My Paintings and Agha Bozorg

My Paintings and Agha Bozorg I dedicate this story to my dear Arezou, @arezoubehrang_, an artist whose love for my homeland and my king has given us precious paintings to treasure. So stay with me for a few moments.

I’d been taking painting classes for several years and had moved on to oils. But I don’t know why I’d lost the feeling for it. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up a brush anymore. I didn’t even like the smell of paint. I told my father I didn’t want to go on. Painting was no use to anyone.

My father said, “You do this with everything. You leave it half-finished. You give up.” He said I was only wasting time and money. “Haven’t you spent enough on brushes, paint, and canvases?” I felt awful. I kept thinking I’d disappointed him again. Why was I so useless?

My mother saw how I felt and said, “Why don’t you go see Agha Bozorg? I made loobia polo. You could take him some.” “Mom, I’m not in the mood.” “Go. Don’t argue with me.” She picked up the phone and called Agha Bozorg. I couldn’t hear what she told him. Then she turned back to me. “He’s waiting for you.”

After a short walk, I reached Agha Bozorg’s house. As usual, the door was open, and he was sitting by the window watching for me. I went in and said hello. “Put that pot in the kitchen and bring us two cups of tea. Then we can talk.” “Agha Bozorg, I’m not doing so well. If you don’t mind, maybe another time.”

“You don’t need my permission. But there might not be another time. “Bring me some tea. You know my knees hurt, and it’s hard for me to keep getting up.” “Of course.” I went and came back with two cups. “There’s a packet of nabat in that cupboard,” he said. “Bring it over. It’ll be good with the tea.”

When I opened the cupboard to get the rock candy, I froze. The shelf was full of my drawings from years ago. “My tea’s getting cold, son.” “Agha Bozorg, you kept all these drawings?” “Of course. How could I throw away my grandson’s art?” “Art?”

“Every drawing you gave me was full of love, whether it was a few tangled lines or the beautiful face of a horse. It was the best you knew how to make at the time. I kept them so that one day, a day like today, I could tell you that nothing good comes all at once.”

“If you know how to mix colors today, it’s because yesterday you learned to call green green, white white, and red red. “If today you can draw the arch of a nomad girl’s eyebrow, it’s because yesterday you learned the little children’s rhyme for drawing a face: eyes, eyes, two eyebrows. “Back then, drawing a circle seemed like the hardest thing in the world.”

“Whenever you feel like you can’t do it, like you’re not cut out for this, look back and see what you’ve done. See what you created so that you could look at your creation today. “Remember that you weren’t afraid of yourself or of what you didn’t know. “You may run out of strength sometimes, but each day you were better than the day before.”

My fellow Iranian, my friend, my brother, my sister: whenever you feel you’ve had enough, that you can’t do it, turn and look at where you were before. You’ll see that you owe yourself, and all your effort, a little encouragement. You’ll see that you should pat yourself on the shoulder and say, “Well done.” And keep going. Long live Iran. Long live the Shah.