent and doesn’t understand yet,” his wife reassured him. “When she comes back from playing, I’ll explain everything to her.”

Umar Deen smiled faintly and then sighed helplessly.

“This land produces gold, but that gold goes to foreign countries. The people of this land are not meant to enjoy it.”

Umar Deen was a pakora seller. He ran a small cart on the road near the settlement and earned just enough to provide two meals a day. Abaiha was his only child. Despite poverty, he wanted her to study. She attended a government school, and on the way there was an apple orchard behind the settlement.

The orchard bore high-quality apples, and during the harvest season their fragrance spread across the entire area. Adults could resist the temptation, but children found it impossible. Sometimes they managed to steal apples; sometimes the gardener chased them away. The old gardener was kind-hearted, but he was replaced with a younger, ruthless one, along with guards and even dogs.

The day Abaiha insisted on apples, Umar Deen was forced by helplessness to beg the gardener.

“Brother, please give me just one apple.”

“Give me one hundred rupees, and I’ll pluck one for you,” the gardener replied coldly.

“It’s such a big orchard,” Umar Deen pleaded. “What harm is there in giving one apple to a poor man?”

“These apples are not for people like you,” the gardener sneered. “They are grown for rich countries and rich people. Now leave—and control your children. Two ferocious dogs have been ordered.”

Umar Deen returned empty-handed.

The next day, despite being forbidden, Abaiha went toward the orchard and found an apple lying near the bushes. As she picked it up, the gardener saw her. He snatched the apple and beat her. Crying, she returned home and told her father everything.

Umar Deen stormed out like an enraged lion and confronted the gardener. He was poor, but not weak. That night, he and his wife lay awake, crushed by deprivation and unfulfilled dreams.

The next morning, Umar Deen stood beside his cart, waiting for customers, anger and helplessness burning inside him. Suddenly, a motorcyclist stopped.

“Brother, give twenty rupees’ worth of pakoras for my daughter.”

The man’s daughter looked about the same age as Abaiha. She held a shopping bag full of apples. Umar Deen packed the food quickly. Moments later, the motorcycle collided with a truck. The father died instantly, and the girl fell near the scattered apples.

Umar Deen rushed over. The child murmured weakly, calling “Father… Baba…” Her bloodied body trembled, eyes filled with hope.

Umar Deen hesitated. Then he hurriedly collected the scattered apples and ran away before a crowd could gather.

“Abaiha! Abaiha!” he shouted as he entered his house.

“Look, I brought you four apples!”

Only then did he notice the bandage on her head and her injured leg.

“She went to steal apples again,” his wife cried. “The gardener set the dog on her. She’s badly hurt. Take her to the hospital.”

At that moment, Umar Deen realized the truth. Everything was the same—the pain, the blood, the helplessness. The only difference was this: one was his daughter, and the other was someone else’s daughter.

Daughters belong to everyone.

He had failed the test sent by God. He had ignored another man’s child, and now his own child lay broken.

Overcome with guilt, Umar Deen ran back toward the accident site. The ambulance siren wailed, but the girl’s lifeless eyes remained fixed at the spot where he had abandoned her.