Translation into English
On severing ties, neither you wept, nor did I,
But what is this — that neither you nor I slept peacefully?
He was a companion, yet there was no harmony with him,
It was a state of sun and shade — yet there was no separation.
There were hostilities, there was neglect, there were many grievances,
But in the one who left, everything existed — except betrayal.
At the time of parting, our ghazal was in those eyes,
That very ghazal which had never been recited to anyone.
Sometimes the state was such that there was great unity between the two,
Sometimes the stage felt as if there was no acquaintance at all.
Context: Naseer Turabi wrote this ghazal on 16 December 1971, grieving the separation of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from West Pakistan.
He used the metaphor of a "humsafar" (fellow traveller) to express the pain of losing a companion that was never truly in harmony, yet whose departure left a wound that could never heal.