من نگویم که مرا از قفس
Man Nagoyam Ka Mara Az Qafas
“I Will Not Say Free Me from This Cage”
I Will Not Say Free Me from This Cage — Bahar's prison ghazal of 1933: the caged bird does not ask for freedom, only that the cage be carried to a garden. Sung by Zahir, it became an Afghan anthem of dignity under confinement.
About This Recording
Man Nagoyam Ka Mara Az Qafas performs one of the most delicate moves available to a poet writing under tyranny: it asks for nothing the jailer can refuse. Not freedom — only a garden view, only remembrance. The modesty of the request is the indictment; a regime that cannot grant even this is named without being named.
In Ahmad Zahir's hands after the Saur Revolution, the song needed no commentary. Audiences heard a blacklisted singer voicing a prisoner's plea written under a different dictatorship, and understood. It belongs with his late political repertoire — the recordings where the classical canon itself became the safest available language of resistance.
Lyrics
English Translation
I will not say: free me from this cage Only carry my cage to a garden, and gladden my heart
The season of roses is passing — companions, for God's sake Sit in a garden somewhere, and remember me
Nightingales! The damask rose has entered the meadow Cry out, all of you, to welcome its arrival
Remember this captive bird, O birds When you gaze on the rose, the tulip, and the boxwood
متن اصلی
من نگویم که مرا از قفس آزاد کنید قفسم برده به باغی و دلم شاد کنید
فصل گل میگذرد همنفسان بهر خدا بنشینید به باغی و مرا یاد کنید
عندلیبان گل سوری به چمن کرد ورود بهر شاباش قدومش همه فریاد کنید
یاد از این مرغ گرفتار کنید ای مرغان چون تماشای گل و لاله و شمشاد کنید
Poetic Source & Adaptation
Malek o-Shoara Bahar
Malek o-Shoara Bahar (1886–1951), Ghazaliyat 65 (Ganjoor). Bahar wrote the poem in 1933 while imprisoned under Reza Shah. The conceit — a caged nightingale that asks not for release but for its cage to be set among the roses, and for its companions to remember it when they see the garden — made the poem a touchstone for political prisoners across the Persian-speaking world. After the 1978 coup, Ahmad Zahir's recording acquired an unmistakable second meaning that no censor could quite prosecute: he had only sung a classical poem about a bird.