The actor said the show isn’t about how women should get better.
By Mahnoor | 21-09-2026

Durefishan Saleem wants people watching Dar-e-Nijaat to stop seeing it as a show that tells women how to heal.
Reacting to criticism about the latest plot twists, the actor posted on Instagram on Sunday to explain what she believes the drama’s real message is.
“The story is less about saying women can’t heal by themselves, and more about pointing out the unfair double standard when it comes to forgiveness — how easily a man can make mistakes, ask for a second chance, and get it, while women are often expected to live with the consequences of their choices for a lot longer,” she wrote.
Sometimes, the best way to watch a story is to just see it as something that happened to someone. You don’t have to agree with every choice a character makes to understand their feelings or feel for their journey,” she added, before noting that people are complex and not everything has to “fit neatly into a morally right” standard.
In another Instagram story, Saleem shared a post saying Dar-e-Nijaat is about a woman discovering herself — not about a man.
Saleem wrote in the caption: “Sometimes, finding yourself is the love story you needed all along.”
For context, the latest episodes of Dar-e-Nijaat mainly focused on the lead character, Zaryab, who has been dealing with anxiety and depression after being betrayed and dumped by her long-time boyfriend and childhood sweetheart, Zamil (played by Nameer Khan).
In episodes 14 and 15, aired on Friday and Saturday, Zaryab goes through what looks like a panic attack. Her family tries to calm her down, but she doesn’t seem to improve. It’s only when her possible love interest, Abu Bakr (played by actor Sheheryar Munawar), comes in, recites verses from the Holy Quran to bless a glass of water, and gently helps her drink it that she can get up and walk.
This particular scene, it turns out, didn’t sit well with some viewers, who think the drama is sending a problematic message: that women going through heartbreak need a man’s support to heal and recover.
One user on X pointed out that Zaryab’s character needs therapy—not a man.
Another person thinks the show seems to make it look okay for men to rescue women. She said instead that each person needs to heal themselves.
One viewer said the part where Abu Bakar “comes to save” Zaryab is not realistic.
But, as Saleem pointed out, that’s not the main idea. Instead, the show focuses on how much harder it is for women to find forgiveness through religion than it is for men.
On one side, we have Zaryab, who seems to find it hard to move on because she feels bad about living with Zamil without being married. On the other side, we have Zamil, who broke up with Zaryab quickly and harshly as soon as he found religion again, saying he has the right to start fresh while she doesn’t. He married someone he thought was good enough for him in a religious way, without thinking about his own mistakes at all, and based on some talks in the last two episodes, he will soon be able to live with his family again.
Meanwhile, Zaryab is deeply sad, questioning all her life choices. She can’t move forward, or even think about marrying someone else, because she feels her mistake is worse than Zamil’s.
This difference in how much guilt and self-reflection the woman feels compared to the man is, according to Saleem, the main point of the story.




















