Safar is a journey, any length, any direction. The song opens on it, ageh ye rooz beri safar, if one day you go on a journey, and never says where to or for how long; every verse after is what the singer will do if the traveller does not come back. Aslani wrote the words and the music himself and released the song in 1977, two years before a revolution sent much of his audience on journeys with no return date.

Bi-khabar joins khabar, news, to bi-, without. Beri zeh pisham bi-khabar: leaving without news, no warning before and no word after. Between people separated by distance khabar is not small talk, it is the proof of being alive, asked for first in every call. In the line the going and the silence are one act.

Asir is a captive, a prisoner. The singer's first answer to being left is asir-e royâhâ misham, I become a captive of dreams. Classical Persian love poetry held the lover captive for centuries, heart as prisoner, beloved as keeper; the song takes the old image and locks it onto dreams, a cell that only appears once the beloved is gone.

Diyâr is land in the register of longing: the stretch of country a person is from, older and softer than keshvar, country. The song reaches for it again and again, always somewhere else, diyâr-e yâri, a beloved's land, then oon diyâri ke toosh mano tanhâ nazâri, that land where you will not leave me alone. The place is never named. Diyâr rarely is; it is the word for land as missed, not as mapped.

Âvâz is song as the act of singing, and in Persian classical music the name of the unaccompanied vocal art itself. It is where every verse of this song lands: ke bâz barât âvâz bekhoonam, so I can sing for you again, the answer to leaving, to forgetting, to sorrow arriving with a name. The recording ends on the line alone, sung three times over.