S. R. Faruqi:

By means of Khvajah Khizr, he's expressed the terrifyingness of the desert of passion in a very enjoyable style, in two places in the sixth divan. One such verse:

{1800,4}

Also from the sixth divan [{1878,2}]:

ḳhiẓr dasht-e ʿishq meñ mat jā kih vāñ
har qadam maḳhdūm ḳhauf-e sher hai

[Khizr, don't go into the desert of passion, for there
at every step, Your Lordship, there's a fear/danger of tigers]

But in the present verse, there are two additional pleasures. One is that from 'has been/'remained' my homeland' the suspicion arises that now, my homeland has not remained [nahīñ rahā] in that fearsome desert.

The second is that he has very finely used the affinity between safar and ḥażar , because through it the possibility of ḥaẓar ('to pause, halt') arises, which is a paired opposite of safar . In this way the pleasure of a zila has come to exist between safar and ḥażar .

[See also {124,2}; {711,5}.]

FWP:

SETS == SYMMETRY
MOTIFS == DESERT; HOME; SOUND EFFECTS
NAMES == KHIZR
TERMS == ZILA

The piling-on of degrees of separation is a real delight. That terrifying desert of passion that is the speaker's homeland is not only not Khizr's homeland, it's not only not a place he's traveled through, it's not only not a place he might travel through, it's not only not a place he might want to inquire about-- it's a place the very mention of which puts him off traveling entirely. He who is preeminently the guide, the road-finder, the helper of the lost, the water-associated one, the 'green' one who brings fertility wherever he goes, the unkillable one who will live till Doomsday-- even he himself can't remotely endure the very idea of the desert of passion that the speaker has lived in as natively as (in the ghazal world) a salamander can live in fire.

Here's another, even cleverer boast, from the second divan [{721,9}]:

milā kahīñ to dikhā deñge ʿishq kā jangal
bahut hī ḳhiẓr ko ġharrah hai rah-numāʾī kā

[if we meet him somewhere, then we will show him the jungle/wilderness of passion
Khizr has a very great pride in road-showing]

In {721,9}, what is the connection between the lines? Is it helpfulness ('We'll help Khizr expand his professional knowledge of this, our native terrain')? Is it disdain ('He's foolishly arrogant, we'll take him down a peg or two')? Or is it unholy glee ('He only shows 'roads', we'll flummox him by showing him a place with no roads'). In fact I like {721,9} better than the present verse.

Note for grammar fans: In Urdu, one names a child with nām rakhnā , which literally means 'to keep a name' but is used for a one-shot action with continuing effect (the name is not only given, but remains with the child). The intransitive counterpart form of this is nām rahnā , 'for a name to remain'. In English, however, to say that someone's name 'has remained X' implies duration up to the present; in Urdu, to say nām rahā can imply that the name was X up until a certain time (the way 'has been X' would work in English). This is the usage that SRF is pointing out in his commentary.