A solitary road, abandoned, at the ends of the earth, across a straw-colored expanse of desert, amid violet mountains — and then, beyond a mountain pass, sheltered beneath a rock face, beside water that springs from the ground as if by magic, a palm-sized oasis whose broad-leafed trees tremble in the damp breeze. Nothing more than a green mirage, a startling green patch settled as if by illusion against a yellow-brown and purple-gray backdrop. These green patches taking refuge in the folds of the earth — amid the desert landscape carpeted with silvery thornbushes, hemmed in by distant mountains crowned with snow, among crimson hills where a single palm's breadth of green shines with full brilliance, or in the depths of endless silent valleys — wherever shelter can be found or built, from the wind, from the scorching sun... mingling with the white and red blossoms of apple, peach, and almond trees peering out from behind poplars, and in the old dusty cities still hidden beyond the cool, shaded lanes behind the walls of orchard gardens, or deep within houses and in the sunken courtyards of old bazaar chambers. The image of a branch laden with cracked red pomegranates set against green leaves, framed by the turquoise-painted door of a shop in a cool, vaulted bazaar that smells of earth, revives the memory of the garden and its fragrance. The memory of the garden — with its plane trees, sycamores, and broad-leafed elms lining the tall walls, casting a latticed canopy that transformed the blazing whiteness of light into gentle shade, into a beautiful play of light and shadow on the stream at the foot of the trees; a rushing stream enclosed in the sharp fragrance of basil growing in the stone-lined banks, pouring like a small waterfall from pool to pool, whose very sound was enough to make you forget the blazing heat of the sun outside. The garden, a spectacle of colors pleasing to eyes weary of dust and the violet tones of mountain peaks, in flower beds filled with blooms whose thick-bristled stems bore

wild, vivid colors — not the gentle tones of cultivated flowers — colors as intense as the clothing of village women, scented not mildly but with the sharp fragrance of herb and nature: common daisy, cockscomb, four-o'clock, hollyhock, morning glory, cornflower, violet, and the fragrant climbing vines of yellow jasmine, purple jasmine, white jasmine... and the abundantly flowering shrubs of eglantine, Damascus rose, the forgotten Persian rose, the moss rose; the garden of slender fruit trees in plots on either side of the streams: apple, peach, apricot, wild plum, sweet cherries and sour green plums, and a little further the sturdy walnut trees with the sharp scent of their leaves and the indescribable taste of a fresh, crisp walnut, and grapevines climbing over their trellises; the garden of small kitchen plots in the shadier parts, with watermelons and small unripe melons, slender cucumbers and tiny red tomatoes — the children of fruits, who stirred a warm tenderness; the garden full of nightingales, hoopoes, wagtails, sparrows, doves, and crows, and those long childhood hours of waiting beside baskets propped on sticks with invisible, hairfine string, laid out for catching birds; the garden as spectacle of the contrast between light and shade, colorlessness and color, heat and coolness, the safety of the high wall and the awe-inspiring immensity of nature beyond the garden: the endless chain of high mountains and plains and deserts bleached colorless in the shimmering heat; the garden that inspired the images of paradise in Persian miniatures, full of sweet fruits, streams flowing with honey and milk; gardens in which not only souls but bodies too would flourish and renew, and the cool of their shade, the colors of their flowers, the scent of the small kitchen garden's cucumber, the sweetness of their white mulberry, the fragrance of their roses — none of it could be found anywhere else... And what truth could be more true than this Persian garden, with its geometric order and carefully calculated planting beds and the enclosing composition of flowers and trees and young fruit saplings, designed to make the fullest use of every drop of water, every particle of moisture, every patch of soil in a land that thirsts for water.

Short story from the collection Snapshot Photographs

Shahzadeh Garden, Mahan, 1928 · Modern Persian Garden · Gabriel Guévrékian, Villa Noailles

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