Nezami and Lost Love in “Black Dome”

Majid Naficy

This is the English translation of the appended fifth chapter of my book In Search of Joy: A Critique of Death-Oriented, Male-Dominated Culture in Iran (Baran publisher, Sweden, 1991). Preface - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4

In Seven Portraits, Nezami wants to create a work which contains the whole universe like the magic figure "seven".  The cornerstone of this universe is love. Thus, he tells the story of Semnar, the architect, who by the order of an Arab king, built the fortress-city of Khvarnaq, near Tigris for the Iranian prince Bahram, the Onager.  It is a high citadel that touches the sky and taunts the stars.  In the middle of Khvarnaq, there is a room with locked door, in which there are seven portraits of seven beautiful princesses belonging to seven realms of the world. The poet sees this room as a chapel dedicated to love. However, it results in disappointment.  Semnar is hurled from the palace that he built himself. Bahram, the Onager, who each night, in a room with a different colored dome, is the guest of one of seven story-teller princesses, finally when chasing an onager, disappeared into the desert.

Envying his lost paradise, Nezami from the beginning, mourns, and paints his first story black.  Blackness, however, has another side as well.  Like the dark life spring that Alexander was looking for, it inspires eternal life. Here, envy for the past intermingles with hope for the future, and Nezami's lost love becomes a harbinger of his regained love. 

The daughter of the Indian king is the story-teller of the black dome, and her tale, also, like the country of India is magical and full of secrets.  The narrator heard her tale from a relative when she was a child, that is a period in life in which the border between legend and reality is less discernable.  This relative, in turn, has heard the story from a slave-girl in a black garment, who used to visit her in her childhood.  Furthermore, the slave-girl has heard the legend from her king wearing a black garment.  The chain of authorities, instead of adding to the likelihood of the truth, as is the case in respect to Islamic tradition of Mohammad's sayings and doings, creates an imaginary atmosphere, which is beyond the natural and historical time and location.  As if everybody can be the narrator and the listener of the story at the same time.  In fact, Bahram, the Onager, is not the listener of the legend, but its narrator, and you and I, the readers, must likewise play the role of listeners. 

Moreover, why does the king wear black?  Here, too, the narrator enters from a hidden door.  The king has an inn, that like Khvarnaq touches the sky, and welcomes every newly arrived traveler.  As if we encounter the caravansary of the world, not knowing from which door we enter or where we exit.  The king asks every passerby his story.  One day, a man in black comes in who is not willing to reveal the secret of his garment's color:

He said that you have to pardon me
That I cannot reveal what you wish me to say
No one is aware of the secret of wearing black*

Finally, the man reveals that he comes from the city of Madhooshan (The Stunned), a city of wanderers and the puzzled in China.  He lost his way in the mist:

While listening to that story, I went to sleep
And the narrator suddenly disappeared 
He vanished with his tale unfinished
I was so afraid I was going mad

The monarch becomes so uneasy that he relinquishes his throne to a relative, and like a faithful mystic walks on the road.  In the city of Madhooshan, everybody wears a black garment, but no one discloses his secret to the king.  He has to find this out himself. Yet to achieve his goal, he needs a guru, on whom he can rely.  In the works of others, we encounter the same need: Rumi, in order to take his mystical journey, needs Shams of Tabriz; and Dante needs Virgil, his predecessor, or Beatrice, his beloved to travel to paradise, inferno and purgatory. After a year, the king finds his guru in a butcher:

When I searched carefully everywhere
I found a free spirit, a butcher
He was handsome, delicate and gentle
And he didn't speak ill of anyone

The king who has already given up his throne, now has to use his wealth to bribe the butcher, or in other words, to free himself.  A butcher is capable of killing, but it is interesting that through the kingly bribery, he becomes more gentle and is transformed into a sacrificial cow:

Through granting gold, the butcher was
Entrapped by me, like a sacrificial cow

In fact the butcher scarifies himself.  He wants to show the king that to attain one's wish, one has to take a third journey, that is, be ready to sacrifice his life. In the biblical story of Abraham, we are faced with the same situation.  Abraham first has to be ready to sacrifice his beloved son, and then becomes the butcher of a sacrificial sheep.  In the story of "The Black Dome", the butcher first has to become an Abraham, so that afterwards he can change into a butcher.

From here on, the third journey begins.  The butcher takes the king to a desolate place, where no one lives.  They both wear the masks of fairies.  The change of the setting from a city to an abandoned place signifies that the story is at the threshold of a basic transformation.  The butcher brings a basket and asks the king to sit in it by himself.  Thus, he might find his answer:

The butcher asked him to sit in the basket for a while
And said: observe for yourself in the heavens or the earth
Thus you might find out why they are silent
Those who wear the black garments

The basket reminds us of the mother's womb.  In order to reveal his secret, the hero has to be reborn,.  Taking refuge in the basket gives him this opportunity.  In the works of others, we are faced with the same kind of allegories.  Moses in the Old Testament, and Darab in The Shah-Nameh, both are put in cradles and drift on the water, and Feraydoon, the Iranian hero, took refuge in a cave until his puberty.  The basket is hung on a rope, and it is pulled up over a gigantic rock by an invisible hand. The rope, like a serpent, presses the king's neck. as if it wants to release the bird of his life:

Although my body was dangling from the rope
I had no other support for my life than that

However, this time his bird of life sits on the rocky pillar, like the mythical bird, Simorgh.  Dangling in the air, he, who has given up hope for his life, grabbed the two feet of the gigantic bird.  The night is over and the rooster crows, and the magical bird begins her heavenly journey.  In many cultures, human life is compared to a bird and the human body to a cage, and the hero, when he gives up hope for his life, his life changes into a bird and releases him from danger.  In The Shah-Nameh, Simourgh gave asylum to Zal, and freed the infant hero who is thrown on a foothill by his father because of his albinism.  Nezami's bird, also, has a Simourgh-like form:

