Gar Zolfe Porayshanat
“If Your Disheveled Hair”
A ghazal on the beloved's wind-scattered hair as a trap set for hearts — the ship of patience cast into a sea of grief, no shore promised, the king of kingdoms asked to spare one glance for a beggar.
About This Recording
Gar Zolfe Porayshanat opens with one of the classical ghazal's most charged images: the beloved's disheveled hair caught by the morning breeze and thereby set as a trap for every heart within reach. The image condenses the tradition's understanding of the beloved's power — she does not act; her mere proximity, mediated by wind, is sufficient to ensnare. The speaker's shipwreck follows inevitably.
The third stanza shifts registers to address a 'sultan of kingdoms' — a figure of worldly power — asking what harm it would do him to notice a beggar's state. Read in the ghazal's convention, this sultan is both a literal powerful man and an allegory for the beloved; the beggar is both the poor and the lover. Ahmad Zahir's recording inhabits this double register without resolving it.
Lyrics
English Translation
If your disheveled hair fell into the morning breeze's hand Every heart, wherever it might be, would fall into a trap of affliction
We have cast the ship of our patience into the sea of grief To the end of this storm, where will each plank fall?
After all, what harm would come to the king of kingdoms If one day he cast a glance at the state of a beggar?
متن اصلی
گر زلف پُريشانت در دست صبا افتد هر جا که دلی باشد در دام بلا افتد
ما کشتی صبر خويش در بحر غم افگنديم تا آخر از اين طوفان هر تخته کجا افتد
آخر چه زیان افتد سلطان ممالک را کو را نظری روزی، بر حال گدا افتد