Hijab of Beauty


There is not much beauty in gazing upon a rose bush, prior to a bloom. The thorny stems, harsh leaves underneath terrific orchestra of molecular and biological operations, in concordance with gravity and other physical laws, leave a little desire to consider. Until a bud opens and a Rose declares the beauty! All eyes stunned, universe paused, thorns harsh leaves and all the biochemistry and physics forgotten and done away…

Beauty is a Hijab (veil) shrouding the infinite, complex and incomprehensible. Beauty is a cloak hiding time and all the physical operations taxied by its passage. When eyes see the beauty, that is an edict from the Creator announcing something of incredible complexity, infinity and incomprehensible science and technology has been going on!

There is no mind and no machine capable of recording, observing, analyzing and understanding the boundless clutter of microbiological operations to subatomic interactions of field forces that constitutes a rose.

Each operation by itself is void of anything rose-like and irrelevant to the concept of a flower. While the minds and machines fail under the labor of analyzing a rose, eye after eye, hour after hour, rose after rose… eyes capture like a container the gushing rapids of the liquid beauty with no thinking or understanding, effortlessly rip away the passage of time, pretend eternity has dawned and simulate forever-ness just to make one gaze upon the beauty of the rose possible.

Master inventor designed the cosmos, ever so carefully designed the beauty for it continual, so eyes are wowed capturing the caricature of the Master’s handicraft, “Indeed we have adorned the heaven with the beauty of the stars”. [1]  Just as scientifically clear are the gravitational pull of the planets or the electron spectrum of atoms, the beauty is clear not through the minds but through the eyes. Beauty is the object of inventiveness of the Creator and nothing you can grasp faster or with such ease.

Staring upon the beauty of the rose and in few seconds you come to yourself asking: “Where was I ?” wondering… though you and “your self” are the answer:

You turned my spine into a bow and I the arrow [2]
Pulling me towards Yourself but throwing I afar

Speechless you bend under the immense complexity and infinity of the micro and macro operations that constitutes the seconds a rose is observable to your eyes, you are thrown like an arrow by the bent of this bow, someplace far away. Someplace afar where there is only you and the beauty and nothing else. Someplace where there is no langue:

Within the secrets of love no room for language [3]
Be silent! Over there words are not to be heard!

Someplace where there is only wine and drunkenness and you were in the winery drinking the torrents of beauty pressed from the grapes of love, intoxicated lost your mind and left this world for few seconds:

Oh cupbearer serve that wine which is my heart and religion [4]
Pour brimful a goblet since it’s the sweet life of mine
If there is a religion for drinking wine
In love with wine drinking is my religion

You became the goblet and beauty the wine and while brimful drunkenness rubbed out your eyes, it is not relevant were you where, the question is whom your blind eyes beheld?

So the effervescence of Your redolent beauty
Brimming the goblet of sober eyes
And yes!
Blindness deciphered the Braille
Eyeless drunk I could gaze
Not upon past or future
Not upon sadness or happiness
But the beauty of Your love
Rendering the present




[1] Koran As-Saffat, The Rangers 37:6

[2] Khajoo Kermani

[3] Wahshi Baafqi

[4] Araqi

Background: Pollen under a microscope with a picture of rose etched by a laser.



© 2003-2002,  Dariush Gholizadeh