FWP:
SETS == WORDPLAY
This verse offers a spectacular display of paradox. If the speaker doesn't know something as crucial and desirable as the beloved's mouth, then he is a hopeless 'know-nothing', an ignoramus, one who doesn't know what should be known. (This is the general reading of the commentators.) On the multivalence of jo , see {12,2}.
In the ghazal world, the beloved's rosebud mouth is so exquisitely small that it's in fact nonexistent; on this 'beloved has no mouth' motif, see {91,4}. So that if the speaker indeed knows her mouth, which itself is 'nothing', then he is a 'know-nothing' in exactly the opposite sense: he is one who knows what is there to be known-- namely, that same 'nothing'.
There's also a lovely secondary word- and meaning-play: the juxtaposition of nah ma((luum honaa and khulnaa . This clever pairing exploits the fact that ma((luum honaa means not only for something to be 'known', but often, colloquially, for something to 'appear' or 'seem' or 'be apparent' (think of ma((luum hotaa hai kih ...). Whereas khulnaa means not only 'to open' but also 'to be revealed', 'to be apparent', 'to become known'. So the not-becoming-apparent of her mouth results in the becoming-apparent of the speaker's 'knowing-nothing-ness'. Which invites us to ask, apparent to whom? Are there observers present, who are testing or judging his degree of knowledge of her mouth?
And of course as a final flourish, khulnaa
is something that a mouth does. Her mouth is so small, so ultimately 'closed',
that it is invisible or nonexistent-- which caused the speaker's 'knowing-nothing-ness'
to become 'open'. How he longed to see her mouth itself become 'open', for
words or even for a kiss! Instead, the radical 'closedness' of her mouth was
what 'opened' the knowledge of his own state. For more examples of extreme
wordplay involving khulnaa , see {14}.
Nazm:
Since the beloved's mouth is nonexistent/nothing [hech], the person who would not know her mouth is a 'nothing-knower' [hech-madan]. (205)
== Nazm page 205