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“The Smell of Moth Orchids”: On the Resonant Wounds of Naheed Qamar’s Poetry Written by : Hammad Niazi To step into Naheed Qamar’s poetry is to step onto a landscape on which the smell of moth orchids in the wind becomes the very air of settled hurt. This is not just a jumble of words; it is the pounding of existence’s broken, scattered pieces, ringing through centuries of quiet to drive a beam of light into the darkness of the soul. Her poems are a mirror in which the scars of time, the valleys of loneliness, and the ashes of love look for their own reflection. The deluge of human experience, which passes through the framework of her work, is actually the deluge flowing into “the aqueduct of time” (زمانے کی کاریز) to find its way towards the heart of the narrative. Every word weighs upon the heart like a stone – phrases like “the moon growing on the chest of the heart” (دل کے سینے پر اگتے چاند) not only attain un-questionable heights of imagery but cover the pain of being as if a blazing star had come to rest upon the palm. It is from here that the question arises, pulsing at the heart of each poem: “What is that which we seek in the heart of the story?” (وہ کیا ہے جسے ہم کہانی کے دل میں ڈھونڈتے ہیں؟). For Naheed, this quest is not wordplay; it is the magic of wound upon wound, where “the flow of blood” (لہو کی روانی) is the only reality. Time, in her poetry, is a hurt traveler, “lost in the corridor of time” (وقت کی راہداری میں بھٹکا ہوا), standing on the ruins of itself. “Leaf by leaf, scattering days” (پتی پتی بکھرتے دن) and “wooden staircases of memory” (یاد کے چوبی زینے) are not just symbols, but fragments of earth from the tearing apart of existence. When she says: “What did we live for, even if we lived — without sky, without earth” (ہم جیے بھی تو کیا — بے فلک، بے زمیں), it is not a complaint, but an expression of that human condition where the price of being “laborers of love’s dreams” (خواب محبت کے مزدور) is always paid through the hands of indifference. Aesthetic bittersweetness lies in Naheed Qamar’s words. Images like “the moon on the branch of sight” (شاخ نظر پر چاند) and metaphors like “grief’s ice-bound cage” (غم کے یخ بستہ پنجرے) make her poetry visual sculptures. But this beauty is never bereft of suffering. The agony concealed in each stunning word is such a “whirlpool of the separation” (برہا کی منجدھار) which “resonates within the jugular vein” (شہ رگ کے بھیتر گونجتی). Her manner is so silken that even the hilt of the sword yields to silk’s pliability – “The scale-pan itself measuring union, separation’s sting itself” (خود ماشہ تولہ وصل کا، فرقت کی ٹیس بھی آپ). In poetry, Naheed’s poems are a fire dancing on its own ashes. Descriptions such as “glistening from the ash of love” (عشق کی راکھ سے دمک) and “kohl of pain” (درد کے سرمے) do not just make her poetry a verbal wonder, but display an energetic philosophy of living in which “the heart’s paralysis” (دل کا سکتہ) is actually life’s biggest reality. When she writes, “At seeing you, heart, wind, time, world, all stood still” (تجھے دیکھ کر دل، ہوا، وقت، دنیا جہاں تھم گئے تھے), it is not only a romantic situation, but that cosmic silence where existence breathes in for eternal breath. There is no line drawn between death and life in Naheed Qamar’s work. “The hour of resurrection” (حشر کی گھڑی) and “the sun falling into the netherworld” (پاتال میں گرتا سورج) are two faces of the same coin. That is why, while reading her poetry, the reader sees herself/ himself in a “twilight” (دھندلکے) where “weakness of vision” (ضعف بصارت) also becomes a symbol for the opening of the inner eyes. Slipping into the abyss of her words, one is left with the sensation that one is “the heart itself, trembling upon its own ruins” (خود اپنے ملبے پہ سہما ہوا دل). As drips from a wounded crane, the remaining bead of a dried tear, or the forgotten echo of an incomplete cry, these poems hold in them the quintessence of pain and silence instead of words. The sun passeth over them, but they are the bony remains of hopes interred in the slaughter fields of dreams, gathered by the frosty sighs of night and left at the doorstep of dawn. These are scream poems, silent screams that are etched into the decayed walls of lost cities—screams that howl with every breeze—pleading hands, moaning lost voices. They are a pain too deep to be spoken, but too agitated to remain still, and were conceived out of stifled howls that were never fully voiced—or perhaps never truly heard. The last thing to note is this: Naheed Qamar’s poetry is not observation; it is the tear of a century, penned with “ink burning on tiny hands” (ننھے ہاتھوں پہ جلتی ہوئی روشنائی). It is the account of that “fruitless toil” (بے سود مشقت) which speaks of each faceless spirit homeless “in your earth and sky” (تیرے ارض و سما میں). Maybe this is the reason that her poetry rents a chasm within the soul while being read – as if an injured silence (گھائل چپ) had all at once become audible. And this rift is, in fact, the path of that light passing through the air perfumed with the aroma of moth orchids to reach the remotest recesses of our soul. Leave a Reply Cancel Reply Logged in as admin. Edit your profile. Log out? Required fields are marked * Message*

