var="${red}howdy${nrm}"    # '$(red}' is just a color code, no problem 
there.
print -l $var
eval "print -l $var"

... shows:

howdy
(eval):1: bad pattern: ^[[31

... Is there a way to feed color codes to eval?  Seems to me I remember 
that there's some ${(?) var} ... some flag in there that does it.