“Your true ‘land’ is the place where you are going not the place where you are now.”
I love this verse by the 13th century Persian poet Rumi.
I came across it the first time in a catalogue I bought in Berlin at an exhibition of Shirin Neshat’s art.
This Iranian director has a unique way of portraying women in her country.
I just went to see her latest movie, Women without Men. It portrays the lives of five Iranian women against the backdrop of the American and British-backed coup that brought down Prime Minister Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah in 1953.
The photography is superb. My favourite part is the story of the prostitute Zarin. The sequence showing her in a hamam, buried in a frantic effort to scrub away destiny from her anorexic body is a masterpiece.
Women without Men is unsettling in a unique way. And so intriguing.
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