Mara Mara May Bede

Give Me Wine, Give Me Wine belongs to the most ancient vein of Persian lyric: the wine poem, where the demand for the cup is simultaneously a demand for release from the ordinary world and an invocation of love's intoxicating power. The repetition — 'mara mara' — is an intensification, a demand that cannot be stated once and left at that.

Zahir's recordings in this tradition make the Sufi interpretation available without insisting on it. The song functions as a pop recording — a man asking for a drink — and as a devotional act — a seeker asking for the dissolution of self that genuine love or divine presence brings. The two readings coexist in the recording without resolving into either.