The Music Shop

There were dozens of instruments in the music shop, but no music. There was a tar, but no one to play it. Two or three divans, stamped with their maker’s mark, stood in a corner of the window. There was no mad-hearted player to draw music from them. Several dafs with fine skins hung on the wall. No calm spirit was held in their frames. Fine reed flutes lay on the table. No heart singed by sorrow had breath to give them. A santur sat in its half-open case, with no player’s mallets beside it. There was a bookcase, but not a sheet of music on any shelf. A bagpipe rested behind a candlestick on a ledge, but no breath to pour itself, beat by beat, into the wind. Across from this little shop stood a mosque where, At all hours, there were calls to prayer, cries of “God is great,” and heart-rending sermons, but no one truly praying. There was talk of God, but no devotion. What kind of age is this, with no sweet music, only the painful shouting of fools? I ask you, my fellow Iranian, my friend, a piece of my own flesh: If each of us put hand and heart to an instrument, wouldn’t this land’s symphony of freedom, the sound of you and me in every street and alley, be worth more than any pulpit, mullah, promised heaven, or fantasy? Long live the Shah.