he relationship between a city and literature is reciprocal. The city nourishes the imagination of writers while writers shape the cultural landscape of the city. The life, places, and spaces of a city provide writers with themes and settings for their fiction and poetry. In turn, storytellers and poets transform the city’s cultural landscape.

A city’s creative energy flows through books, literary discussions and poetry sessions. Every city possesses a unique language that speaks to its residents and visitors – a language distinct from the tongues of its citizens. This language has no specific name, yet it communicates consistently and profoundly. The city speaks through its mansions, walls, windows, streets, alleys, highways, bazaars, chowks, carnivals, tea houses, cuisines, fashions, art galleries and bookstalls. It conveys meaning through its bustling hubs and desolate corners, through its seasons, its springs and autumns, its trees and flowers, its birds and its silences. The city shouts. The city whispers. The city has its dreams and nightmares. It invents grand ideas and becomes the arena for their clashes. The city is a crucible of the world’s greatest paradoxes.

The city speaks in monologues. It wages wars – both real and imagined. It harbours its own heavens and hells, its utopias and heterotopias. All these facets share a common language, a shared grammar and a unified poetics. While people readily learn the languages spoken within a city, they rarely grasp the language of the city itself. Most inhabitants remain oblivious to its unique voice, its silent dialogue. They excel in communicating with one another yet fail to engage meaningfully with the city’s essence. Though they may appear well-settled, they remain strangers to the soul of the city.

To truly know a city, one must understand its unique and exclusive language. Without this knowledge, the city’s past, identity and soul remain elusive. And without knowing, one cannot love. Love requires understanding – an intimacy with the self and soul of the beloved. Strangers, by contrast, cannot love; they experience only distance, fear, alienation and isolation. Poets, writers and artists are uniquely attuned to the languages of their cities. They have the rare ability to discern its subtleties and nuances, weaving them into their art.

Through their work, writers bridge two worlds: their native language and the language of the city. Literature born of cities becomes a space where individual identity converges with the essence of the urban landscape. Ezra Pound famously asserted that all great art is born of the metropolis, a claim supported by the history of world literature.

The Epic of Gilgamesh belongs to Uruk, The Odyssey to Athens, and Alif Laila wa Laila to Baghdad. Dante’s Divine Comedy is inseparable from Florence, Shakespeare’s dramas from London, Dastan-i-Ameer Hamza and Sarshar’s Fasana-i-Azad from Lucknow, Meer and Ghalib’s poetry from Delhi, and Iqbal’s poetry from Lahore. This deep connection between cities and their artists reflects the soul of the metropolis and its enduring influence on human creativity.

Topophilia is a defining feature of city literature, capturing the deep connection between people and the places they inhabit. The love for a place can be as profound and consuming as love for a person. A Persian couplet, often attributed to Queen Noor Jahan, beautifully reflects this intense affection for the city of Lahore.

[I have bought Lahore in an equal exchange with my soul, I have given my life and purchased another paradise.]

One might argue that the queen, accustomed to the grandeur of royal palaces, naturally saw Lahore as her own earthly paradise. While this perspective holds some merit, poets from all stations in life have celebrated their cities with equal passion. Love – whether for a person or a place – transcends class, gender, race and religion. Nasir Kazmi’s famous couplet about Lahore exemplifies this deep-rooted topophilia, reflecting an enduring affection for the city that unites the elite and the everyday citizen.

[O city of Lahore, may your vibrancy last forever; the atmosphere in your streets has drawn me to you.]

Topophilia is not a simple or straightforward emotion. It is as intricate and multifaceted as any other human sentiment. Writers, therefore, do not merely romanticise cities; they also empathise with the pain, fears, desolation, disfigurement, decay and devastation that cities endure. Once again, Nasir Kazmi comes to mind.

The city shouts. The city whispers. The city has its dreams and nightmares. It invents grand ideas and becomes the arena for their clashes. The city is a crucible of the world’s greatest paradoxes.

[The air in these fearful cities has something to say. You should stop and listen what this land conveys.]

Love manifests itself in countless ways, each with its own unique expression. Among these, praying for a cherished person or place is a deeply moving testament to love. Shoaib Bin Aziz poignantly captured this sentiment in his timeless couplet, a heartfelt prayer for Lahore.

[O Lord, cast a glance upon my Lahore as well; may your Mecca forever prosper.]

Love oscillates between the intense experiences of union and separation. The experience of separation often transforms into an imaginary journey, simultaneously spanning the past and the future. Memories of past unions intertwine with dreams of future reunions, creating a poignant tapestry during moments of estrangement. Nostalgia, therefore, becomes an intrinsic aspect of any experience of love. The places we leave behind or those lost to time, wars or modernization, evoke deep feelings of nostalgia. In modern and post-colonial literature, the nostalgia for native cities is a recurring theme.

