Desire

Through the dense crown of a plane tree, discernible not to everyone but only to the one who has truly raised his gaze, a golden streak flashes by — a falling star. Beneath a canopy, upon a dais, reclines a young shah, listening to the report of a kneeling adviser, while a servant holds out a dish of ripe fruit; this whole unhurried night of the majlis receives, in less than an instant, an answer from the sky to the ruler's unspoken desire. But it is not those whose rank places them nearest the throne who notice the sign. To the right, one of the guards holds a torch — a light kindled for others' eyes — and at that very instant his own gaze drifts from duty to another fire, belonging to no one, overhead. And in the inaccessible cypress on the left, where it is uncomfortable even to sit, a musician has taken shelter, an oud in his hands — he does not play but also looks upward; even below, among his own, he is not quite one of them, and here he is altogether on the margin of his appointed place. The light of service and the unclaimed sound — both are for a moment abandoned for the sake of the sky. By the brook, among the resting retinue, stands a white cage with a bird locked within — a yearning soul beside the one whose desire at this hour flies across the sky entirely free. Nine months went into inscribing on a single sheet this golden streak and all those who did notice it after all. About the work The miniature belongs to the genre of the nocturnal court majlis, well established in the painting of Maverannahr in the 16th–17th centuries, where the appearance of a heavenly sign was traditionally read as confirmation of a blessing from above upon the shah's reign. The wandering musician, who has found himself a place not among his own but on an inaccessible tree, apart from all, revives the image of the qalandar of whom Idries Shah wrote in his books on Sufism: the dervish for whom stepping beyond the established order was not a flight but a form of the path. The sandy-gold mount, painted in the finest golden ink with blossoming shrubs and flying birds, frames the scene without a single break in tone from the night sky of the sheet itself. The miniature was created by the master Davlat Toshev, for whom the falling star became an occasion to show that the sky does not always answer the one who is nearest the throne. Details Base: Natural handmade Bukhara silk paper (90% silk, 10% cotton) Technique: Tempera, watercolour, natural plant and mineral pigments, gold leaf (23 carat) Unique piece