Sarāb

Created and Produced By

AIDA SHAHGHASEMI

Vocals and electric bass: Aida Shahghasemi

Piano: Nima Hafezieh

Guitar: Jeremy Ylvisaker

Upright bass: Liz Draper

Drums: Davu Seru

Fully recorded and mixed by Joe Mabbott at The Hideaway Studios in Minneapolis

Mastered by Jared Miller at The Filterlab in Minneapolis

Initial cover art: oil print on paper by 

Neda Shahghasemi

Final cover art (digital modifications of initial piece) by Ziba Rajabi

Book design, layout, haptic considerations: 

Ziba Rajabi

Madge, S. (2020). Iranian Ground-Jay (Podoces pleskei), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. doi.org/10.2173/bow.irgjay1.01

A lone astronaut.

What would it be like to be on the way to deliver someone to exile on the most distant planet in our solar system? A planet that’s not even a planet anymore… 

Something happens and she detaches from her ship. There was an accident. We hear her in her helmet, breathing with fear while listening to a distant song that crackles. After the sudden snap and her detachment from the last thing that kept her tethered to a sense of control, we hear the soundtrack of her drifting in Earth’s orbit. Neither falling down to Earth, nor moving directionless into the abyss, she sees sunrises and sunsets every 90 minutes. Even earth knows she deserves to wait less since time is running out. She remembers Bolbol Khormā and Yā Kareem as she thinks of her own exile. How much she has longed to go home but hasn’t been able to. She is thinking of a love song she is singing to her home, the true love of her life. Then she hears Zāqboor5, a bird endemic to Iran… she is thinking of it being a ground dwelling bird, hopping from one dry patch to another, blending in so well, while looking for food that isn’t there anymore. It’s searching alongside the farmer that’s digging out his own crops. What is the point of more barley and wheat when a genius is needed? Take out all the crops and plant a genius that can come and save us all from ourselves. Maybe this one won’t be a crook and won’t create walls between us through which he himself would want to look to punish us for what he sees. But was this not the plan all along? Have we not gone through this over and over and over again before? Were we not, already, delivered to salvation? Why has salvation always felt like quick sand but looked like an oasis? All the flowers in the world bloomed and deliverance still hasn’t occurred. Maybe we can just imagine it… a cafe in her hometown, her place of birth… Everyone is filling their bellies with scrumptious food and delicious laughter and a Blues band is playing for their ears. There is no care in the world other than whether or not the salad has fresh tarragon in it. She dreams of water and the wind. The willow trees she grew up with all looked like people to her. She remembers a song about a man who turned into a willow tree from all his sorrows, and then there was the mother who lost her young son and sang for him at his grave wishing that his death was not in vain. When will the trees, and the birds, and the wind decide humans are bad caregivers? How many waves of exile must there be?

The astronaut remembers. The cycle keeps happening over and over again. Hope, if it were to have any meaning, would be trusting that despair is not enough. Like courage, it’s not about being blindly optimistic while refusing to see the ruins. Like courage, it’s about being afraid and still heading towards it anyway. Her resources are depleting, and she knows she may not be able to deliver her package, but at least, she got him this far. Maybe someone else will take things one breath further and someone else after her… a breath after that. 

Without knowing the science behind it, mirages may have been believed not as reflections but as actual objects, but once we know, it becomes impossible to “believe them” for what they are not. They become like the lies of a cunning man who emanates purity and humanity while blood drips from his hands.

Even God, if there is one, may have fallen for it, but now that it knows there are no more prayers and no more Hijab and no more effort in the world that will convince him that freedom is this mirage.