Dark Night, Whirlpools, and the Limits of Consolation
(after Hafez)
“Things happen for a reason; nothing happens randomly,” say many Native American traditions—it is only that we are not wise enough to understand the reason.
Yesterday, I received a call from a friend I had not seen in some time. Over the years, his messages had grown sparse and heavy. First, the loss of his mother. Then his father. Then his sister. Now, his son is preparing to leave for an Ivy League university far away, the final quiet departure from a home already emptied by grief.
When he spoke, he sounded devastated—fog-bound, unmoored—like a boat that has lost its rudder. The erudite professor I once knew was still there, but obscured, submerged beneath cumulative loss.
As a physician trained also in cultural anthropology—and shaped early on by close work with psychologists in Havana—I have learned that, in such moments, the most meaningful offering is rarely an explanation. It is presence. Attentive listening. The humility to sit beside suffering without trying to rescue it too quickly with words.
Yet as I listened, I found myself wondering: what would Hafez have made of this moment? I did not open the divan for a formal fāl-e Hafez, yet almost unbidden, a verse arrived—as if carried across distance from Shiraz by way of Tehran.
The verse (classical Persian, common recension)
شبِ تاریک و بیمِ موج و گردابی چنین هایل
کجا دانند حالِ ما، سبکبارانِ ساحلها
Shab-e târik o bīm-e mowj o gardābi chenīn hāyel
Kojā dānand hāl-e mā, sabok-bārān-e sāhel-hā
Literal sense
A dark night, fear of the waves, and such a terrifying whirlpool—
How could those lightly burdened on the shore know our condition?
In two lines, Hafez draws a sharp moral and epistemic boundary: experience versus safety, immersion versus distance.
Reading the verse alongside grief
The speaker is not observing the sea; he is in it. Darkness, waves, and whirlpools are not metaphors about danger—they are danger itself. Those on the shore are not cruel or indifferent; they are simply uninitiated.
Hafez reminds us that there are states of human experience that cannot be grasped without exposure, without risk. This is not an attack on compassion, but a warning against easy counsel, tidy explanations, and reassurance delivered from the dry safety of the shore.
In Sufi terms, the sea is Truth, the whirlpool the annihilation of the self (fanā’), and the dark night a state of bewilderment (ḥayrat). Those who remain lightly burdened—secure, rational, unshaken—may speak fluently, even wisely. But they have not drowned. They have not lost their footing.
Ethically, the verse feels almost anthropological in its precision. It critiques moralism without proximity, judgment without vulnerability, advice without shared risk. The shore is comfortable, and comfort breeds certainty. Hafez does not accuse those on shore of malice—only of epistemic innocence.
Psychologically, the whirlpool is not only external. It is grief layered upon grief; love made fragile by loss; devotion that continues even when retreat would be easier. From this angle, the verse sounds strikingly modern:
Only those inside the storm truly understand the storm.
What the verse offered in that moment
As I listened to my friend, Hafez did not give me an answer to offer him. He gave me something more valuable: permission not to pretend I understood fully, and reassurance that my role was not to pull him toward shore, but to acknowledge the waters he was already navigating.
In that sense, the coincidence between the verse and the counselling moment did not feel accidental. It felt congruous—an old voice articulating, with unsurpassed economy, a truth clinicians, anthropologists, and mourners eventually learn the hard way.
One distilled sentence, Hafez at his sharpest:
Do not expect understanding from those who have never risked drowning
For a friend standing where loss has accumulated faster than meaning, the most ethical advice is not instruction but orientation. Among the Persian masters, three ghazals (or quatrain clusters) speak without condescension—they do not rush grief, nor spiritualize it away.
Below are three precise, time-tested choices, each offering a different kind of counsel. If I had to choose one, I would choose Hafez.
🌊
Hafez — the ethics of staying afloat
Ghazal (anchor verse):
Shab-e târik o bīm-e mowj o gardābi chenīn hāyel…
(A dark night, fear of waves, and such a whirlpool…)
Why this is right for your friend:
This ghazal does not ask for optimism, endurance, or transcendence. It legitimizes being overwhelmed. Its advice is implicit:
You are not failing. You are at sea.
Hafez’s counsel is moral rather than practical:
Do not accept judgment—from yourself or others—while you are still in the storm.
This is the most humane advice for cumulative grief.
🔥
Rumi — grief as an initiatory fire
Ghazal (well-known counsel):
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
Why this helps (but only after Hafez):
Rumi speaks from after the breaking. His advice is transformative, not consoling. He suggests that loss is not meaningless—but he assumes the listener can already breathe.
This ghazal is best offered later, when your friend can hear possibility without feeling erased by it.
🍷
Omar Khayyam — mercy through realism
Rubāʿī cluster (paraphrased):
Be gentle—life passes quickly, and the rules were never explained.
Why Khayyam matters here:
Khayyam offers permission to stop making sense. His advice is almost clinical in its compassion:
Do not moralize suffering. Do not force coherence where none is promised.
For some mourners, this is the most relieving voice of all.
🕊️
If you offer only one text
Give your friend Hafez’s sea ghazal, and say nothing more than:
This is not advice. It is recognition.
