Khadīja Mastūr (Khadija Mastoor), a pre-eminent social-realist Urdu writer of the 1950s through the 1980s, was born on 11 December 1927 in Bareilly, India. Her father, Sayyid Ṭahūr Aḥmad Khān, died in 1937, followed a year later by her maternal uncle, leaving the family without financial support. Under these circumstances, Khadīja was unable to attend college, but she did receive a thorough Urdu-language education at home. After Partition, the family moved to Lahore. The experiences of personal loss, displacement, economic hardship, and existential crisis were important in