Concept

In this tale from Jami's Haft Awrang, a heart-lost lover has burned for years in devotion to his Beloved, intoxicated by her presence and bound by fidelity. When fate forces their separation, he weeps at the farewell, yet only one of his eyes sheds tears while the other, hardened by the fire within the heart, stays dry. As punishment, he drives a nail into the tearless eye so that it will never behold the Beloved again. Read allegorically, the Beloved is the Divine, and the tears of parting are the seeker's sincere grief and burning in the pain of separation (firaq). The eye that fails to weep at the loss of the Beloved has taken no true part in the anguish of love, and so it is denied the reward of contemplation (mushahada) at reunion (visal). The tale teaches that only the eye moved to tears by longing earns the right to gaze upon the Beloved's beauty, and that unfelt, tearless love disqualifies the seeker from the vision of union.