I prefer to enter a city by night. One feels less like a stranger. With the absence of people and their routines, and free from ethnic and geographical distinctions, at nights the city appears quite different—much like any other place. People crawl into their homes, and so begins the story of a city’s nights.
The streets, the trees, the windows, the allies, and the poles—no matter in which city they are, they will be familiar to you. It only suffices for the night to come, so that the black spread of the backdrop becomes manifest. At nights, the quiet arena of the streets and alleys is a context for the invisible relations between the presence and absence of people, things, and buildings, to converse with the language of color and light. It only suffices for the night to come.
In the words of Akhavân Sâles:
“The road has rested from the comings and goings,” said the storyteller,
“The dust is settled,
“The day is gone and the night has fallen,
“The old, azure jewel is here again.”*
* “The Man and Ink”