CP Post: Kashmir and Agha Shahid Ali in "Farewell"

From what we have studied on Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry, certain recurring motifs include the use of letters and addressing another in order to build on this communication within a state of displacement. That there is an invisible no-one whom he addresses adds to the displacement in the works; a shift from a center wherein he may reside; a shift from Kashmir.

In class we discussed his own position towards Kashmir and just how far he can connect to it with authenticity; this appears an unanswerable argument unless a response is taken straight from the poets mouth—and here my concern begins; to understand the poet’s relation to Kashmir in more direct terms—for this is what the poet brings in his poem “Farewell.” Insofar as we are concerned with interpreting the work as directed towards the country rather than a lover, friend or relative, it is quite possible to enter the poet’s description of his intimate relation with his country.

What “Farewell” brings to us is a direct address to Kashmir. His letters are now addressed to the nation itself. Essentially, it feels like he’s addressing the heart and spirit of Kashmir—a loss without which “even the stones were buried”; he compares it to a weaver, a collector of “fallen fleece” who “weighs the hairs on the jeweler’s balance” – where the country’s components are its fallen fleece, where the country stands at judgment on them and ascertains a balance, Kashmir for Shahid takes on a more divine role, and at the same time a role more mortal, a supporting force without which “the defenseless would have no weapons.” The divine aspect is also found in “A Country Without A Post Office” and reiterated in the next line “who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise?” For Kashmir is lost; Kashmir the divine, lacking omnipresence, has in fact a mortal spirit. “This country I have stitched to your shadow” is the country bereft of the spirit that carried its life; a shadow to which the poet desperately tries forging unison.

 The poet’s direct address also highlights his intimacy with the country; where his “memory” coincides with the nation’s “history.” That this address could also be to someone connected by bonds of blood or love adds to this closeness—the nation may as well act the forsaken lover to the poet’s wanton affections. And herein we find a prevalent theme of guilt; the poets own guilt in his relation, or more specifically his abandonment of that relation, to Kashmir. “At a certain point I lost track of you,” he proclaims, “you needed me/you needed to perfect me: In your absence you polished me into the Enemy”; the poet here takes a turn to accusation, to find fault in the land to match his own guilt. This raises the relation to something more intimate than before as the poet’s accusation holds the taste of a deceived beloved—how, in Shahid’s shift to another land, the country rejected him itself as it could not turn him into what it desired. “In your absence” – for Kashmir, too, played the departed lover—“you polished me into the Enemy”; this reflects Shahid’s view of his place in Kashmir—he the abandoner, the wretched figure who split what was once whole, where memory and history coincided, is now the Enemy, the outsider whose memory now coincides with the nation’s history at a more negative level—perhaps what adds to the distance between both. As Shahid tries redefining that severed bond, his claim of “I am everything you lost” seems to draw him in as the missing soul of Kashmir for which he mourns. Here one could say he refers to his own loss of the Kashmir in him—this may be taking it too far, but cannot be discounted if he once united both nation and himself so that one is the other and the loss of one is the loss of the other. After all, his memory “gets in the way of” the nation’s own, described as though separation of the two is impossible means the former point has some standing in validity.

The chance for redemption, too, seems impossible as the poet ends on “You can’t forgive me” and a lingering sense of loss with “if only somehow you could have been mine/what would not have been possible in the world?” Here the bond of two lovers solidifies and extinguishes simultaneously; the poet takes a more possessive stance toward Kashmir, and yet acknowledges his loss of this possession. He also brings the reader close to his own position once more as we consider the impact of the loss on him as a whole—how the loss of Kashmir means he is bereft of infinite possibilities.

Kashmir the divine, Kashmir the homeland, Kashmir the bereft and scornful lover, Kashmir which will never be attained again—the poet’s own place within and without Kashmir resonates in “Farewell” as he bids this selfsame farewell to a bond, to what was his and was him, forevermore. It is not Shahid with faux claims of having a relation with ones abandoned land, as we argued in class-- in fact, Shahid acknowledges the messy nature of this relation he has, an intermingling of memory and history, of unity and severance, of his own guilty apologies coinciding with accusations, for neither he nor Kashmir stayed or tried for cohesion. This, to Agha Shahid Ali, is Kashmir, and his relation to it; within this there is no room left for redemption. The exilic figure’s own self, his own potential dismembered from that of the nation’s, leaves nothing behind but a profound loss.