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Monday 8 February 2010

Khameni, Iqbal and the Babi heroine Qurratulayn

Since, or so Poetry's Persian previsions, Irony is as endless as the Ocean- its lion's roar staking sovereignty upon its but shoreline's necking erosion- it appears that the Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khameni, marja mirror to, not Iran, but its merely Levinasian Other-once paid fulsome tribute to Iqbal.

Interestingly- in Iqbal's Javed Nama- Asadullah Khan Ghalib occupies the sphere of Jupiter along with Mansoor al Hallaj and Qurratulayn Tahira- the great Babi heroine/poetess whom E.G Browne admired and (it may be) introduced Iqbal to.

For my present purpose, it is sufficient to note that the insertion of Ghalib's name rescues Jupiter from the Nietzchean net of genealogy- the rigorously discontinuous tracings of Foucault's swinging dick - or, to speak plain, the otiose and impertinently structuring corset of a poset-  restoring, thus, that intuitionistic continuum- which Brahmin eld as Bhraspati held- to which no Anaxagorian axe has yet been taken, save to be as by sandalwood perfumed,  being otherwise futile .

Still, in the context of Begum Tahira's unveiling at Badasht- which caused such consternation (she the Rabia, the Hazrat Fatima, of her age!) that one unlucky wight slit his own throat and ran gibbering from the garden- or Mansoor al Hallaj's felix culpa of unveiling what  ought to be veiled- what gives Iqbal's Jupiter its tellingly Ghalibian topos is the story  that the poetess was strangled with her own veil and thrown in a Chaah-e-Baabil well by a drunken gaoler.

Yet Rushdie- who, veiled, had his marriage saved- (or so the photographic evidence would suggest)- sez 'veils suck!'

 "If water, or so in medical lore it is written,
    Inspires fear in the Rabid One
  "Here, I- a Lion by but vulgar visages bitten-
Mirrors shun!"
                                                                      (Asad)

2 comments:

  1. 'Paani sey sagg-gazeedah daray jiss tareh Asad
    Darta hoon aeenay sey keh mardam-gazeedah hoon'

    ReplyDelete
  2. Check out this article- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LF10Ak01.html- for the lowdown on the 2 faces of Khameni.

    ReplyDelete