Its Now or Never

It's Now or Never — based on the Italian melody 'O Sole Mio' and famously recorded by Elvis Presley in 1960 — entered Zahir's repertoire as part of his engagement with international pop. The song's central urgency: love cannot be deferred, the moment is now or never, maps onto the ghazal tradition's own understanding that the beloved's presence is always already temporary.

Zahir's arrangement gives the song its Afghan dimension without erasing its international character. This is characteristic of his fusion approach: not to convert the foreign material into something purely local, but to create a space in which both registers are active simultaneously — a demonstration that Afghan music could metabolize the world without losing itself.