Still Life

Somewhere in the passage of an ordinary day, inside a familiar yet estranged room, everything has come to a standstill—frozen in a vague, uncertain moment. Which day? Which house? Which city? The day the mirror collapsed within its own frame, the flow of daily life decayed, and that lace tablecloth was set aside. A place where life twisted upon itself and time stood still—just before the photograph froze it forever.

“Sorrow and grief enter my heart. I am afraid of death.”¹ The brides in the frames—ornaments upon the room’s walls in the heart of that life—gaze at us like witnesses to this ruin, bearing testimony to the guilt. The photographs, mementos of what we call "life," remain untouched and intact on the wall amid the turmoil—as if only to reinforce the presence of death in this still life. For the photograph speaks simultaneously of “what once was” and “what is no longer.” They too have descended into death—just like everything else in this room: like the youth of that man, whose tiny portrait reflects from within shattered mirrors and gazes at the photographer through layers of dust; or that broken door in the lower right corner, which leads nowhere.

Death has slipped through the half-open wardrobe doors and now rests quietly, silently, upon the furniture within—on the warmth of the wall’s color, on the mirror’s empty frame, on the window to the left, from which even the light fails to bring life. No one is here. “Silence speaks in a thousand tongues.”² Only "war" lives in this house now.

1- Smith, George. Gilgamesh. Translated by Davood Monshi-Zadeh, 2021, 4th Edition, Akhtaran Publishing.

2- Shamlou, Ahmad. Ebrahim in the Fire. 13th edition, 2019, Negah Publishing Institute.