Clouds and snow.. Asking- are you Free?

Clouds and snow.. Asking- are you Free?

My day with the Clouds By Hoda Hadadi.

Can a children’s book be so lyrical yet political, poignant with images, yet reverberating with questions. Hoda Hadadi, the Iranian author and illustrator is capable of creating so with subtle brush strokes, minimal texts and loads of imagination.

The original text in Persian, translated in English and published in India by Eklavya, seems to be relevant for all ages. It will appeal to you as a poetry, how you want it to unfold. It traces the life of a child (throughout very intelligently Hadadi never speaks about gender of the child throughout- since that shouldn’t matter- should it really?) and the mother as they wade through their morning chores waiting for the sky to give snow and clouds. Often the clouds become the knitting of the mother, in between her fingers wound in soft wool and often appears in the songs of the children as they pray for snowfall, apparently disappeared six years ago. As the sky sends snow instead of rain, the children rush out to play, and we see through the image a face looking through the glass. Slowly the metaphors become clear… through the last lines..

There was a lot of snow in our courtyard.

My friend and I ran in there in our warm

New jackets and played snowball.

Mother watched us from the window

And smiled.

She too wanted to run, but she had

Forgotten how to because she had not

Run for a long time.

How many such mothers do we know. Is it about Iran only with its repression or is it about women, who forget slowly how to run, dance, smile, move freely, open the windows and rush out? Do we notice how our mothers slowly confine themselves inwards. Or we celebrate their confinement by deifying them as sacrificial beings, through advertisement commercials, movies, media, typifying them and slowly reducing them to strange orbital planes..

The clouds and the snow call out to them and indeed they must have forgotten to run…

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Embroideries have given us an idea of Iran, however this is universal.. all across, connecting theme of obedience...