A day earlier in Abadan our passports and tickets were ready for collection. Dad spoke to this guy in the ticket office who dropped the word OK in every one of his Persian sentences. He had a poster of palm trees on the wall. Who puts posters of palm trees of some other city in a city full of palm trees? He was what we called Gharb-Zadeh which meant western wannabe. On that last day I was keen to keep my daily ritual and cycled under the heat of the Sun, in our city of Mahshahr. Mahshar meant moon city. I passed Mahnaz’s house and peeked through the mesh wire window. She wasn’t there, shame. Why was it that when things were getting better something always changed? Only a fortnight earlier I wrote her a note, sat next to her in the cinema and dropped it in her lap. When she saw me next she blushed. Her cheeks turned red like inside a cherry pie and I’m guessing they probably tasted the same. I knew then that if I persisted I could get a taste of her. I put my best shirt on. It was a lost cause but it wasn’t just for her I was saying goodbye to the neighbourhood. The heat melted the road and left my tyre track behind. At least the road kept a trace of me. You could fry an omelet on that asphalt but I was used to that heat even though my skin had turned deep brown and peeled like a potato. The swimming pool chlorine had lightened my hair and I thought I looked cool! I passed the market. The vegetable market had fresh coriander and the mechanic’s shop smelled of diesel and grease. My friend Ali was home. Unlike me he was a town boy. At school I hanged out with the town kids just as much as I knew the kids from our part of town. Town kids called us the refinery kids. I didn’t care much for such differences. Ali went puppy faced but kept quiet and just wished me luck. Ali’s Mum offered me lunch, smiled and wished me luck, but I didn’t stay. I passed the fishmongers and the smell of freshly backed bread further up market made me hungry so I headed home. I reached the rose gardens of the English houses of our road and circled the Helipad where the king had once landed for his visit. On his visit I’d peeked inside the Helicopter now I was going round the H three times for good luck. I had my lunch and had a short nap. The summer days were long but that day was going too quickly and I was slightly disappointed. My life was about to change and I expected a bit more fuss from friends and family. Surely someone cared that I wouldn’t be there the next day? Then it happened. Ali hadn’t gone puppy face because he was keeping a secret. He wasn’t good at keeping secrets but that day he did a good job. The kids had organised a surprise visit. They all turned up at once, or at least the best of my friends the seven of them came to say goodbye. Mohsen the eldest of all of us was a poor kid who along his education had started to be a coach driver’s assistant. This had caused a bit of interruption so he’d repeated the year but otherwise that kid was a really bright. His favourite occupation was to make bamboo shoots burn a few holes and turn it to a flute for his buddies. He was a great musician but that day he was a coach driver. He’d borrowed his uncle’s coach, picked each one of them at their homes and beautifully parked the coach in the col-de-sac where we lived. It wasn’t just for me, it was for them too. They wanted to look me in the eyes and see how it felt to be going somewhere and living a dream. I should had kept in touch but didn’t. A lot happened after that point. A war swallowed up a million kids. Rich or poor many people left the country but I hope my magnificent seven, the seven friends, the town boys that I once had as genuine friends had grown to be happy men and I hope wherever they are that they had a good life. Life did turn out to be like a dream. The thirty-six years have gone fast and nothing like what I expected.
I-have-no-feelings
This is a triptych telling the story of a political prisoner who is incarcerated inside a small space. Constraint movement in a small space causes madness in some prisoners. He is interrogated and tortured. The white light torture or sensory deprivation torture creates disorientation hence the blurriness in the second panel in contrast to sharpness of the first panel. In the first panel the presence of bats symbolises madness and also the existence of a fundamentalist element that went unnoticed until the revolution. The third panel shows decomposing of blood into soil and a disintegration which bring more blood and taints a nation. Many are killed and buried in unmarked graves in this way.
The phrase “I have no feelings” was a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini. He was asked how he felt about going home after years of exile and he provided a response that became symbolic of his psychopathic cruelty towards his fellow Iranians. The phrase “I have no feelings” has been turned into semi-abstract Persian calligraphy, disguised, spread or sometimes visible in all three panels.
This is a work in a new school of work called DaGod. DaGod is derived from Dada but unlike Dada it is movement against the crimes of religious fundamentalism.
