profit lay in my existence" she asks 'Why did you create me9" Then later "If peace and comfort had been our share/You wouldn't have created womankind " The poem refers to the fact that girls were often married away at a tender age and became widows likewise. "When the transient [admirer] came to the garden, the flowers had not yet come to bloom //But when the flowers finally bloomed, the transient [admirer] was resting in dust." Near the end of the poem, the widow says, "God, You should summon the woman first, /or summon the man and the woman together / or else, God, erase this custom from the earths/which has caused all love to die here." Hall, however, was a peace- loving man; he concluded his poem with the widow asking God to fill her heart with His love alone, for her restless heart had suffered enough. Nazir Ahmad was different: he made the emotional and sexual life of the young widow very much a concern of his novel, Ayama, which was first published in 1891 He also pointed out how men exploited young widows in order to satisfy their own appetites. Nazir Ahmad's heroine dies at the end, but before her death she gathers around her all her relatives and gives them a long sermon She describes the evils of the custom that prohibited the remarriage of widows, using her own life and the lives of other widows as examples. She also questions the logic of those who looked down upon a widow who remarried, when in fact widows sought marriage chiefly to protect their honor Maulana Thanawi also denounced the prevailing custom, but couched his plea exclusively in religious terms. He too accused women of being contemptuous toward the widows who got remarried. He told his female readers: "Your faith will not be correct unless you regard first and second marriages as co-equal [The Prophet has declared,] ' Those who revive some practice of mine will receive a reward equal to the reward of one hundred martyrs.' Consequently, anyone who strives to get widows remarried as well as any widow who will remarry in order to gain the Prophet's approval, will get the blessings and rewards that accrue to one hundred martyrs."24 Bibi Ashraf never remarried, for that was something quite beyond her own powers. But in those areas of life where only her own determination and efforts mattered, she was exemplary. Though surrounded by hostile people, she taught herself to read and write Later, when she became a widow with two young daughters, she preferred to live away from her village for the sake of her daughters' education, and chose to support herself through her own hard work, first as a seamstress then as a school teacher. Bibi Ashraf was not bom rich like Hall's Zubaida Khatun, neither did she become rich like Asghan Khanam, the super-woman of Nazir Ahmad's novels. She was bom in modest circumstances and lived a life governed by modesty, piety, charity and service. We are charmed by her innocence just as much as we feel admiration for her ' true grit,' and we are grateful to Muhammadi Begum for preserving her memory for us 24 Bihisti' Zewar p 433 Annual of Urdu Studies, ^6 11^