The departure of Ibrahim Golestan.. from a drop to the sea
It was announced, last Wednesday, the news of the departure of the Iranian writer and filmmaker Ibrahim Golestan (1922-2023), who left our world last Tuesday at the age of over a hundred years, by publishing his daughter Lily Golestan, a sentence: “You are gone, farewell.” Golestan died at his home in Sussex (south-east England), surrounded by his family. At his request, his funeral will be held behind closed doors.
Golestan, who was born in the city of Shiraz – in the name of Ibrahim Taqwa al-Shirazi – is considered one of the most prominent Iranian writers who excelled in various fields of art. He is the storyteller, translator, director, cinematographer, producer and broadcaster. At the beginning of his youth, he left his hometown for Tehran to study, went to his uncle’s house, then joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Tehran, but he did not complete his studies. After a while, he married Fakhri, his cousin. Their daughter, Leila Golestan, is today a prominent translator and director of the Golestan Gallery.
He joined the Iranian Tudeh party, from which he soon split, and his home in Tehran before the Iranian revolution turned into a meeting place for well-known writers, poets and artists at the time, including Jalal Al-Ahmad, Mahdi Ikhwan Thali, Sadiq Shubak and others.
His stories recounted the disappointments of people who had big dreams
After years of his residence in Tehran, Ibrahim Golestan became an employee of the Iranian British Petroleum Company, in which he worked in the media department, so he went with his family to Abadan. A few years later, his son Kaveh Golestan was born, a photographer who was killed by a mine while doing his work in Iraq. In Abadan, he established the “Golestan Studio”; Where he filmed some advertising films for the centers of the oil company.
Golestan was one of the first contemporary Iranian writers to pay particular attention to the language of stories, and to use melodious prose in modern forms of the story. According to Iranian critics, he adopted the style of the American story book in his fictional achievement and established a place for it in Persian prose, especially since he was the first to translate Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.
In his collection of stories “Azar, the last month of autumn” (1948), Golestan succeeded in employing Faulkner’s style, unlike the majority of Iranian story writers who drew on the methods of French writers. In most of his stories published in the 1950s, Golestan recounted the disappointments of people who had big dreams and struggled to achieve them. He was among the first contemporary Iranian writers to attach importance to the imagination in modern narrative forms. His role in the progress of the contemporary Iranian narrative cannot be ignored.
He left Iran a few years before the revolution and settled in England
After that, he produced many films, especially the film “The Black House” (1962), in cooperation with the poet Forough Farrokhzad, who directed it, and a love relationship resulted from this cooperation between them. However, after his film “The Secrets of the Treasure of the Valley of the Jinn” (1974), in which he directed a harsh criticism of the monarchy and its economic projects; He was prevented from working in the cinema, so he sold the studio that he owned in order to emigrate permanently to England.
Golestan is considered one of the founders of the New Wave movement in Iranian cinema. Among his films: “We Can Mention Chastigari” (1962), “Mud and the Mirror” (1964), and “Secrets of Jinch Dear Jenny” (1971), in addition to many short documentaries, including: “From a Drop to the Sea (1957), “Marlake Hills” (1963), and “Treasures of Gems” (1965).
Among his books: Chasing the Shadow (1955), Joy, the Wall, and Thirst (1967), Fashion and Fog (1969), The Rooster (1995), A Letter to Simin (2016), and Al-Mukhtar in Al-Asr” (2022).
As for his translations that he made before his emigration, they include: “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway (1949), “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (1954), “Death” for Being Maxwell (1956), and “From Flaubert’s Letters.” by Gustave Flaubert (1958), and “Don Juan in Hell” by Bernard Shaw (1975).
Ibrahim Golestan left Iran permanently a few years before the revolution and settled in England. Throughout his life, he made many criticisms of Iranian intellectuals and artists. Bold and frank criticism that sometimes reached the point of insults. One of the sources that recorded his endless opinions and criticisms towards people of culture, art and literature is the book “Writing with a Camera”, which includes a dialogue with film critic Pervez Jahed, and it was published in Arabic with the translation of Ahmed Heidari.
The Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad wrote many poems about Ibrahim Golestan, including the poem “Red Rose”, which may be the most sensual and daring poem in contemporary Iranian poetry. Here is the text of the poem and a message from it to Gulistan, translated from Persian by Muhammad al-Amin al-Karkhi.
Red Rose
Forough Farrokhzad
Red Rose
Red Rose
Red Rose
He took me to the farm of red roses
In the darkness hung a red rose on my turbulent strands
Then he slept with me on a red rose leaf.
You lame doves
You miserable, naive trees
Blind windows
under my heart,
between the folds of my waist
A red rose is growing
A bright red on the Day of Resurrection
Oh, pregnant, I’m pregnant,
pregnant.
From Forough Farrokhzad’s letters to Ibrahim Golestan
Sweetheart of my heart and soul, this is the last letter I send to you from Rome. Tomorrow I will leave on a flight, you cannot imagine the extent of my happiness as I am heading to a place where you used to live, a feeling that relieves me of the heavy sense of alienation.
I had a similar feeling when I was in Shiraz. When I walked its streets, I had the feeling that I was accompanying your childhood and youth. And when I smelled the air, I felt like I was inhaling your precious breath, and my eyes were chasing your memories over the doors and walls, and they returned satisfied.
I ransomed you, I ransomed your stature and your presence, I ransomed the white hairs growing around your neck, I ransomed the confused pupils of your eyes, I ransomed your sadness and joy.
What are you that I can’t calm down without? Your footprint on the dirt is enough for me. It is enough for me to trust you, to stand up, to be. It suffices for you to call me Frog Fowler again, and birds and trees to be born with me… I love you, I love you, and my little heart has no energy for all this love.
