There is a sacred hearth in community, peace in simplistic living, a fulfilling harmony in love, a beginning in an end. Gabbeh fuses and aligns simple realism and folkloric dream in a balance of intuition and cognizance, perkiness and solemnity. Their reunion in proximity to the ‘tree of life’ is a reminder of their ancestry and rebirth, interdependence and filial piety. As children of the earth, wind and trees, they signify in their cohesion a connectivity that is both universal and personal. Gabbeh’s nomadic tribe has its roots steeped deeply in nature as manifested by the ever-evolving tree which she calls “the symbol of family”. Gabbeh’s revolving realm is thus a realm of restorative spontaneity, divine retrospect and spiritual sublimation. The deep blue, betokening the boundless elements of sea and sky, is reminiscent of ‘minoo’ or the Persian poetic word for ‘heaven’, where the blissful disciple looks up during prayer. His hands return tainted in a hypnotic camouflage when he endeavors to pick the cosmic and aquatic gleam. He makes mystical gestures summoning the red poppies and yellow wheat as if to grasp them in the palms of his hand, and he does, as he holds a speck of flora before their eyes. Gabbeh awaits the return of her uncle, who rehearses the nomad children on understanding nature in its flecked perfection, with the intent to touch upon self-realization. This is a hunt for love, an eye contact with a prism of possibilities, a brown study amidst the plush contrasts of their rugged environment. Here, color is twice as bright: luminous drapes and rugs that are bound to scald your eyes, khaki turfs that draw you in. They run about representing nature in a state of flux, while Gabbeh, sedate in her meditation, spins the yarn of fate. On the other side of the terrain, a nomadic school is shot to visibility where ruddy-cheeked children are being taught out of doors. However, their communion gets stalled indefinitely. Related to Gabbeh: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders Review: Into the Dark Subliminal Hamlet of AdolescenceĪ horseman beckons her by his howls that echo searchingly through the vales. Intriguingly enough, Gabbeh stands mirroring the woman, who is decked in the very same royal azure apparel as her, manifesting, perchance, her own reflection in another temporal dimension, as they sit poised against running waters, insinuating the elusiveness of time. The close-up shots loom on her soulful lineaments, as they converse, with the lady holding her shoulders a simultaneous distant shot is a revelation that she is invisible as the lady rinses the Gabbeh. Gabbeh’s self-fulfilling clairvoyance is translated verbally in poetic philosophy her prophecies prove true, but she seems largely an invention of fancy. There is a mild intoxication in its ether which remains essentially tranquil, save the occasionally charged spirits of the nomads, which enables us to sink into the blissful somnolence that accompanies a beautiful dream. Here, providence and phenomena intermingle in a cabalistic whirl that almost always drifts back to a domain of familiarity. This enigmatic carpet is made incarnate in the form of a wayfaring young girl (Shaghayeh Dojodat) of the Qashqai tribe, who enumerates in evocative tones sequence of events before they actually happen. Rippled by variegated hues of blue as diverse as shades of sky meeting the horizon, this carpet featured a horseman carrying away his girl across what seemed an endless highland. In Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s film (the first in his ‘Poetic Trilogy’), it is a Gabbeh that an old couple stumble across, floating on a river, which sweeps us into lands lined by cascades of clear waters and a collision of colors. Gabbeh or a magic carpet in the oriental imagination is the traveler’s joy, the means to navigating the far and unknown.