I’ll never know the fateof my worn-outcap. I took a handkerchief from my pocketand tied it on my head. It’s not rightfor the humanmane to sway. The doors tightened on the still-closed grave,waiting for the evening prayer. When the call sounded,the sparrowsflung up in joyand reachedhome. After the evening prayer,I knew the body of the Sufiby the embroidered cloth that covered himfor many hundred years. I bent my own body downto his feet, reciting verses. Two eyes changed to two tearsthat shone on the embroidered cloth. The tears changed to two sparrowsflung up into nowhere. I had gone somewhereinside him.I couldn’t come out. *His memory is like a worn Arabic textI’m afraid to open,afraid I’ll tear it. But once I made a pilgrimage there. How can this make sense? As I was leaving the shrine,something explodedinto the cloud of sparrows,then a flurry of severed wings. Everyone was runninghere and there,screaming. I ran into the shrineagain, into the shrine’spure silence. Now I watch a sparrowwith its bleeding beakwriting somethingon the grave. Translating its pain–Where will I go now? There is a graveto diginside me. ఒక సూఫీ సాయంత్రంఏమైందో ఆ మాసిన టోపీ.ప్యాంటుజేబుల్లోంచి కర్చీఫ్ ముక్క తీసితలకు చుట్టానుజుట్టు జూలు విదిలించకూడదుసమాధి చుట్టూ బిగుసుకున్న తలుపులుఇంకా తెరుచుకోలేదుఎదురుచూపులుఅసర్కోసంఅజా పిలుపుతోపావురాలు ఆకాశం గూటిలోకి రెక్కలెగరేశాయిపుట్టింటికి చేరుకున్న ఆనందం వాటికి.చాన్నాళ్లకుఅసర్ సమాజ్ అయ్యింది.వందేళ్ళ క్రితం కన్ను మూసిఆ రాళ్ళల్లోంచి మళ్ళీ కళ్ళు తెరుచుకుంటున్నఆ సూఫీ ముని కప్పుకున్న చాదర్లోంచిఆయన దేహంలోకి చూశానునా దేహాన్నంతా వొంపిఆయనని కళ్ళకి అద్దుకున్నాను.దువా చదువుతూమూతపడిన రెండు కళ్ళూ రెండు నీటి చుక్కలైఆయన చాదర్పైన వాలాయిఅవి రెండు పక్షులైఎటో టపటపా శబ్దం చేసుకుంటూ వెళ్ళాయిబయటికి రాలేకపోయానుఆయనలోంచి.ఒక పాతకాలపు అరబ్బీ పుస్తకంఏ కాస్త మోటుగా తాకినాచిరిగిపోతుందేమోనన్నంత భయంగా తెరిచినట్టుఆయన జ్ఞాపకాల్లోకి మెల్లిగా వెళ్ళాను.ఈ యాత్రకి అర్థం ఏమిటి?బయటికి అడుగుపెట్టానో లేదో!ఒక పక్షుల సమూహంలోఏదో పేలిన శబ్దం.అందరూ పారిపోతున్నారుఎవరూ కనిపించడం లేదుకత్తులు తప్ప.ఏమీ వినిపించడం లేదుకొసప్రాణం అరుపులు తప్ప.మళ్ళీ లోపలికి పరిగెత్తానుఅక్కడా నిశ్శబ్దంఒక పక్షి మాత్రం నెత్తుటి రెక్కతోదర్గా రాయి మీద ఏదో రాస్తోందిచాదర్లోకి ముక్కు దూర్చివెక్కివెక్కి ఏడుస్తున్నట్టుగా వుందిఎక్కడికి వెళ్ళాలిక?నాలోపల వొక సమాధి తవ్వుకుంటున్నాను2002
Evening with a Sufi
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“Evening with a Sufi” from EVENING WITH A SUFI by Afsar Mohammad.
Published by Red River on January 10, 2022.
English Copyright © 2022 by Afsar Mohammad & Shamala Gallagher.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Afsar Mohammad teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He writes in his home language of Telugu and English. He has published a collection of translations from Telugu to English, Evening with a Sufi. He has also published 6 volumes of poetry in Telugu, and his collection of short stories, Sahil Will Come and Other Stories, was published by Orient BlackSwan in 2025 (Tr. Alladi Uma and M.Sridhar). Afsar has also published two monographs—The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013), and Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He is now working on the translations of Sufi writings from Telugu to English.
Afsar Mohammad teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He writes in his home language of Telugu and English. He has published a collection of translations from Telugu to English, Evening with a Sufi. He has also published 6 volumes of poetry in Telugu, and his collection of short stories, Sahil Will Come and Other Stories, was published by Orient BlackSwan in 2025 (Tr. Alladi Uma and M.Sridhar). Afsar has also published two monographs—The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013), and Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He is now working on the translations of Sufi writings from Telugu to English.
Shamala Gallagher is the author of a poetry collection, Late Morning When the World Burns (The Cultural Society, March 2019). Her work appears in Poetry, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Shenandoah, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, she holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and a PhD from the University of Georgia. She lives with her family in Athens, GA.
This volume brings together, for the first time in English translation (translated by the poet in collaboration with Shamala Gallagher) the selected, and often groundbreaking poetry of the celebrated Telugu poet Afsar Mohammad, known for his trendsetting poetry and literary criticism in the post-1980s Telugu literary culture. Beside an erudite translator’s note from Gallagher, Evening with a Sufi also contains two in-depth essays on Afsar Mohammad’s poetry by David Shulman and Cheran Rudhramoorthy, plus an interview with the poet by poet and translator Rohith.
"Every time I read his poems, Afsar Mohammad fascinates me with his hard-hitting, blunt images....There is a passion of a Sufi and the pains of a common man in his poems."
— Gulzar
"Afsar Mohammad’s Evening with a Sufi conjures for me devotion and rapture mapped onto the human need for bread, need for belonging to place, and the longing for writing the unwritten. Each poem spells the promise of a better world. Afsar is a poet whose heart aches for justice; these poems ‘bend their bodies down’ to the feet of the Sufi, reciting. Translated from the Telugu, Shamala Gallagher renders a crisp poetry in English that will stun with their sharp mysticism. Afsar is a poet’s poet—a poet in service of all humankind."
— Rajiv Mohabir
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