"Rain Speaks My Mother Tongue"*
You are a Gilani. Perhaps you were not born in Gilan, or perhaps you do not even live there — but there are "moments" when you are a Gilani. When you are suffocated by the heaviness of the air and you open the window and wait for the wind, and you "know" it will blow — you are a Gilani. When dust has settled inside you and you wait for the rain to fall and wash and carry it away, and you are "certain" it will rain — you are a Gilani. Gilan is the name of the "assurance" you have in the sky that it will rain. The name of the "trust" you have in the wind that it will blow. The name of a "promise" you have from the earth that it will make things grow. The name of a "pact" you have with the trees that they will bear fruit. Gilan is not a geographical location; it is an existential condition. It is the condition of that cobbler's apprentice whom Ebtehaj saw with his own eyes — the one who, when his work was done, would go and order khotka kebab and spend his entire day's earnings. Gilan is the name of not worrying about tomorrow. The name of the "hedge" you draw around yourself instead of a "wall" — a hedge that keeps the way open for sight, for air, for breath. The name of a "long love affair" with days, nights, work, and food. It is when the bitterness around you and the salt in your heart mingle with the sweetness of your present moment in one bowl — in that same bowl of olives and smoked fish and walnuts. Your life-giving fragrance is the scent of anar-bij greens. Your soothing sound is the sustained drumming of rain on a pitched roof, a sound like the overlapping songs of the bazaar. It is when life, with all its hardships, becomes a short joke. Gilan is the name of the last pleasure that a whitefish takes in its final thrashing on the wet ground of the market, from the bowl of water the fishmonger pours over it. Gilan is the feeling of getting lost in the quiet bustle of the night. In the perpetual glow of the city. Gilan is not the name of a province in northern Iran; it is the name of a "state of being" — a "rainy state of being." A rainy state is not happiness, nor is it sadness; it is the savoring of both happiness and sadness. Indeed, it is the savoring of everything. Gilan is this very "land of the rainy state of being" — a land not in a patch of ground in some corner of the world, but a land that resides in a part of all of us. *A verse by Shams Langroudi
Photos: Hamidreza Akbari, Lahijan, 2020
