A word in Urdu

Del libro que estoy a punto de terminar. El otro día leí esto que me gustó mucho. Ocurre en un momento medio extraño, una visita imprevista de Yoel a una pareja de hermanos gringos, un chance weirds. El hermano le revela a Yoel la historia de sus vidas y cómo fue que terminaron en Israel. Luego, prosigue: 

"What would you like to tell us about your own life, Mr Ravid? Yoel, if you don't object? Has your family also split up? I've heard tell that in Urdu there's a word that if you write it from right to left it means adoration, and if you write it from left to right it means loathing. Same letters, same syllables, just depends which way. For God's sake, don't feel you've got to repay one personal story with another. It's not a business deal, just an invitation to get it off your chest, as they say. There's a story about some old rabbi from Europe who said the soundest thing in the whole world is a broken heart. But you mustn't feel obligated to trade one story for another. Did you eat already?..."  

To know a woman, Amos Oz