arabic → English transcript

Two scenes in two capitals, but for one plane

There are those watching for it at two airports

There are those who don't care much about its departure

And there are those who check their watches, hoping for its landing

to draw conclusions from it

Rawin, a man of wide imagination, sketches

a delicate trajectory of scenes from far-flung capitals

from them, in them, and about them

in an attempt that may explain even a small part of the global game of influence

In Tianjin, Masoud Bezishkian boards a plane that will take him to Iran

He casts a quick glance under his seat as a precaution

against what Iran's senior leaders consider a postponed death

The plane lifts off from the Chinese runway

and it collapses into Bezishkian's anxieties

an image of his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi's plane, shattered and burning

Then his memory embarks on a mission to dig up scenes and footage of the same incident in China

He remembers that someone had pushed him back to the third spot in the Chinese queue

He remembers that he was there to perform his duty

He remembers that no one had shoved him into the frame of the nuclear triumvirate's photo

nor even into the photo of the triumvirate of placation

On Tianjin's runway, Chinese people say, with implicit admission

How lovely it would be if we stayed friends

Beijing knows full well that politics is the art of transformation

And Tehran knows that politics is about reconciling interests

China leaves the back door ajar

Iran waited for any Chinese gesture

But Tehran has come to know that the Chinese language

— and body language, for that matter, is not something you learn quickly

It is a language—oh night, how long you are

In Tehran, the scene looks very much like

the scene of a family in dire straits

whose drowsiness disappears as they wait for the head of the household to come at night carrying for them

hope, a solution, and something to stave off hunger

But Bzishkian knows that what the family of difficult temperament in Tehran is waiting for

is a morsel of missiles, communications systems, and air defenses

Bzishkian asks how he will tell them that even my photos in China were taken hesitantly

as if no one wants to provoke Trump's resentment

Trump's plane flies along winding routes

as if the Iranian pilot wants to show Bzishkian the capitals that Tehran once ruled

and then its influence there became only a mere trace

The plane flies over Beirut, where the shrine of a man named Hassan Nasrallah stands.

Then Damascus, where he sees no sign of an Assad.

The Tirans were convinced that Russia had stashed him in Moscow's skyscrapers.

He glances from his window to the right.

He sees nothing but a flash that cannot sustain him.

In Washington and Tel Aviv, the scene looks identical.

A shared relief at the rationality that Beijing and Washington spread in Tianjin.

The Chinese display was measured.

Even the hyperactivity suffered by a man named Kim Jong-un.

For in the presence of Putin and Xi Jinping.

Pyongyang's leader appeared like a well-behaved schoolboy.

Over Baghdad, while Bezyshkyan's plane drifted over Tehran.

Bezyshkyan lost himself in an Iraqi mawwal of the kind called "the Faithful Rib".

But Bezyshkyan heard only Iraqi mawwals that very much resembled

the murmuring of sorrow.

Isn't it time for the Iraqi to rest?