From a heavily pixelated, thumb-nail sized video(1), the cry of a tinny, warbled saroz and the beat of a faint, grainy damboora together sound a lossy lament. In one version of an infinitely versioned folktale(2), a lover stunned with grief disappears into a chorus of cypress trees. And in a zikrkhana by the sea a group of women chant praise and remembrance in palimpsestic tongues(3). 

the wanderers taught me longing / the mystics taught me lament (reprise) is a distilled audio edit of a work currently on exhibition at Auto Italia (London) as part of the show Noorani Metal Sound. Collaging together ripped audio, a recollected story and a field recording, this three part audio work juxtaposes together three different modes of recall. The audio is pieced together in a kind of wondering about how sound travels through mouths and memory, through compressed, copied, and degraded files, through movements and meaning.

(1)  Recorded somewhere in the hills of Mashkey, this audio is one of the final traces of Dr. Deen Muhammad, one of the thousands disappeared in Balochistan at the hands of the Pakistani state. His daughter, renowned activist Sammi Deen Baloch writes “even today, the hills, deserts, fields and streets of Balochistan, in the echoes of your damboora, bear witness to your love”.

(2) The story of Laila and Majnun, English translation below. 

(3)  A Zikr (invocation) ritual practiced specifically in the coastal belt of Balochistan. The sounds, rhythms, language and movements of this particular tradition of Zikr are unique to this region and an expression of a long history of Indian ocean sonic exchanges. Much of the chanting and invocation is done in untranslatable amalgams of Arabic Balochi Swahili and Farsi.

Laila Majnu

There are of course 100,000 versions of this story. The story of Laila and Majnun. Laila means night and Majnun is the mad one. The story is told across South Asia, Iran, Central Asia in its many, many different forms. But this version is one that stayed with me forever. I could never forget this telling of the final encounter of Laila and Majnun, star-crossed tragic lovers torn apart by matters beyond their control, usually the conditions and conventions of hegemonic society. 

This last meeting happens in a forest of Cypress trees. Cypress trees are known for their height and for their long, seemingly immortal lifespans. In the Cypress forest Laila tells Majnun that they can never meet again and as she walks away from him he falls to his knees and calls out: Laila. Laila, Laila, Laila. From that moment on, Majnun can only speak one word, and that is the word he speaks again and again and again. Majnun has also become an Echo in love  - but in this story becoming Echo is not a fall, it is sacred, divine exaltation. 

Decades later, Laila, still in love, pining and longing, returns to the forest in search of Majnun. But she finds that the forest has changed. The once tall Cypress trees have all bent down. Just like Majnun, they kneel in prayer and all the trees in the forest echo endlessly just one word. Laila, Laila, Laila.  Laila finds her way to the exact spot where she had left Majnun decades ago, and finds there again a Cypress tree repeating her name. She asks the tree, are you Majnun? And the tree replies: No. I am Laila. 

The whole forest of trees is possessed by Majnun’s grief, and as they sound this grief together, Majnun becomes many and the forest becomes one. In the soundings of Majnun’s grief the forest learns worship, and in the echoes of the forest Majnun and his beloved both become expansive, become immortal. In the repetition of her name the memory of Laila is settled into Majnun’s bones and being and the whole forest has attuned itself to the beat of the mad one’s burning heart. 

Zahra Malkani

Zahra Malkani is a multidisciplinary artist from Karachi, Pakistan. Collaboration, research, and pedagogy are at the heart of her practice. Working across multiple media she explores the politics of development and dispossession through the lens of dissident ecological knowledges and traditions of environmental resistance. She is a co-founder with Shahana Rajani of Karachi LaJamia: experimental and ecstatic ecopedagogies in collaboration with ongoing movements in defense of land and water in the city. 
Zahra’s work has been supported by institutions such as the Sharjah Art Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Rockbund Arts Museum. She has been awarded residencies at Academie Schloss Solitude, the Jan Van Eyck Academie, La Becque and the Rijksmuseum. Her work has circulated internationally, more recently in spaces such as KonsthallC (Stockholm), Nottingham Contemporary (UK), the V&A Museum (UK) and Colomboscope (Sri Lanka). She has published writings in journals like Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, the Journal of Architectural Education and online publications such as Against Catastrophe and Decolonial Hacker. Zahra was nominated for the Jameel Art Prize from the V&A Museum and Jameel Arts Foundation (2023), and is a recipient of the Asia Arts Gamechanger Award (2024).