I was not wearing a white robe, but bright orange.
Purple irises grew from my belly, reaching for
faraway light. The sun was just rising while you,
on the other side, were watching your own dusk.
Behind you a hundred military fortresses, thinning
with each of your steps into the water. They started
to break up into words with jagged edges, flying everywhere
madly in a dust storm. I dived into the ocean, head first.
Like a silver fish I slinked over and under the waves,
determined, after dodging all the words arriving in the air above.
They had come horizontally from the east encased in steel,
sharp, deafening. Water, cold and indigo-green, the only
safe place, and I, a flash of fire across the globe.
When I came up for air you were there. The sky opened
to swallow the shards, the cacophony. Silence. Your eyes
held me. So much more beautiful than I remembered,
you said. I fell, exhausted, into your arms, which grew
and grew, enveloped me like blankets from home.
You held me up like a chalice; I was the wine.
You drank, or perhaps it was me. We became two swans
and flew south to warmth, our diaphanous wings
pearls of mist against a blue sky.
Shirin Abedinirad, Babel Tower, 2015. Interactive installation, Tehran, Iran. Created with interaction designer Guglielmo Torelli, the work reimagines the spiritual architecture of Babel through mirrors, light, and movement, recalling a time when humanity shared “one language” and lived “freely without boundaries.” Responding to audience interaction and shifting weather conditions, the installation gathers fragments of city, nature, and sky into a changing image of the world, transforming division into dialogue and longing into a vision of unity. Artwork courtesy of featured artist Shirin Abedinirad.
