Breath of Allah: Jamil Ahmad's "The Wandering Falcon"

by Gregg Chadwick

In his first work of fiction, The Wandering Falcon, Jamil Ahmad depicts a world caught between timeless paths of migration and geo-political modernity. Ahmad knits together a series of short stories that cover the life arc of one young man, Tor Baz - the wandering falcon of the title, as he journeys from infancy to manhood.

Inspired by his time as a civil service worker in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Ahmad writes of a world governed by clan and custom. During his time as a powerful emissary of the Pakistani government under the tribal region's frontier governing system, Jamil Ahmad simultaneously served as politician, police chief, judge, jury and executioner. Bits of this personal history are woven within the stories, including hints of Jamil's wife's German heritage. Environmentalist and activist Helga Ahmad was instrumental in encouraging her husband Jamil to move from  halting first attempts at poetry to richly crafted stories of people, place and borders.

The bleak landscapes in the book evoke a world of nomadic treks where human contact is brief and often violent, and where far western desert winds blows clouds of sand so thick that breath is priceless. The environment is unforgiving as is the justice doled out by tribe and government.

Jamil Ahmad finished The Wandering Falcon in 1973-74 but the stories did not find a publisher until this year. Penguin Books' decision to at last publish Jamil's stories is timely. Ahmad  believes that his stories evoke a vanishing world of tribes that the modern world must resonate and harmonize with: "Because frankly speaking, I still think that each one of us has a tribal gene inside, embedded inside. I really think that way."

                                                                         Jamil Ahmad

Jamil Ahmad hopes that deeper understanding of the tribes that once roamed freely between the far borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran could help end the wars that stain their mountains and valleys with blood. Reading The Wandering Falcon can help begin a process of understanding between the timeless nomadic life and the fragmenting borders of our post-modern society.

Our contemporary world has much to learn from the rhythms of the nomadic trail. I highly recommend Jamil Ahmad's magnificent book The Wandering Falcon.


Gregg Chadwick
Breath of Allah
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

More at:
The Wandering Falcon's Site on Penguin.com

Sunday Bloody Sunday for Iran & Where the Streets Have No Name - U2 Live at Glastonbury - June 2011

"Mubarak, Ben Ali, now it's time for ..."

"For all of its empty talk about Egypt, the government of Iran should allow the Iranian people the same universal right to peacefully assemble and demonstrate in Tehran that the people are exercising in Cairo."
- White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor

”We wish the opposition and the brave people in the streets across cities in Iran the same opportunity that they saw their Egyptian counterparts seize in the last week.” She added, ”We are against violence and we would call to account the Iranian government that is once again using its security forces and resorting to violence to prevent the free expression of ideas from their own people.”
- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton




Video from Feb 14, 2011 protests against Ahmadinejad in Tehran

An eyewitness in Tehran today reports for the BBC:

Mohsen Asgari
BBC News, Tehran

"Riding on the back of a motorbike, holding my mobile to take video footage, I went to central Tehran on Monday afternoon. My driver skilfully found back alleys to reach Azadi (Freedom) Square, the Iranian counterpart of Egypt's Tahrir Square.

Thousands of people made their way amicably and silently towards the square, most of them young. Many wore trainers, suggesting they were anticipating having to run away from the security forces to escape arrest.

Riot police began to disperse the crowd before they even started the rally. Men on motorbikes belonging to the police and Republican Guards charged the protesters and beat them severely with batons. However, this merely emboldened them.

When the troops fired tear gas at the crowd, it became very difficult to breathe. Some girls and women fainted. Many of the protesters were also detained. Others set rubbish bins on fire to combat the effects of the gas.

My driver was hit by a paintball fired by a policeman and lightly injured, but he was still able to drive me back to the office. Once there, I was shocked to see that official and semi-official news agencies were saying everything was normal when for a couple of hours there had been total chaos."

Airborne Toxic Event's Song for Neda

Airborne Toxic Event's Song for Neda

The Call - ندا -Neda, originally uploaded by greggchadwick.

Gregg Chadwick
The Call - ندا -Neda
36"x48" oil on linen 2009

HBO Documentary "For Neda" Streaming Online (Farsi)

The Call - ندا -Neda, originally uploaded by greggchadwick.

Gregg Chadwick
The Call - ندا -Neda
36"x48" oil on linen 2009

HBO Documentary "For Neda" Streaming Online (English)

The Call - ندا -Neda, originally uploaded by greggchadwick.

Gregg Chadwick
The Call - ندا -Neda
36"x48" oil on linen 2009

U2 Paints the Rose Bowl Green for Iran

U2 performing Sunday Bloody Sunday during their 360 degrees world tour at the Rose Bowl on October 25th, 2009.

As the song Sunday Bloody Sunday opens, U2 now scrolls the lyrics from the Rumi poem Azadi. The word Azadi itself simply means Freedom. U2 is supporting Artists 4 Freedom by using the Rumi poem which provides the lyrics to Dj Spooky and Sussan Deyhim's new track, Azadi (The New Complexity). U2's multimedia screens mash together the lyrics to Azadi along with photos of the protestors in Iran and artworks by Shirin Neshat. Inspiring stuff.



Azadi (The New Complexity) is a song based on a classic poem by Rumi, one of the poet laureates of Iran’s still vibrant poetic legacy.

Here is the original poem translated into English

SHOW ME YOUR FACE
by Rumi

i crave
flowers and gardens

open your lips
i crave
the taste of honey

come out from
behind the clouds
i desire a sunny face

your voice echoed
saying “leave me alone”
i wish to hear your voice
again saying “leave me alone”

i swear this city without you
is a prison
i am dying to get out
to roam in deserts and mountains

i am tired of
flimsy friends and
submissive companions

i am blue hearing
nagging voices and meek cries
i desire loud music
drunken parties and
wild dances

one hand holding
a cup of wine
one hand caressing your hair
then dancing in orbital circle
that is what i yearn for

i can sing better than any nightingale
but because of
this city’s freaks
i seal my lips
while my heart weeps

yesterday the wisest man
holding a lit lantern
in daylight
was searching around town saying

i am tired of
all these beast and brutes
i seek
a true human

we have all looked
for one but
no one could be found
they said

yes he replied
but my search is
for the one
who cannot be found

Read more: DJ Spooky & Sussan Deyhim - Azadi - The New Complexity
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives




Artists 4 Freedom is international in scope and is located between London, Barcelona, Lisbon and Berlin.
Link Below:
Artists 4 Freedom

As a member of Artists 4 Freedom, I ask you to create a poem, a painting, a song for Iran and join the cause. The world is coming together in support of Iran.

(And a special message to Little Steven. Little Steven is touring right now as a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. But Little Steven is also an amazing political songwriter who helped bring down apartheid in South Africa with his song Sun City and openly dreamed of a free Berlin, when others labeled him as naive, in his heartbreaking song Checkpoint Charlie. Little Steven, Artists 4 Freedom needs you to write a song for Freedom in Iran.)

Against the Light - سهراب - Sohrab

Gregg Chadwick
29"x69" oil on screen (detail)