Derakht-e Golabi

It is seldom that we see poetry distilled in biographies: even though aren't memories the best example of poetry? Derakht-e Golabi (English title: The Pear Tree) deals with memories. It also deals with why Boo Radley did not choose to come out; why the young man waits for 99 nights outside the princess' window but not the promised, 100th night; why love for grand ideals can make you feel tired. The film strongly reminded me of the book To Kill a Mockingbird and the films Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and La guerre est finie. Like Diego, Mahmoud is tired: but here we also see that self of Diego before the tiredness came. How often a love for justice is born of love for beauty and a strong commitment to be faithful. Mahmoud loved M, in the form of my eternal love even more than M the person Mimcheh. His love for Mimcheh is slavish; he thinks he is not her equal; he loves to please her, he adores her, and he can die for her. He can always brood over her, and yet be far from her. For his love of his love for Mimcheh is strong: he cannot bear the thought of it dying, it quenched, it spurned, it cold-shouldered. Absence from Mimcheh only makes her more beautiful; absence from her only makes of him the culprit, never her. Now she can be perfect, and he can give all his love to fight for grand ideals of equality for all. And now he realises their futility: now he realises everything worth having in his life is his love for Mimcheh, the time he spent with her, the moments that can never be shared. The most beautiful novel he has written is unwritten: it sleeps, reposes inside him, and gives him the pear tree's peaceful shade. Neither to justify his ways, his ideas, his thoughts, nor to declare unto the world that "yes, I also loved": nothing will make him draw forth now from this seclusion, which is at once his paradise and his teacher. Now, the middle-aged Mahmoud becomes a child again: now he learns again, and now he learns to appreciate Mimcheh. Maybe more than M, my own eternal love. Now Mahmoud learns to love Mimcheh.