Its wings resembled boughs of a tree
And its feet the legs of a throne
Its beak stretched like a pillar
As if it was Mt.Bisotoon with a cave inside
...
With each feather that it shook to dust itself
It sprayed musk perfume on the earth
When it scratched the stem of each feather
A shell full of pearls would spew forth

So far, the king has made three journeys, and has given up his throne, wealth and life, and has become capable of regaining his lost paradise, Utopia, or his mystical origin.  The bird lands at noon, and the king sees himself in a real paradise:

i saw a garden, that no human eye
Had ever reached on earth or in heaven 
Therein were millions of blooming flowers
With wakeful greens and sleeping brooks
Every flower was there of all colors
The scent of each flower carried for miles
A hyacinth, through the ring of its lasso
Had snared the curly hair of a clove  
Jasmine has bit the lips of the flower
Grass has cut the tongue of the judas-tree
The dust of camphor and the soil of ambergris
Golden sands and jeweled rocks
Springs running like rose-water
Filled with jasper and pearls
A spring that this turquoise sky
Has borrowed from its color 
The schools of fish in the water
Shone like coins in the quicksilver
Around it a mountain colored emerald
On the hill a grove of pine and white poplar
All of its sands were red rubies
Thus  the white poplar looked red
Everywhere were sandal and aloe wood
Winds filled with their aroma

This paradise not only is beautiful, but also it is completely feminine. In late afternoon, the wind sweeps the earth and clouds sprinkle water.  At each green bush, a girl appears with a candle in her hand, and they begin to sing and dance.  The queen of fairies, finds the earthly stranger peeping at them behind a bush and asks him to sit next to her. The scene in which a man hidden from women "unlawfully" peeps at their meeting, is also repeated in other works of Nezami.  For example, in the book of Khosrow and Shirin, when Khosrow arrives at Armenia for the first time, he watches the party of the queen, Mahin Banu, from afar.  Also, in the story of "The Turquoise-Color Dome", in The Seven Portraits, the merchant man is watching the feminine party of fairies from the top of a tree, and in the story of "The White Dome", the hero peeps at the party of women in a garden from behind the wall.  Are these scenes a recreation of the childhood memories of the men, when they are allowed to go to public baths with their mothers, or attend women's parties?  Or are they the realization of men's dreams of a harem? 

The king under the pretext of drunkenness and with a passion for love, advances towards the queen of fairies, Nazanin Torktaz.  The queen enjoys flirting with him, but she does not want him to  go beyond pulling hair, biting or stealing kisses.  On the first night, she sends her slave-girl to the king's bedroom.  On the second evening, at the party, Nazanin warns the king against ambitious human nature, and cautions him against more aggressive advances.  On the third night, kissing and hugging escalate, and the poem becomes very erotic:

Slowly, like a thief seeking treasures
I touched and rubbed her pelvis
I touched and rubbed the pure silver
It became hard and I became released

Since Nazanin sees the king's insistence, she asks him to close his eyes for a moment, so that she can opens the door of her treasury:

For the sake of her sweet excuse
I closed my eyes to her treasury
When I gave her a moment's time
She said: open your eyes, and I did
I charged in hope of prey
In order to embrace my bride
When I looked at my beloved
I saw myself back in the basket

The bird has fled the cage, and his fantastic paradise is demolished, as if it was all just a sweet dream.  The above scene, reminds us of the time when Eve and Adam are driven out of  the Garden of Eden:

And unto Adam He said: Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I have commended thee, saying "Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it west taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (I, 3)

The king finds the butcher next to him, and asks him to bring a black garment.  From then on, mourning his lost love and demolished paradise, the king wears black.  In the beginning of the story, when the slave-girl askes the king about the reason for  wearing a black garment, the king clearly refers to his lost paradise:

How barbaric heavens charged on me
And played so bitterly with a king like me
He drove me out of the vicinity of Eden
And only mentioned me in the holy scriptures

  Therefore, in the city of Madhooshan, everybody wears black to mourn a lost paradise.  Of course, women have not experienced the adventure themselves, but they follow their men and wear black costumes.  This city is not solely limited to China, because our king resides in India, where he discloses his secret to the slave-girl. In fact, each city in the world, is a city of Madhooshan, a city of wanderers and the envious who are driven out of their Utopias.  Is there a person who can resist the desire to make love to Nazanin Torktaz, and limit one's self to kissing and hugging? The blackness of the garment testifies to the fact that it has not been that way, and it will never be.  However, the blackness has a double meaning: on the one hand, as the poet mentions in the beginning of his story, it signifies lack of joy and mourning; on the other hand, as he indicates when ending his story, it represents a desire for immortality, youth, and growth.  You see the world through the blackness of your eyes, and the whole being reaches you through this black window. 

Youth and growth are inherent in the black hair of the youth, and the life spring for which Alexander travelled is dark.  So, life will remain mixed with death, and the human mind will continue its search to untie the knots of life, and the memory of lost love will inspire a passion for a new love:

Had not the silk of night become black
How could it become worthy of the moon's love?
There are seven colors in seven kingdoms
And there is no color higher than black

Hardly can one call this message pessimistic.*

*- Khamseh-ye Nezami, edited by Vahid Dastgerdi,Tehran,  1982 "The Story of Seven Portraits", the chapter on the black dome. I translated Nezami’s verses from Persian to English. 

*- This text was first published in Persian in Barresi-ye ketab, Vol.4, No.16, Winter 1993-94, Los Angeles.