DaGod is my own invented Art school and there are only a few works in this style. The controversial nature of the work has resulted in one of my works from this school to be shown on CNN and VOA. The first panel has also become an Album cover of a South African band called Bipolar Rats. DaGod often carries dark artistic humour and elements of it are similar to religious iconography (in this case the golden sculpted frames which are part of the work).
Please note price is per painting rather than the 3 panels. Print of individual items is also available.
Zurich Zoo
IPAD 1 had just come out but hadn’t reached Zurich and I had just moved there.
Being on my own I went to the Zoo and did some quick sketches and I was unexpectedly surrounded by a bunch of curious kids!
I didn’t mind but I wanted to be left alone to test drive the IPAD for the first time and the idea of a middle aged man on his own drawing the attention of kids wasn’t something I had in mind. I planned to finish the silver back. He was beautiful. There were more sketches of other animals but I didn’t bother uploading them.
Lilith history’s first feminist
If you were a little kid in middle east you would remember when your Mum and Dad would say if you were naughty Lulu would take you away? Well here is her story. Our Lulu is known as Lilith. There are so many versions to her story. She is a female demon, deity, and Adam’s first wife. In some stories she is born before or at the same time as Adam. She is not a spare rib and was made from clay. According to Kabbalah writing she was created before Adam on the fifth day of creation as a water creature. But other writings mention that she was created from the same substance as Adam.
In Folk tradition because Lilith came out of clay just like Adam she demanded to be treated as an equal to him. Adam and Lilith quarrel so much and she runs away. Adam prays for help and God sends three angels to bring her back. ‘Leave me!’ she said. ‘I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days. ’
When the angels heard Lilith’s words, they insisted she comes back instead she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: ‘Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant. ‘ She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, some still write the angels’ names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.
Another widely taught version of this is that the Hebrew cosmogony originally told a story of Yahweh creating Adam to marry a local Goddess-associated figure named Lilith. Lilith was a follower of the Great Mother Goddess, Inanna — later known as both Ishtar and Asherah.
In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh was said to have destroyed a tree that was in a sacred grove dedicated to the Goddess Ishtar/Inanna/Asherah. Lilith ran into the wilderness in despair. She then is depicted in the Talmud and Kabbalah as first wife to Yahweh’s first creation of man, Adam. In time, as stated in the Old testament, the Hebrew followers continued to worship “false idols”, like Asherah, as being as powerful as Yahweh.
Jeremiah speaks of his (and Yahweh’s) displeasure at this behavior to the Hebrew people about the worship of the Goddess in the Old Testament. Lilith is banished from Adam and Yahweh’s presence when she is discovered to be a “demon” and Eve becomes Adam’s wife. Lilith then took the form of the serpent in her jealous rage at being displaced as Adam’s wife. Lilith as serpent then proceeds to trick Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and in this way is responsible for the downfall of all of humankind. It is worthwhile to note here that in religions pre-dating Judaism, the serpent was known to be associated with wisdom and re-birth (with the shedding of its skin). In Arabic mythology she is refered to as Karina.
Karina of Arabic lore is considered Lilith’s equivalent.
She is mentioned as a child-stealing and child-killing witch. In this context, Karina plays the role of a “shadow” of a woman and a corresponding male demon, Karin, is the “shadow” of a man. Should a woman marry, her Karina marries the man’s Karin. When the woman becomes pregnant is when Karina will cause her chaos.
She will try to drive the woman out and take her place, cause a miscarriage by striking the woman and if the woman succeeds in having children then her Karina will have the same number of children she does. The Karina will continuously try to create discord between the woman and her husband. Here, Karina plays the role of disruptor of marital relations, akin to one of Lilith’s roles in Jewish tradition. I think this is how in Iranian myth the story of “ Ham Zaad” or our shadow doubles must have come about. If you like this mythology then read the full story in the Wiki. http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Lilith
A homage to Francis Bacon. I’ve turned Bacon to Halal Beef as a DaGod school transformation.
I did this charcoal drawing and then turned it to this by Photoshop for kids.
Map of Iran is similar to a sitting cat.
This is one of the funniest sketches that I have ever seen.
I have no feelings tryptic panel 3
Part of my Dagod series. Oil with sculptured frame.
I have no feelings tryptic panel 2
Part of my Dagod series. Oil with sculptured frame.
