In Memory of Agha Ustad Bakhtiar Karimian

Nine years ago to this month, I found myself as a naive teenager wandering the Middle East looking for dervishes, especially the whirling kind. With my Canadian friend I had met along the way in eastern Turkey, I wandered through Iran, stopping in Isfahan for 10 days. We both had fallen in love with the city and the majesty of Midan Imam.

While my friend was off admiring the tile work in the mosques, I was wandering the bazaar asking where I could find a dervish. My search finally ended at the small shop of a mirror worker, ayaneh kari, Ustad Bakhtiar Karimian, who designed stain glass windows and intricate mirror designs. He was a round man, in his mid-sixties, with a full white head of hair and a huge mustache. His shop was in the far western corner of the gigantic Midan Imam of Isfahan, it was dark and old, full of mirrors and colored glass of every shape and size. I told him I was looking for the Truth and he received me graciously, considering I was an eighteen-year-old American backpacker, exceedingly graciously.

I sat and watch him work a little and then he took a small piece of a mirror and held it up with his hand and took another piece and put it on top of his heart. He did not not speak English and I spoke only a few words of Persian, yet I understood him perfectly when he described the state of the heart using the mirror as the analogy, the mirror is God and the heart must be pure and clean to be able to reflect God and be a manifestation of his reality. All this occurred through some kind of universal language, zaban-e dil, or the language of the heart. Ustad Bakhtiar then took me to lunch, I still clearly remember how every single person he passed put their hands to their heart and bowed deeply when they saw him and greeted him. He was obviously a man of great respect and reputation in the bazaar.

Coming back so many years later, my first task in Isfahan was to find Ustad Bakhtiar and to use my newly-acquired Persian skills to finish off where we had left. I went to the place where I saw the shop in my mind, but I didn't see any small and dark mirror shop, all of the shops were now open on both sides, and were bright, selling the usual Isfahani tourist items, block-printed cloth, silver work, camel bone art, blue enamel, and more. I walked around the entire length of the bazaar, which is probably around two kilometers long, thinking that perhaps my memory had failed me, all the while, I feared for the worse.

I finally went back to where I remember his shop was, and looked for an older shopkeeper to ask about him. Luckily the first man I asked immediately knew who I was talking about, and gave me the unfortunate news that I was two years two late, I could now find him in the graveyard, Bagh-e Rizvan, outside of Isfahan. Crestfallen, I sat in the square, I couldn't believe my luck. And my memory had not failed me, Ustad Bakhtiar's store had been in front of me the entire time, but it had been transformed into a bright and cheery store selling traditional Isfahan block-print cloth. Indeed, the outside of the store still bore a few remnants of Ustad Bakhtiar, it was decorated with his intricate mirror-work, and I smiled and took solace in the fact that his memory was not forgotten.

I still wanted to find his grave, but had no idea how I could do that. The bazaaris I spoke to offered vague information and couldn't tell me where he was buried. But later on in the day, when I met up with a friend, R. in the square, I told her my story, and she got on her cell phone. In a few minutes, she miraculously found a cousin of hers who knew not only knew Ustad Bakhtiar, but also knew where he was buried - it was more than a coincidence - you could call it many things.

We visited her cousin, a young man who had a small and humble shop in the bazaar, who kindly offered us juice and water and told me more about Ustad Bakhtiar. Later in the afternoon, we set off with three cars holding much of R.'s family and arrived to the cemetery which is about twenty minutes outside of Isfahan. We found the section where Ustad Bakhtiar was buried, especially reserved for great artists, poets, and writers. We quickly located his grave, and then men, removed some old flowers and washed the gravestone in water. I recited the Fatihah, the first chapter of the Qur'an, which Muslims read at graves, and told Ustadh Bakhtiar everything I had wanted to tell him and more.

On his gravestone, he was identified as "faqir ila Allah", literally, "one who is in need of God, or impoverished with God," but used to denote someone who has complete faith and trust in God, a true Sufi and 'arif, or person who has attained full knowledge of God.

To the memory of Agha Ustad Bakhtiar Karimian, May God Have Mercy on Him and May He Rest in Peace...