Ko‘ngil Shahri

After Dil Ichra I wanted not to leave the heart but to make it larger. That is why Ko‘ngil Shahri appears - the city of the heart. For me the very word ko‘ngil is very important here. In Uzbek and in the wider Turkic poetic usage it can mean not only “heart” in the narrow sense but a whole inner world: feeling, thought, intention, memory, desire, spiritual state. Scholars of Uzbek poetics note directly that ko‘ngil is semantically wider than the close words yurak, qalb and dil. This coincides perfectly with the movement of the album: after the intimate dil the inner space turns into a whole city.

A city is a complex image. It has streets, noise, doors, a center and outskirts. But in the song I almost do not describe its architecture. The main event is another: “to the city called the Heart, the King comes.” For me this changes the meaning of the whole inner world. The city does not exist for the sake of its own endless self-analysis. It prepares for the presence of One who does not belong to this city and yet is able to make it His abode.

The line “for the One whom earth and sky could not contain, the heart becomes an abode” enters a very ancient and powerful Sufi circle of images. In mystical literature the saying was widely quoted that the heavens and the earth do not “contain” God, while the humble heart of the believer becomes a special place of presence. I am careful about the status of such sayings and do not want to substitute dogma for poetry. But precisely as poetic language this paradox is incredibly close to me: the smallest thing within a person is able to open to the Infinite.

For Navoi too the theme of the heart has enormous depth. In official Uzbek materials on Hayrat al-Abrar his image of the “Kaaba of the heart” is cited, an inner sanctuary connected with Divine manifestation. And historically Navoi’s link with Jami and the Naqshbandi circle is well attested: Jami was for him not only a great poet but also a spiritual authority. So the name of Navoi in my song is not decorative. It brings in the whole Central Asian cultural layer - but at once I myself set a limit to it.

“Do not raise a clamor in the name of Navoi - find the soul that lives within.” This line is very dear to me. It seems addressed to me myself as well. One can endlessly surround music with the right names, Sufi terms, quotations, Bukhara, Samarkand, Navoi, Rumi - and still not take a single inner step. Tradition easily becomes a beautiful noise if a person uses it for self-affirmation. So the song asks not to repeat the name but to find the living content.

In this sense the purification of the heart - “pok etgil” - is also not moral cosmetics. For me it is the freeing of the inner city from what has taken up too much room in it: vanity, noise, fear, the need to control everything. In Rumi the heart often becomes a mirror that must be cleaned of rust so that it can reflect. In Ko‘ngil Shahri I rather see it as a dargoh - an abode, a court, a threshold. But the movement is the same: the inner must become more transparent.

I also like the word “King.” It does not allow the inner world to be turned into a self-sufficient psychology. I do not want to say that everything important is located “in me” simply because I am a human being. On the contrary: the city receives its meaning from the One who comes. There is in this a modesty that matters to me. The heart is great not because my ego is huge, but because it is able to be turned toward what is greater than me.

That is why Ko‘ngil Shahri is a bridge between Dil Ichra and Sukunat. First the heart ceases to be my property. Then it expands to a city and an abode. And only after this does the silence arise in which there is no longer any need to keep explaining who has come and what exactly happened. A true abode at some point stops speaking about itself.