This past year I designed an undergraduate course that I called ‘The Poetry of Love’. One of the challenges of the course was how to define “love”.

The English language bundles many different shades of love under the umbrella term of love. Urdu has a rich vocabulary, cobbled from its mother languages, for the different emotional colours of love. I asked my students (who are mostly English-speakers) to come up with synonyms for love. We realised that love can be understood through pain, the pain of separation, the restlessness of waiting, the elusiveness of union.

Moving on to love poems, I began to explain the tradition (riwayat) of the ghazal, where the poet addresses an imaginary beloved or the idea of a beloved, an idealised beloved who is impossible to placate. The lover-beloved relationship in the classical ghazal is bound in tropes, yet this kind of love poetry is universal and transcendent.

The ghazal is not a “love poem” but a poem about love. The nazm or even the modern ghazal allowed more freedom to write about love in a personalised, individualistic slant. Many of the modern, contemporary Urdu poets have written about love. Moving away from stylised depictions, love’s earthly and mystical depths have been explored. Nonetheless, love poems of a personal nature are rare in Urdu.

Munibur Rahman, who passed away at the ripe age of 98 on November 28, 2022, is an exception. He created new pathways in the nazm, writing freely about a slew of emotions, from the quotidian to the poignant. He left a rich legacy of poems and, among them, a slender book titled Hijr-o-Firaq Ki Nazmein.

One thinks of hijr and firaq as synonymous; both denote separation. But there are subtleties of nuance embedded in the finer meaning of hijr and firaq. To begin with hijr, it’s an Arabic word that means departure from the tribe or place of belonging. Firaq, on the other hand, is from Persian and its primary meaning is separation from the beloved. Poems about love in Urdu are mostly about the angst of separation from the beloved.

Munibur Rahman’s poems of hijr and firaq pour out his anguish on the demise of his beloved wife. Munibur Rahman began his career at Aligarh University, where he focused on modern Farsi literature. A fellowship took him to London, where he received his PhD. There, he met Elizabeth Mohr from Geneva, who was teaching French to high school students. They married in 1951 and travelled back to Aligarh, where Munib sahib accepted a professorship in the department of Persian.

For the next 17 years, Elizabeth, whom he affectionately addressed as Zeba, made Aligarh her home. A gifted learner of languages, she spoke fluent Urdu, felt comfortable wearing shalwar qameez and eating spicy food. She grew her hair and wore it in a jurra (bun) in the Hindustani style. They had four children.

Geneva was a world away from Aligarh. The Rahmans could not afford the cost of travel to Europe. Elizabeth Zeba, a loving wife and mother, might have longed for Geneva — her husband certainly wanted to fulfil her yearning. In 1970, a remarkable opportunity in the form of a job offer came their way. Munib sahib was offered the position of associate professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, USA. They moved to the US with their four children.

After a successful career as a highly respected scholar and poet, Munibur Rahman retired in 1994. He had begun to lose his eyesight due to macular degeneration. But with Elizabeth Zeba by his side, he did not succumb to depression despite his limited capacity to see and read. Unfortunately, Zeba, who had suffered from tuberculosis in the early years of their marriage, developed heart disease. Her condition worsened quickly when she was diagnosed with a kind of sclerosis known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. She died in 2002, her beloved husband by her bedside.

Munibur Rahman mourned her departure, her hijrat in beautiful poetry:

She Will Not Return Now

Seasons will change, the weather will take turns, / But she will not return. / There will be summer, there will be winter and the rains,/ Or the days of autumn,/ But she will not return now./ Birds will return,/ The blue ducks will swim in the lake,/ But she will not come back./ Every year there will be festivals of rejoicing:/ Christmas, Eid, Diwali, will return a thousand times,/ But she will not come back now./ When I awake, she will not be by my side,/ I will not find her next to me./ I will go walk on the paths we walked together,/ But she will not return now.

I Have Switched Off the Lights

I have switched off the lights, the house is empty,/ Except for a dreamless image./ Beneath the slumbering tree/ A firefly sparks, on then off,/ And everything is lonesome, lonesome./ No one is near me at this time,/ No hope, no longing./ The stars seem far away./ I won’t sleep yet again tonight./ This night too, for the sake of companionship/ I have put aside time for you.

When reading these poems, Faiz comes to mind. Poems such as Tanhaai:

Phir koi aaya dil-i-zaar, nahin koi nahin …
Ab yahaan koi nahin, koi nahin aayega

Faiz’s poem is essentially about firaq and not hijr; it is steeped in the colours of loneliness; it can be read as a poem about love. Another Faiz favourite:

Tum aaye ho na shab-i-intizaar guzri hai
Talaash mein hai sahar baar baar guzri hai

Here there is longing, hope and waiting for the beloved. This is not hijr; it is firaq.

Munibur Rahman is writing simultaneously about hijr and firaq. His poems have a spontaneity and purity of emotion that goes deep into the heart of the reader. My translation needs more polish, because the simpler the language, the more difficult the translation. I struggled to find the right nuances in English. I am not happy with my rendition of ‘Ab Woh Nahin Aayegi.’ There is a world of emotion in these simple words that is lost in translation.

I wanted to write a tribute to Munibur Rahman on his passing in November 2022. Words failed me. Great poets are immortal. We remember them for our own enrichment.

The columnist is professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia in the US. X: @FarooqiMehr

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 28th, 2024