2/25/2007

Daf

It whirls and sings and jumps out of his hands, only to return and to resume the magical and intoxicating beat of music of a different kind and texture, sporadically augmented with the sound of chains chiming. Mohammad Vali once read me a poem in which heaven was described. Among the imagery the poem described, it said: “…and people there play music, a different kind of music, with a different instrument, something we have never seen before, something that might resemble a Daf… .” Tonight I was in heaven, listening to Pejman, playing the Daf so masterfully. I wished he would play longer…..I wished he would live up here to play for us everyday.….I wished we could all be together everyday……I wished Mohammad Vali were still alive. He is up in heaven, playing the instrument that might resemble a Daf. I remember his funeral quite well….his son and his best friend played the Daf as he was put down in the grave….they cried and played and cried and played…and just as dirt was shoveled onto his grave, the two of them kissed their Dafs and threw them into his grave, to be buried with him. I think he is playing the instrument that might resemble a Daf, and I miss him, my friend.

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