Nostalgic literature can be broadly categorised into two types. The first is a heartfelt, passionate remembrance of a beloved city. A classic example of this type of nostalgia is found in the following couplet by Mirza Ghalib.

[Dear buddy, when you mention the city of Calcutta, you shoot an arrow through my heart.]

The second type of nostalgic literature is characterised by its quest to explore and construct identity. This form of literature emerged as a response to the crisis brought about by colonialism. Colonial powers dismantled or marginalised indigenous spaces, creating new metropolises. They erected grand structures to overshadow pre-colonial historical landmarks, reshaping the identity of cities. Alex Haley’s Roots and Intezar Hussain’s Basti are definitive examples of this type of nostalgia. Both novels delve deeply into the past, revisiting places, myths, stories and rituals that have been forgotten or displaced, all in a profound effort to reconstruct identity. As we know, memory serves as the cornerstone of identity.

Towns and cities become sites for shaping identity. In post-colonial literature, the boundaries between the personal and the political often get blurred and the search for personal identity merges with the quest for national identity. Cities take on symbolic significance. In modern post-colonial Urdu literature, cities like Lahore, Delhi, Lucknow, Cordoba, Mecca, Najaf and Karbala symbolise South Asian Muslim national identity. In the late 19th Century, the idea of the Muslim Ummah gained prominence in the Middle East and South Asia, emphasising unity beyond geographical identities. In an Urdu couplet, Iqbal asserts that “idols of colour and blood must be shattered into Millat, and identities like Turani, Irani and Afghan should dissolve.” However, it is intriguing to note that the concept of a “placeless Ummah” frequently invokes places such as Hijaz, Haram, Mecca, Madina, Najaf, Karbala, Baghdad, Damascus, Cordoba, Mashhad, Delhi, Lahore and Tehran. This highlights an undeniable truth: there is no escape from place. Place is an inseparable part of the human experience.

As cities began to shape national and cultural identities, they also became arenas for conflict – a war of cities intertwined with a clash of identities. Iqbal captures this tension in his couplet: “Tu bhi hai shewa-i-arbab-i-riya mein kamil / Dil mein London ki hawas, lab peh teray zikr-i-Hijaz” (You are perfect in hypocrisy: your heart longs for London, but your lips chant the name of Hijaz). In his celebrated poem Masjid-i-Qurtaba (The Mosque of Cordoba), Iqbal reclaims his religious identity by journeying through the cultural history of Cordoba. Similarly, Iftikhar Arif’s couplet poignantly reveals the emotional captivity to the cities that symbolise the Muslim world.

[My heart lives in Madina, Najaf and Karbala, cherishing a harmonious climate.]

The people and places we cherish can also be the source of our suffering. Love doesn’t always beget love; sometimes, it breeds hate. The places we hold most dear, providing us with a sense of belonging and purpose, can turn into spaces of dread, horror and alienation. This ambivalence explains why writers often experience both topophilia and topophobia. It is no coincidence that topophobia is another central theme in city literature. While topophilia evokes deep attachment and a sense of belonging to a city, topophobia stems from feelings of alienation and estrangement.

In both classical and modern Urdu poetry, the theme of vahshat recurs as a complex, nuanced concept deeply rooted in the unique experiences of Urdu poets, making it resistant to translation. While terms like estrangement, loneliness and anguish come close to capturing its essence, they fail to entirely encompass it. Vahshat is not an ephemeral feeling but an existential state – an anguish so profound that it compels the poet to escape from populated spaces to desolate, untamed places, the dasht. The city that was once a paradise, gradually transforms into a hellish environment. The city life demands constant effort, pushing for conformity, relentless competition and the pursuit of dominance in every field. This relentless drive leaves little room for the solitude necessary to reflect on the true meanings of existence. It is this very battle that gives rise to vahshat in the city. Below are two couplets by Ibn-i-Insha and Munir Niazi that encapsulate the poetics of topophobia – a fear or dread of the city.

[Insha Ji, arise, it’s time to depart; why bind your heart to this city? What peace can a wanderer find in residency; what place does a hermit have in a town?]

[This heartless city should be burned down; and its ashes scattered to the winds]

The writer is a Lahore-based Urdu critic and fiction writer, currently serving as head of publication at Gurmani Centre, LUMS. Jab Tak Hae Zameen, and Majmooa Nasir Abbas Nayyar are his recent publications