Dwelling in the Light of Fragments: A Study of Dhaji Dhaji Roshni by Qandeel Badr Hammad Niazi Dhaji Dhaji Roshni, a recently published Urdu poetry collection from Balochistan written by  Qandeel Badr. Qandeel Badr belongs to “Gohar Ghar”, a prominent literary family of Balochistan. Gohar Ghar has already made a significant mark in Pakistani as well as Balochistani literature. Notable literary names from this family such as Saeed Gohar, the late Daniyal Tareer, Injeel Saheefa, Bilal Aswad, and Tamseel Hafsa — are no longer unfamiliar names in the world of Pakistani literature. The title of the book meaning “Shimmering in Shards of Light” is both an aesthetic and emotional thesis. The poet writes in fragments, in dissolving images, in luminous pain. But these fragments do not scatter without purpose; they orbit an unspoken center, a searching, a presence that feels like absence. The voice that emerges from this book is distinctively feminine, vulnerable but not weak, delicate yet defiant, drenched in metaphor, myth, and a longing that feels older than language itself. This is poetry that resists linearity. The poems do not tell stories so much as they invoke visions. At times, the poetess is a girl made of jal (burning water), at others she is a shattered mirror, a swallowed scream, a walking void. What’s compelling is how fluently she merges the personal with the cosmic. The pain of lost love becomes indistinguishable from a spiritual vacuum. The metaphor of a train’s whistle becomes the sound of separation, exile, the dividing of self and beloved. A window that remains half-open becomes a portal to unfinished dreams. The language is never didactic or direct, it pulses with shadows and reflections, like a lake trembling in wind. Elemental imagery dominates this collection. The poet frequently identifies herself with water, fire, earth, and light. She is rain if she cries, a cloud if she stays silent. Her body is a clay pot spinning endlessly on a wheel, her soul flickers like a dying lantern. In many moments, she does not describe feelings but becomes them. This method of merging subject and metaphor gives her verses a surreal, Sufi-like resonance. She writes, “I drank from the cup of wonder,” and elsewhere, “I dissolved into light.” One cannot tell whether these lines are spiritual awakenings or breakdowns, and perhaps they are both. The sacred and the broken meet constantly in her verse, and it is precisely in their overlap that the poetry breathes most deeply. Her relationship with the divine is as fraught as her relationship with the self. In several poems, she addresses God directly, questioning His silence. She asks, with haunting clarity, whether revelation has stopped coming her way. Even the act of learning letters “from alif to meem” is turned into a spiritual practice, and when this practice fails to yield presence, it leaves behind only exhaustion. This distance from divinity doesn’t result in atheism; rather, it leads to a deeper hunger. She searches the void for signs, and in doing so, offers us a theology of absence, where even silence is a kind of speech. Love in this collection is never romanticized. It is dismembering. It is exile. It is divine and dangerous. The beloved is often faceless, or fused with images of God, stars, or silence. One poem asks: “Was it love, or just the light I got lost in?” The speaker’s identity blurs with that of the other. Even gender becomes fluid at times. The poet writes from a female perspective, but her images reject stereotype. The woman here is not waiting or weeping in conventional ways.She is building rhythms from birdsong, planting suns on her forehead, and arguing with angels. She is writing herself back into myth and scripture with a voice that is both ancient and blisteringly current. Stylistically, the poet makes excellent use of free verse, though echoes of classical ghazal rhythms ripple throughout. Repetition is used not just for musicality, but as an emotional incantation. The lines often spiral inward, each one digging deeper into a central wound. Many poems end not with conclusions but with questions, voids, silences. This refusal to provide resolution is honest; it mirrors the very nature of longing, the very texture of grief. Despite its surrealism, the poetry remains rooted in the lived realities of the subcontinent. References to trains, gumbads, pottery wheels, wedding windows, and familial memory all tie the poet’s voice to the regional and the specific. And yet, she lifts these images into a universal register. The poem where she says she was written with her father’s pen and lost inside her mother’s palm is both intimate and mythic—a memory folded into metaphor, a life turned into symbol. Poems like “Tan Bartan”, “Idraak”, “Main ne zindagi doobtay sooraj se seekhi hai”, “Shaam dhalnay ko hai”, “Lori”, and “Pyaala bhar chuka hai” are certainly a beautiful addition to modern Urdu poetry. This poetry, with its Eastern infused, gendered tone, is rarely seen in the contemporary literary landscape of Balochistan. I hope that reading this book will introduce you to a beautiful tone of our new poetry. In the end, Dhaji Dhaji Roshni is not merely a poetry collection۔It is a spiritual topography, an echo chamber, a mirror house filled with flickering lamps and trembling reflections. It does not seek to resolve the tension between presence and absence, or light and shadow. Instead, it invites us to dwell inside that very tension. This is a voice that whispers, chants, weeps, and sometimes screams—but always, it illuminates. The shards may be scattered, but they shine. The book is published by Gohar Ghar Publication Quetta. Leave a Reply Cancel Reply Logged in as admin. Edit your profile. Log out? Required fields are marked * Message*