Asheghaneh (2006)

Asheghaneh implies a lover’s manner as well as the style of Ashiqs, who are mostly sufi troubadours in the Azerbaijan and Kurdistan region. The Ashiqs’ art classically, and Bábá-Táhìr’s1 quatrains typically, attempt to depict only an inner state: a static moment. This piece, however, tries to join these separate instants and draw a timeline: a statement of states.

This piece is a day in a lover’s life. It starts by a dawn and ends by next. It opens with
longing for the beloved as day set them apart.

Nightingale by dawn is not but wailing,
Recalling the memory of the flower glowing.

Gradually yearning turns to hopeless calls, and breeds a cynical worry:

Never suffered a pain or a wound,
How could you feel an afflicted heart?

The second movement presents a hopeless complaint against fate for the torments of love.

No peace for now, no hope for tomorrow;
My share of fate: piles of sorrow.

The third movement reflects the lover’s deliberate choice, and thus his hope of deliverance from pain: an end to separation.

Shall I sleep with her memory at night,
By dawn my bed is fragrant of its scent.

1 Bábá-Táhìr (944-1019) is known as one of the most revered and respectable early poets and mystics of Persian history. Most of his life is shrouded in mystery. He probably lived for the most part in Hamedan, Iran. His nickname, Oryan (the Naked), suggests that he was a wandering dervish. The quatrains of Bábá-Táhìr have more of an amorous and mystical connotation than a philosophical one.

Farshid Samandari