Afshin Ala to Reza Amirkhani: ‘I don’t believe your consciousness has diminished!’

According to KhabarOnline News Agency, Reza Amirkhani’s paragliding accident and his transfer to Kasra Hospital sparked numerous reactions, all expressing sympathy and wishes for his swift recovery. Afshin Ala, the poet, was among those who wrote a message for this author and literary critic on his Telegram channel, as follows:

“A Letter to Reza Amirkhani

I heard that your level of consciousness has diminished. Astonishing! Reza Amirkhani and low intelligence?! For years, a generation has grown with your earthly wisdom and otherworldly intelligence, awakened from the slumber of heedlessness by gazing through the windows that your keen eye and mind-creating pen have opened to the realm of meaning.

So, allow me not to believe it, and I humbly ask the esteemed doctors not to say that your level of consciousness has diminished. Your sky-reaching intelligence, along with your humble body, rests today in the highest station. A solitude where God intoxicates His favored ones with the wine of certainty, bringing them to pure awareness.

You are also destined to transition for a while from the intelligence of the earthly realm to the intelligence of the heavenly realm. That is why you have fallen asleep, in an ethereal solitude. In a place that no paraglider flight could ever take you.

Although you have been at your peak all these years, traversing peaks and clouds. This strange desire of yours to fly is perhaps because, despite all your possessions and merits, you do not consider this earth worthy. Perhaps your lofty and light-spirited soul cannot bear all this bitterness and unworthiness that afflicts the earth.

Even I, whose hand of reason and knowledge cannot reach the height of your profound thought, am weary of all this bitterness. I, too, am outwardly awake, but in truth, I have fallen into a bitter sleep, seeing nothing but nightmares in every moment.

I am also tired, tired of news, of events, of blood and hatred and destruction, of the impudence and savagery of modern man, of the relentless assault of strangers from without and the unworthy from within upon this ancient and oppressed land. A land on whose chest you and I grew by loving it, becoming mirrors to reflect its simultaneous grandeur and oppression.

I became a bewildered and incapable poet for singing its joys, hopes, and misfortunes, and you, a watchful and keen-sighted writer for showing the way, nudging, awakening, and enlightening. Where am I, and where are you? But there is no doubt that our concerns and pains, despite all their differences, are rooted in the soil of one garden. A garden full of trees and shade-giving, but blighted and afflicted. What difference does it make that the tall palm of your knowledge and wisdom is a head taller than this wounded and sad tree that is me? A trembling willow, yet still standing, upon which many friends and foes have leaned, leaving nothing but scars as a legacy when they departed.

If my state is such, God knows what you, a person like you, have endured from this unfaithful era, from this guest-killing guesthouse. So you needed this rest. And that, after the suffering you endured all these years, from what you desire but do not see, and from what you see but do not desire. So sleep peacefully and rest. Let your ever-flying wings rest a little in bed to regain fresh strength for soaring higher.

We still need your abundant intelligence, steadfast faith, and prolific pen. Outside, many hands are raised in prayer towards the sky. I am certain that the merciful God will hear our prayers and once again return our dear Reza to the embrace of the people of Qibla and the pen.”