Dar-e-Nijaat Episode 24 review: the haveli, the well, and Abu Bakar's gentle apology

Spoilers for Dar-e-Nijaat Episode 24 (ARY Digital, Friday 23 October) below.

Dar-e-Nijaat Episode 24 is the one where the story finally leaves the city. The family travels to its ancestral village, a childhood memory comes back in the worst way, and Abu Bakar (Sheheryar Munawar) gets the soft scene with Zaryab (Dur-e-Fishan Saleem) that half of Instagram has been waiting for.

What happened in Episode 24?

The trip to the village has a practical reason: the old family haveli is being handed to an NGO to become a school. What starts as a walk through empty rooms turns into a walk through old wounds.

The heaviest moment is a flashback. We learn that Abu Bakar’s phupho once pushed him into a well when he was a child. It is a dark reveal, and it explains a lot about the quiet, guarded man he has become.

Khushbakht comes face to face with the sister-in-law who hurt her years ago. She offers her money, and then walks away without forgiving her. That one choice says more about her than any monologue could.

Between all this, the newlyweds flirt. Abu Bakar apologises to Zaryab, gently and without fuss, and as he leaves for work there is a long, lingering goodbye. Back in the other marriage, Hamna (Romaisa Khan) complains to Zamil (Nameer Nawaz Khan), who demands his rights as a husband while ignoring every duty that comes with them.

Performances: Sheheryar Munawar’s best scene so far

The well flashback belongs to Sheheryar. He plays the memory with almost no dialogue, and the review site The Other Me Unfolded called him “brilliant” in it. It is the kind of restraint that made people take Abu Bakar seriously in the first place.

Dur-e-Fishan is good in the romantic scene, holding back tears and letting confusion show instead of overplaying it. Romaisa Khan makes the most of her single scene. Zamil, meanwhile, is written as a flat, selfish husband; the frustration you feel is the point, but he could use more shading.

Writing and direction

Umera Ahmed has taken this story to some dark places, and this episode handles them with care. The Khushbakht scene is the most realistic writing in weeks: helping someone is not the same as forgiving them.

The pace is quick, though. The phupho reveal needed more room to breathe than director Saqib Khan gives it. That is ironic, because only two days earlier Nadia Khan had called the drama “boring, slow, and on repeat” and said it was being stretched while the team waited to shoot its village scenes in winter, Reviewit reported. This episode is the first real move to the village, so her complaint may already be getting an answer.

How did fans react?

The apology scene, shared by the drama’s official Instagram account, set off a stream of comments. Reviewit collected some of them: “Men this is how you apologize to your women” was a typical one. Fans clearly prefer this softer Abu Bakar to the closed-off one of the early episodes.

When is Episode 25?

Dar-e-Nijaat airs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm on ARY Digital, so Episode 25 is on Saturday 24 October. ARY has released the official promo, which already had more than 849,000 views on YouTube when we checked. The episode uploads on ARY’s YouTube are short cuts of about eight minutes; full episodes are on the ARY Plus app.