Death was the first subject I ever wrote about. I was in grade three when my parents’ close friend Ali Dashti died of leukaemia. Ali was a charismatic, mysterious character who traveled everywhere and wore a beige trench coat and had a wide laugh and back then was the only person I knew who had an electronic toothbrush. He was a man of the future, but also the past because he was well-spoken and full of stories. I only knew him as “uncle Ali” (‘amoo Ali’). His death was the first I experienced closely, and it immediately cracked the veneer of childhood innocence. Before he died and as he deteriorated, I wasn’t allowed to see him. I’d hear stories of how frail he’d become, of how when my father noticed Ali’s watch getting too big for his thin wrist, he asked my dad to hold on to it until he gets better and can wear it again. The physical absence of him made him that much more present in my imagination. And so when he passed, I resorted to the one thing I knew to make sense of my imagination; I wrote. I wrote a poem that is by no means a great piece of literature but that released me from my pain.
A few days ago I lost another uncle, ‘amoo Abbas’, though he was rarely called by his first name. Other than his close friends, he was Kiarostami to others and Abbas Kiarostami to the world. A name that demanded respect. He was also a fixture of my childhood memories. At one of the many weekend gatherings with my parents’ friends, who were more like family, a 7-year-old-me whispered in my dad’s ear: “Baba, please don’t tell him, but why doesn’t Amoo Abbas take off his sunglasses?” My dad let out a big laugh, turned to him and said, “Abbas, Tara is asking why you never take off your sunglasses?” I turned red and pinched my dad in embarrassment. But Abbas smiled, looked at me, took off his sunglasses and said, “well here, this is me, taking them off”. Silence around us. I looked at him in awe.
In one of my travels back to Iran when I was a newly emigrated 17-year-old to Canada , I visited him at his home. I was writing a script that involved suicide. I read what I had to him. He was walking around, listening, commenting encouraging feedback. He asked me why I was so interested in death and I let him in on all my dark teen-angst thoughts that no one else would ever be privy to– not even my therapist. He told me that in life, humans don’t control anything. They don’t choose to be born, where to be born, to what family…they don’t choose many things except for two: killing yourself, and pleasing yourself. Suicide and masturbation. So you can’t blame them for doing either. But everything else, you must do as well as you can. He told me to finish the script. To send it to him. He asked for my mobile number and scribbled it on a wall full of digits above the telephone in his kitchen. He said he never answers the phone unless he can recognise the number. And now, he could always answer mine.
I didn’t call him enough. He was traveling a lot, making films, and then I went to Iran less and less until I couldn’t go anymore. I was hoping to see him at my wedding next year.
His death made me feel cold. My back, my bones, I feel like there is a part of my spine that is less tall, less strong. And I’m not the only one. The outpour of support, mourning and commemoration for him made social media unbearable for a few days, as it annoyed me initially for the obvious reasons when a high-profile death like this happens: “but did you REALLY know him? Did you actually love him/his work?” And why is everyone making this about them? But this is the beauty of a great artist. He reaches into your being, holds a conversation with your heart. A conversation you will always remember. He becomes you, a mirror through his work, and in his death too.
Abbas showed artists (not just filmmakers, not just Iranians, but artists), the enormity of small stories. His eyes were always seemingly covered, but it was his ability to see things with a naked eye that gripped us– with fixed cameras and few cuts and unassuming actors. His films were stripped of contrived decorum and pretense. They were his experiments into the corners of human condition we often foresee. Some were better formed than others, but he carried us with him. Whether it was The Report or Close Up, Shirin or Certified Copy, his photography or poetry, he did not play it safe and he was not predictable, even when we wanted him to be.
Abbas started wearing dark glasses long ago due to an eye issue. He was given something he couldn’t control, and made it his signature like the master that he was.
His death was grave. And I won’t apologise for making this note about me. Because he was a big part of who I am today, even if he wasn’t entirely aware of it. He was a big part of everyone who ever saw what he saw, in those moments where his actors go from place to place, laugh from the bottom of their gut, walk up a hill, or look for answers. I have been here before; looking at death, feeling it in my limbs, thinking about its presence and power. Or perhaps I never left. I dream about it, I think about it, I am death. Because it is the contrast of death against life that makes me feel alive. And in the loss of a ferocious soul full of life and humanity, we must carry him on.
I’ve been here before, writing, with no direction or literary merit, to understand the gravity of emotions sinking my chest and puffing my lungs. So I will dig up that script. I will finish it. And another. And another. And I will continue what I have learnt from Abbas. To face the inquisitive little girl, take off my glasses and say: here, this is me.
t.a