course of relations

I was speaking to my father yesterday, standing outside a vintage store in the cold to avoid the noisy interiors.

We were, as we usually do, catching up on a bunch of technicalities (do you have enough money? he asks. How is your health? I ask), as well as confessing our love and respect for each other. He was also telling me about his new iguana pet (Zoozoo), and how they were watching The Godfather II together the night before.

(1965) Iran

He then talked about his dear friend, Bijan Elahi, who recently passed away; A prolific poet, painter, essayist, translator, and one of the pioneers of the Iranian New Wave in literature. An article in BBC Persian described him as the “poet of silence,” alluding to his quiet last years in a tacit retaliation toward the suffocating atmosphere that was crippling artist and intellectual life in Iran.

My dad told me how when I was five-years-old and had a blazing fever, Bijan who was hanging out at our place and was curiously into mysticism and Sufism, prayed for me above my sickbed. I was touched by this story, until my dad laughed and said, “Well of course that didn’t help. It was a common fever and took its course.”

“At least I didn’t die!” I said. Maybe I would. Who knows?

(1964) From right: Bijan Elahi, Ahmadreza Ahmadi, Noory Ala

But I couldn’t help but feel sad. Even though I don’t remember this unique individual (he handed in a blank exam paper in his last year of highschool, protesting against the conservative and patriarchal education system), I felt like he had something to do with me. He had translated Nabokov, Lorca, Joyce, and Kafka, which I read and drenched in. He studied Picasso and taught a generation of writers and poets to disregard the form, the platform, the rules.

He wrote: “Poetry is chasing the truth through back alleys – such is the creed of relations. But it is only through the course of relations, that you can recognize the back alleys.”

I thought of all the great poets, painters, artists, writers, thinkers, directors, actors, singers, and teachers that were left imprisoned, dead, killed, or muted in a country that is known for its poetry.

And then I thought the best gift, the only thing I can offer to overcome this sudden, onerous nostalgia and longing for novelty and appreciation, is to work. Work, learn my past, and create. Create, and support those who do, and do.

When I hung up with my dad I thought, I should rent Godfather II tonight. And watch it with my own Zoozoo.