جلد چهاردهم
شب هجران
Shab-e Hijraan
Ahmad Zahir · 1979
Shab-e Hijraan (Night of Separation) was released posthumously after Ahmad Zahir was assassinated near the Salang Pass on June 14, 1979 -- the day of his 33rd birthday. The title translates as Night of Separation, and the recording now stands as an inadvertent farewell, its themes of parting, exile, and irreversible loss acquiring a biographical dimension that no listener can ignore. It is among the most emotionally devastating documents in the whole of Afghan popular music, a final testament from a voice silenced at the height of its powers.
Repentance, repentance from the night of separation — from weeping eyes, ruined heart, cruelty of the beautiful; the counselor knows nothing of this burning; love was day and night, rolling in mud and blood — where was hearing, like seeing with the eyes.
Tonight let wine ruin me — let me die. The triple request (ruin me, drown me, put me to sleep) structured around 'let me die' as refrain. Life without the beloved is more bitter than death.
Why last night did you not look my way at all — not even secretly smile? Was it inattention or fear of rivals? All night I devoured heart's blood in sighing and weeping and lamentation.
I was content with your cruelty — you have abandoned cruelty; you have blocked every path of my salvation and cut my hope from everywhere; have I gone astray, or have you made the mistake? You have repaid the debt.
By God my heart is tight, tight — perhaps of stone. A catalog of what is missed: dark eyes, lip colors, sincerity, the fragrance of the body, the manner of a glance, the sound of a voice.
Far from you yet so lost in you I'm as if in your embrace — distance that is not distance. Living by memory and the warmth of an embrace that is not happening but feels present.
Still on my lips is the place of your kisses, still rippling in my heart is the longing — you are not here, but your memory is in your place. A song of persistent bodily memory after the beloved's departure.