Finding a voice

It’s one of the most haunting sounds I’ve ever heard — the plangent wail of a female Sufi singer from Afghanistan.

It’s one of the most haunting sounds I’ve ever heard — the plangent wail of a female Sufi singer from Afghanistan. Her song, ‘Gar konad saheb-e-man’, which translates as ‘If my eyes meet the eyes of the Lord’, was filled with religious longing for the divine; austere and otherworldly, yet also deeply persuasive, engaging, absorbing, taking over the mind.