Parviz Davayi's New Book; The Tale of a Lover's Passion

Parviz Davayi's new book titled "One Day You Will Come" is a continuation of the collection "Letters from Prague," published by Jahane Ketab. It is a collection of the author's writings in the form of letters addressed to real and sometimes imaginary individuals, capturing the unique atmosphere of Davayi's writings that straddle the line between short stories and essays/letters. After three decades of publishing these writings in this form, they bear the author's distinct signature and are unlike any other collection in Persian literature. Davayi can be loved or disliked; his writings can be seen as personal, excessively nostalgic, and lacking structure from an author who calls himself a "dreamer." At the same time, from another perspective, they can be regarded as beautiful musings from a unique author who perceives the world differently and describes his surroundings with commendable prose. Davayi's writings lack a specific theme; sometimes they recount childhood memories, sometimes they describe the author's fascination with an old film, sometimes they provide explanations about the abnormal conditions of today's world—and today's cinema—and sometimes they narrate the author's infatuation with a beautiful "person" who has appeared in this "aimless existence" (for example, in front of a train station in Prague), creating a magical moment that has, of course, come and gone. All of these may represent a kind of "in search of lost time" (an interesting similarity can be found between Davayi's perspective and that of Marcel Proust: the creator of "In Search of Lost Time" can dedicate several pages to describing, for instance, a cup of coffee; Davayi also pauses in time—quoting Raymond Carver as "staring at something ordinary"—and explains everything around him that could easily be overlooked, thus offering a different view of the world). This suggestion leads us to another world. Once, Davayi said about his short stories: "These are another world. One must knock and enter slowly." This beautiful expression might be more applicable to Davayi's own writings: a different world where the author's childhood predominates and occupies a significant part of his writings (something the author calls "a trivial personal defense against death" at the age of eighty-two), blending memory, nostalgia, and daydreams with love; a love that had been devoted to cinema for decades and is now disgusted by much of today's film industry and the violence inherent in it (including his intense hatred for filmmakers like Tarantino, which he has often discussed with the writer). This time, all this love is directed toward nature and human beauty, seeking an escape from the bad news around us (including the "Mongolian black-clad contemporaries" who have banned colored pencils) in the face of a beautiful stranger on the street, whose gaze can evoke a multitude of romantic memories (both sweet and bitter; one of the most beautiful being the author's unspoken love for a seemingly wealthy girl during his student days, which collapses with one derogatory sentence from that girl: "Kids, put your money together and buy this gentleman a raincoat!"). This can combine various layers of romantic longing, love for beauty, a journey into the past, and the search for the meaning of life, engaging the romantic audience. In this direct conveyance of "thoughts of solitude," honesty plays the most significant role that delights the eye in the dance of these words; the author sees no need for pretense and shares everything that comes from the heart directly with his audience—whether the real people addressed in the letters or us as readers. Davayi explains his love for a specific type of film—intertwined with his childhood world—by saying that while watching the film "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" at the age of six or seven, he entered the cave with the film's hero and "My dear sir, I have never come out of this cave, and I am still in this semi-dark, beautifully colored and lit hall. Let the wise men say whatever they want!" The strangeness of the writings and their personal nature stem from the admirable confidence of an author who has shared his thoughts with his readers for over six decades—as a film critic and now as a writer—and can now begin an article/letter/story with the Apache wedding vows and confess that he has been "in love with love" all his life; whether a certain reader finds no attraction in this type of writing and quickly tires of reading them, or another reader becomes immersed in the special world of a unique author who resembles no one else.