No. 146 - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s “Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor” changed my life
The legendary Pakistani song that felt like home to Osman Khan
This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.
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• 3 min read •
I often think of The Egyptian.
My dad told me about a guy he met once in the U.S. He was sixty, and had been living in America for four decades; happily settled and proudly American.
One day, at the age of sixty, he woke up and Googled some of the Egyptian music from his childhood. Then he started watching Egyptian films. He started thinking about Egypt, his old friends. He got melancholy. Soon, he was making plans to somehow shift his life back. It was like one of those viruses that can lie dormant for decades before waking up because you took the wrong pill or fell funny.
I grew up in Lahore, Pakistan. From 2017 till 2025 I studied and worked in America. The whole time, I kept wondering whether, if I stayed, I’d have my Egyptian moment. If one day the life I’d built would suddenly feel like someone else’s.
As time went on, a part of me started to believe it wouldn’t happen. I needed to believe it, since, with every passing year, back home felt more and more distant, more alien. I was changing, as everyone who goes to college does, but my changes felt so much higher-stakes, so much more important. I started to hope that the story of The Egyptian was a tall tale.
To make a long story short, the ennui of America and my 20s got to me. And my Egyptian moment came.
I found myself sitting on the New York City subway sick to death of the entire vast world of music I had access to. None of it felt right. It was all people talking about things that never happened to me. Beers and teenage driver’s licenses and finding yourself. I’d never even seen a beer till college. And I knew exactly where my self could be found. Americans can never quite figure out who they are, that’s their problem. Pakistanis know exactly who they are and they can’t forget it, that’s our problem.
Desperate, I searched for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and recognized one of his songs. He’s a huge deal back home, a Sufi music giant who put our music on the map. Even an Urdu music philistine like me vaguely knew “Halka Halka Saroor.” It’s a song about being in a daze, feeling drunk off of love, or devotion, undulating about through your life. It felt like how I felt about America, about the people I loved there, about that time in my life.
Over the next few months, my listening to that song and my decision to go home increased in tandem; it’s still hard to say which came first.
It was like that song had been waiting for me to come home. I knew more of the lyrics than I realized, recognized more of the Ustad’s other songs than I thought I would. I found an interview where they asked him why so many people at his North American concerts suffered ecstatic episodes. He said simply, “The violence of the ecstasy depends on each person’s pain of separation from his homeland.” Huh.
The Egyptian’s path home started with music. So did mine. A lot of people have a song that taught them how to rebel, how to get out of Dodge, how to find their new self. My song brought me home.
I hope if you’re reading this you have a song that brings you back to what matters. If not, think on it. I’m sure there’s one just waiting for you to take it up again. ◆
About Osman
Osman Rahim Khan lives in Lahore, Pakistan. He recently moved home after several years studying and working as a statistician at Dartmouth College and the Wall Street Journal. He now works in the corn seed business.
Instagram @osmanoftheppl
Substack osmankhana
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Categories
Friendship • Family • Coming of Age • Romance • Grief • Spirituality & Religion • Personal Development • LGBTQ+
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