Form and Style

The Country Without a Post Office has been penned down in four sections. Each section of the poem is
composed of three eight-line stanzas (octaves) that rhymed as ABCDDCBA. This symmetrical, yet
unconventional rhyme scheme narrates the movement of the speaker, who goes up and down the
minaret, and in and out of the darkness. Each line of the poem consists of around ten syllables,
providing one more restriction on the poet. These restrictions help in creating a tight linguistic
environment that equals the suffocating emotional state of the speaker, who tries hard to understand
himself and the reason for war raged in his homeland.

The Country Without a Post Office Analysis

The poem, which can be read in full here, begins with an epigraph, which is quite similar to Gerard
Manley Hopkins’s “Terrible Sonnets” that starts like: “I Wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.”

Section 1

Above is the first section of The Country Without a Post Office wherein the poet speaker comes back to
his country, Kashmir, where a “minaret has been entombed.” The poet sees a man who soaks the wicks
of clay lamps in mustard oil and climbs the steps of the mosque each night to read messages that are
scratched on planets. Through these lines, the speaker has tried to develop an introduction before
starting his poem and by picturizing a person climbing the stairs and reading “messages scratched on
planets,” he introduces the image of an astrologer, and when he starts canceling stamps bank stamps of
the letters that have doomed addresses, he picturizes the images of a postal inspector whose function is
to sort out and distribute the letters sent to the post office. The mention of doomed addresses on the
letters further shows that many people have either migrated to some other places, or their homes have
been burnt by the violence in Kashmir. Moreover, by mentioning minaret in the poem, the poet wants
to show the Islamic culture wherein a minaret is used by a muezzin to call the faithful people to prayer.

In the second stanza, the poet brings to light the gory state of Kashmir, which has been facing communal
conflicts since the 1990s. The violence in the state has been so widespread and bloody that people shift
to the plain areas, or become refugees by leaving their ancestral properties. The Kashmir Valley, which is
also known as “Paradise” for its beauty, today has become the valley of death of innocent Hindus and
Muslims. The speaker says, “The soldiers light it, hone the flames, burn our world to sudden papier-
mâché.” The reference of “us” and “them” in the fifth line of this section means the Hindus and
Muslims, who are burning houses of each other. The speaker says, “Now every night we bury our houses
—theirs, the ones left empty. And today there is no muezzin to call to prayer, but still, we are faithful in
fighting back and burning houses of our brethren.

Section 2

This section of The Country Without a Post Office though repeats previously used images, this time they
have been used in a very different context. The words like “The fire” and “The dark” have been perfectly
used to picture the unrest condition of Kashmir. When the speaker says, “One card lying on the street
says, “I want to be he who pours blood,” he very smartly picturizes the ceased postal delivery system in
the country. Here the speaker himself comes ahead to help “cancel stamps” and open the lines of
communication.

In the second stanza of this part, the speaker brings forth a character that the speaker wishes to have a
word with but gets unable. The stamps have no name of the nation, this may be because Kashmir isn’t
an independent country, and both India and Pakistan are fighting on and on to capture this disputed
territory. The narrator searches for this person through the ruins and smoldering houses, but can’t as
“Everything is finished, nothing remains.”

The speaker makes use of symbolic images of fires and silence in the last stanza of this section. He does
so to get a clue to the direction he should take. He says, “Only silence can now trace my letters to him,
Or in a dead office the dark panes.”

Section 3

In the third section of the poem, the speaker assumes the role of the muezzin, and exhorts the faithful
people to reach him and buy stamps before he leaves his ghost, or is killed by someone in the violence.
He says, “I’m keeper of the minaret since the muezzin died. Come soon, I’m alive.” The use of phrases
like “glutinous wash” means the backs of the stamps, which is wet now and will blossom into autumn’s
final country.

Further, in the second stanza, the speaker talks about his own heart, and even talks to his different side.
The inside fire he talks about is the fire of his own, and the various identities that he (Ali) has lived
through as an Indian-born Kashmiri. The violence between the Hindus, Muslims, and the gory state of
Kashmir has torn Ali apart. He empathizes with both communities. In the last stanza of the poem, the
speaker finds his own voice by unearthing “the remains” of the voices of others, particularly the muezzin
who is no more now.

Section 4

Above is the last stanza of The Country Without a Post Office wherein the speaker himself takes the
responsibility of reading letters that have piled up. He says, “I read them, letters of lovers, the mad ones,
and mine to him from whom no answers came.” Through this line, he wants to say that my reading of
the piled-up letters go vain as there is no one to answer, and there is no one who can listen to me. All
my cries are like the dead letters, which were sent to this deaf world. Here he may mean that he did his
best to bring into the rampant violence of Kashmir and the atrocities being done against Kashmiri, but
no country and no organization came ahead to help Kashmir. Here he compares his cries to “dead letters
sent/to this world whose end was near.”

The second stanza of the poem shows how the speaker (poet) shifts from “we” to “us” and signal that all
these letters are own, and words written in them are our own cries that break like bodies in prisons. The
speaker is now into a realm of madness, of indistinguishable identity. He is lost, watching just his own
“Mad silhouette.” The speaker uses the letters of a prisoner in the final stanza to metaphorically
comment on his own situation and desperation. In the last few lines of the poem, the poem becomes
personal when the speaker states, “I want to live forever,” this may be because he himself is about to
die.

Personal Commentary

The poem The Country Without a Post Office is undoubtedly one of the best masterpieces of Aga Shahid
Ali. The poem vents out the pangs of the poet who is internally broken by the widespread violence in
Kashmir, and how the government machinery like post offices stopped working due to the communal
distress between the Hindus and Muslims communities. Through the poem, the poet, who acts as a
speaker in the poem, brings forth and picturizes the realistic pictures of Kashmir violence, and left the
postal machinery of the country completely halted.

About Agha Shahid Ali

Agha Shahid Ali is well-known for writing poetry related to lose and longing, pangs and pains. Born in
Delhi on February 4, 1949, but raised in Kashmir in an enlightened, sophisticated, and culturally-rich
Muslim family, Ali obtained his master’s degree in English from Delhi University and later immigrated to
the United States in 1976, to obtain a Ph.D. in English from Pennsylvania State University. Though he
claimed Urdu as his mother tongue, he wrote his first poem in the English language when he was just
twelve years old. Almost all of his poetic works have been written in ghazalesque style. A large number
of Ali’s poetic works revolve around Kashmir and Kashmiris. In almost all of his poetic works, he has
picturized the pitiable state of Kashmir, which has been crippled by the continuous violence