Yusuf Khan and Sherbano

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Along with Adam Khan And Durkhanai, Yusuf Khan and Sherbano is considered a famous Pashtun folktale on par with Romeo and Juliet. The story goes as follows:

[edit] Story

Yusuf Khan of Turlandi (a village on the high road between Mardan and Swabi) was a hunter. That this passion for the chase be satisfied, he walked daily from his village to the nearby massif of the Kharamar hill. Towering a full five hundred metres above the fertile Yusufzai plains, Kharamar in those days was thickly covered with pine, acacia and wild olive and in those thicket-covered chasms the ravine deer and partridge teemed. It was a rare day that Yusuf Khan returned from the hill with an empty bag.

Between his home and Kharamar lay the village of the fair Sher Bano. And so it was only a matter of time that the two saw each other. Cupid's arrows flew and the two hearts were kindled with the warmth of love. Now, much ink has been spilled on the subject of the cousin (tarboor) among the Pakhtuns, its convoluted jealousies and intrigues and how its venom only increases in the event of one's father's death. And since Yusuf Khan's father had long been dead, his cousins now ganged up to deny him not only his father's legacy, but his beloved one as well.

The intrigues that followed forced young Yusuf Khan to abandon his home and his aged mother and young sister to seek employment in distant Delhi. There our hero found service in the army of the King Akbar. Time flew and Yusuf Khan rose in standing until he was assigned command of a body of troops. If that was to uplift his spirits, depressing news arrived from distant home under the dark loom of Kharamar: despite the resistance by his mother, sister and Sher Bano herself, his cousins had contrived Sher Bano's betrothal with another man.

Taking leave from the court Yusuf Khan rode out westward at the head of his contingent of Mughal soldiers. As luck would have it, he arrived on the day his Sher Bano was being forcibly wedded.

Yusuf Khan rode rough-shod into the celebrations, disrupting everything and slaying some of the vilest of his cousins. Those of his cousins that survived, overawed by the power given him by imperial service, made peace with him - or at least pretended to do so.

Yusuf Khan then wedded his ladylove and together they began a new and happy life. One day, not long afterwards, as Yusuf Khan returned home after a day in the field, Sher Bano was disappointed to see he had brought home no game to be cooked. She spoke her sentiment and Yusuf Khan set out for Kharamar with two of his cousins who now pretended to be his friends. Upon the mountain they shot a deer that fell down a gully.

As he was lowering himself down the gorge, Yusuf Khan's cousins, forever looking to avenge their brothers' death, cut the rope. Our hero fell to his death. Upon hearing of the end of her man, Sher Bano came up the mountain and there gave up her own ghost.