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In a creeping corner
silent and somber,
lies a lonely loafer
detached as a dosser.
It’s covered with crimson clashes,
lined with livid lashes,
flowered with foggy flashes,
and marked with a multitude of mashes.
It perpetually sits soundlessly.
But for the first time ,
it taunts,
daunts,
and haunts me.
Such a seemingly unnoticeable, small, and inconspicuous sandal…
how has it surrounded me?
It would appear that it’s inherit power is to, at the very least, attract the gaze of visitors hungry for anything that hinges on the inaccessible and exotic. But its oriental appeal has only gathered listless motes. And it’s currently vital enchanted powers were as dormant in engaging my awareness up till now, as a hackneyed blasé affair. The rush of entrancing colors and designs that greedily play on its entire frame had failed in seducing me, or I had failed in noticing. In fact it has always been an unknown cadaver to me even though we occupy the same room. However today, at this momentous moment, its incandescent hues have escaped their rusty cage with wave after wave of alluring aroma; showering me with an intriguing luminosity that puts everything else in my room to shame. But what made it glow so profusely as of late when it was ostensibly content in being reticent? It’s not its aesthetic beauty that appeased me, but its nostalgic one; the singular beauty that reaches out and caresses your core and fills you with memories, either real or artificial. As for me, I was reminded of a nonexistent parallel existence along with images that don’t belong to me; images such as sipping strong tea next to a venerable old man as he smokes strong hookah, his face a complex map of wrinkles. Both of us relaxing meditatively on a gorgeously orchestrated rug as we eavesdrop on the sublimely harmonious conversation between a ney, tar, and tonbak. In the distant horizon where infinite sky meets finite land, snow-capped eminent mountains can be seen with utter lucidity. From time to time the chirpings of fellow birds would flutter down on us like graceful snow, echoing with repetition. Such a dubious, fictional life is foreign, completely foreign to my life in this, my interminably familiar, society; it only hovers as a steaming cloud in the migratory realms of my mind. And my room as a showcase has absolutely adapted itself to this incongruity. All over my room, coveting any space, the words: conventional, conformity, mass-produced, adaptive manipulation, surreptitiously cliché or fallaciously bohemian, unoriginally authentic and etc. etc., have provisionally and permanently nested. They are embedded in my array of popular posters (from Pulp Fiction to The Simpsons); are disguised as designer labels that soullessly adorn my clothes; and are yelled over and over in my heaps of popular DVD’s and CD’s. This mess that mercilessly invaded my room and haven through gambits conducted by patrons of advertisement, represents my life in America, and is the only life I’ve known. But that which is untouched and unblemished has sown another reality. This sole solemn soldier has spoken to me about my past; a past that seeps further than two-thousand years ago. And in hindsight, this resolute and demanding object most likely travelled a long distance in time and space, through many loops of hands, and maybe feet, to find me. It was a gift from a far away land that I had never visited physically or metaphysically, and it was dubbed a question mark in my mind. But now this forlorn and traditional footwear has shattered the widespread tumultuous ice and in effect has invigorated a sense of belonging; a belonging that daubs all the relatively recent pustules from my parents’ country with voracious alcohol. Such a nostalgic feel is pure in its goal, it forgives imperfections and dissects the world into a simple black-and-white sphere; there is no room for “ifs.” And as I stare at it with a blossomed intent, I hear it calling me. Earnestly calling me to pay tribute to blood and awaken my Iranian self from its unconscious slumber.
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