Aakhri Adami

Aakhri Adami is a short story by Intezar Husain. This is a story of people who because of their wrong doings start turning into monkeys. AlYusaf is the last person who goes through this agony.

Reflection solely a human prerogative instills sense of guilt in AlYusaf who unlike his fellow beings had the privilege of witnessing them been transformed into apes. AlYusaf fights with his fears but knows the universal principle of cause and effect and fears his guilt that has sworn the seed would have bearings. But he resists. Finally against all his wishes like Picture of Dorian Gray he sees his tarnish image in the water and is devastated.

The story revolves around the biblical and Quran’s story of people of Sabbath. As in all myths since Gilgamesh 'sins' have no hope and one has to pay for it. Our material world of cause and effect also has same manifestations as all actions have reaction.

This is the simple message of this story but I would not take it as this is too simple to be realistic. When we take a wrong turn and reach a dead end it doesn’t mean that it’s the end of journey. We turn back and find other routes that takes us ahead, trying and finding new destinations and courses is the destiny that human beings have evoked for themselves and are not condemned towards that and they cherish this novelty.

Once AlYusaf finds that due to his wrong doing he is likely to descent to a lower form he resists and wants not only to hold to his present status but also transcend it as he rejects some very human emotions of fear, hate and animosity. This is where; there is hope and ascent in the story. The end of the story which seems frightening is not so as an end of a story is never an end, its end of one stream of thought which ebb and then flow into another. In end AlYusaf falls on all four but the germination of his thought process where he renounce his shortcomings has taken him ahead of his fellow beings and so he can still rise and stand tall.