{"id":22,"date":"2014-05-08T20:27:56","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T20:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/?p=22"},"modified":"2014-05-08T20:28:31","modified_gmt":"2014-05-08T20:28:31","slug":"a-reluctant-ghazal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/2014\/05\/08\/a-reluctant-ghazal\/","title":{"rendered":"A Reluctant Ghazal"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019re more harmful than a flame\u2019s rays Erica<\/em><\/p>\n

That attracts moths from faraway Erica<\/em><\/p>\n

You shone much brighter than the sky<\/em><\/p>\n

Your beauty turned my night to day Erica<\/em><\/p>\n

The small cracks in your mind grew wide<\/em><\/p>\n

Before my eyes, you drift away Erica<\/em><\/p>\n

Our shared bruise is nothing compared<\/em><\/p>\n

To the deep pain of my hearts frays Erica<\/em><\/p>\n

My competitor proved too strong<\/em><\/p>\n

Even though he is dead and gray Erica<\/em><\/p>\n

Change can not bear to stay so close<\/em><\/p>\n

Now I must be on my way, AmErica<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For this post I wore a ghazal to accompany The<\/i> Reluctant Fundamentalist<\/i>. The Urdu ghazal is one of the most famous forms of poetry of the Urdu language. These poems are always narrated by a tortured lover \u201chopelessly in love with an indifferent, even cruel, beloved\u201d (Petievich 3). This is the scenario that Changez finds himself in The Reluctant Fundamentalist<\/i>. He is in love with Erica, she is in love with her childhood friend Chris, who died recently. His death did not sever her deep connections to him, and Changez has no hope of eating her away from him. As Erica sinks deeper into her mind and her nostalgia for Chris, she become the indifferent, and unknowingly cruel beloved of the ghazal. The narration of The Reluctant Fundamentalist<\/i>, is very poetic and Changez describes Erica using some of the common images employed by Ghazal writers. Therefore, it seems possible that Changez could write a ghazal like the one I have written above.<\/p>\n

My ghazal follows the basic rules of all ghazals, but with a twist. My meter comes from the last line of each couplet having 11 syllables, and the first line having 8. All ghazal\u2019s have a radif<\/i>, a repeated word or phrase preceded by a qafiyah<\/i>, a rhymed syllable. My radif<\/i> is Erica and my qafiyah<\/i> is -ay<\/i>. However the last line of my ghazal ends with America. I chose this play on words because I believe Mohsin Hamid purposefully meant for the name of Changez\u2019s love to closely resemble Erica. Changez\u2019s relationship with Erica is a close parallel with his relationship to America. As Erica sinks into nostalgia Changez\u2019s believes that \u201c America, too, was increasingly giving itself over to a dangerous nostalgia\u201d (Hamid 53).\u00a0 Even Changez\u2019s name seems to be a play on the English words \u201cchanges\u201d, which inspired me to use Change as the pseudonym in the last couplet.<\/p>\n

Throughout the ghazal I used traditional Urdu imagery along with imagery that Changez uses to describe Erica. In the first couplet I use the image of a moth and a candle inspired by this quote, \u201cwhenever a candle-flame is mentioned in the ghazal, a moth is not far to be found\u201d (Petievich 6). The inspiration for the third couplet comes from Changez describing Erica\u2019s eyes, \u201c I perceived that there was something broken behind them, like a tiny crack in a diamond\u2026\u201d (Hamid 27). The fourth couplet refers to the bruise Changez\u2019s gets from a scooter collision that is in the same spot as a bruise Erica gets from tae kwon do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019re more harmful than a flame\u2019s rays Erica That attracts moths from faraway Erica You shone much brighter than the sky Your beauty turned my night to day Erica The small cracks in your mind grew wide Before my eyes, you drift away Erica Our shared bruise is nothing compared To the deep pain of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6326,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jumaiyusuf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}