Khaal

A beauty-spot or mole on the face.

Literally: mole, beauty-spot

Khaal is the dark mole on the beloved's cheek — the tiny black point that, against the bright face, becomes a famous fixation of the ghazal. Small as it is, the poet builds whole metaphysics on it: a grain that ensnares the heart like bird-seed in a trap, or a point of concentrated darkness that perfects the surrounding light. The mole is beauty's signature flaw that is no flaw, the single dot the lover cannot stop contemplating.