ای ساربان آهسته ران
Aye Sarban Ahesta Ran
“O Camel Driver, Go Slowly”
O Camel Driver, Go Slowly — Saadi's great ghazal of the departing caravan, asking the driver to slow so the speaker can catch one last sight of the beloved being carried away.
About This Recording
O Camel Driver, Go Slowly asks for delay: the caravan is moving, the beloved is leaving, and the speaker wants just a little more time before the separation becomes permanent. The camel driver, in classical Persian poetry, is an intermediary figure — the one who controls the pace at which lovers are parted, the one on whom the speaker must rely when their own will is insufficient.
Ahmad Zahir's recording of this poem makes it feel as much a folk song as a classical text — the arrangement is accessible, the delivery conversational, the emotion legible without knowledge of the classical tradition. This was part of his particular gift: to be the bridge between the learned and the popular, to carry the weight of the tradition without making that weight felt as a burden on the listener.
Lyrics
English Translation
O camel driver, ride slowly — the comfort of my soul departs And that heart I carried with me departs with my heart's thief
I am left abandoned by her, helpless and aching from her absence As if a sting, far from her, were working through my bones
Hold the litter, camel driver — do not hurry the caravan For love of that moving cypress, my very soul, it seems, departs
She goes, trailing her skirt; I taste the poison of solitude Ask me for no sign of her — the very trace of her leaves my heart
متن اصلی
ای ساربان آهسته ران کآرام جانم میرود وآن دل که با خود داشتم با دلستانم میرود
من ماندهام مهجور از او بیچاره و رنجور از او گویی که نیشی دور از او در استخوانم میرود
محمل بدار ای ساربان تندی مکن با کاروان کز عشق آن سرو روان گویی روانم میرود
او میرود دامنکشان من زهر تنهایی چشان دیگر مپرس از من نشان کز دل نشانم میرود
Poetic Source & Adaptation
Saadi Shirazi
Saadi Shirazi, Divan, ghazal 268 (Ganjoor critical text). Manuscripts vary between 'ahesta ro' and 'ahesta ran' in the opening hemistich; Ahmad Zahir sings the 'ran' variant, which is the form the song made standard across Afghanistan. The camel-caravan farewell is one of the oldest figures in Persian and Arabic poetry — the beloved departs not by choice but with the caravan, and the speaker can only plead with the driver who sets its pace.