The thread under her tongue


Experimental Short Story Series #64

Title: The Thread Under Her Tongue

By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)

She arrived like a monsoon breeze—quiet, scented with jasmine and earth.

Afiya, the new bride, veiled in crimson and gold, was carried across the threshold of the ancestral haveli in rural Punjab with a trembling smile and eyes too deep for her twenty years.

But by morning, her voice was gone.

The Silence

It was not hoarse.
Not weak.
Not shy.
Just… gone.

When she tried to speak, her throat swelled with a strange numbness.
The village doctor said it was nerves.
The midwife muttered something about “chhaya hua hai”—a shadow falling.

But Dadi Amma, the matriarch with silver hair and sharper memory, called in the hakeem from across the Ravi river.

And he said what no one expected:

"There is a black thread tied beneath her tongue. A taweez... of silence."

The Curse

Afiya shook her head. She didn’t believe in such things.
She tried to scream it with her eyes.
But the thread burned invisibly whenever she opened her mouth.

The hakeem said the thread could only be untied with truth.

But whose?

The House That Swallowed Women

The haveli had buried too many names.

Afiya wasn’t the first to lose her voice in it.

Her husband’s first wife—whom no one spoke of—had disappeared after just two months.
A cousin had been sent back to her parents “mad with grief.”
Another had fallen from the balcony “in sleep.”

And now Afiya.
Silent.
Watching.
Listening.

She Began to Hear

They thought her voicelessness meant deafness too.
So the whispers flew freely.

She began piecing together the story of the house like old zari threads pulled from forgotten saris.

She heard maids whisper about a room with sealed bricks.
About a cradle that never rocked.
About a woman who used to sing, until her voice cracked with betrayal.

The Thread Loosens

One night, Afiya stood before the full-length mirror in the west wing—the one no one used since that night.

She opened her mouth and whispered a name.
Not hers.
But the name of the woman who had come before her.

“Zeenat.”

The mirror fogged. The glass rippled.
And a single black thread uncoiled from beneath her tongue, falling to the marble floor like a dying serpent.

The Voice Returns

She began to speak.
Not in anger.
Not in cries.
But in songs.

Old lullabies only grieving mothers knew.
Verses that trembled with memory.
Names that had been buried.

Her voice was soft but powerful.

And when she told the truth, the haveli cracked.
Windows refused to shut.
Mirrors blurred.

And for the first time in decades, women in that household began to speak too.

Aftermath

Today, the haveli is no longer called “Qasr-e-Raza.”
It is called "Bayaan."
The House of Speaking.

And Afiya is no longer voiceless.

She now teaches other women to find what’s tied beneath their tongues.

Because sometimes, the silence isn’t ours.
It’s inherited.
Imposed.
Knotted by fear.
And it takes one voice to start the untying.

📚 Join the Revival of Forgotten Voices

Our stories are not just to chill the bones.
They are meant to awaken what was silenced.
This tale is dedicated to every woman who was made to swallow her pain.

Visit our full collection on:

🔗 farazparvez1.blogspot.com

Where the past whispers.
And we finally listen.

By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)


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