Shahryar Hatami reimagines an episode from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the tragic tale of Bahram and Azadeh. In one version of the story, Azadeh, a renowned bow harp player of Roman origin, provokes Bahram during a hunt, urging him to prove his skill by shooting a deer’s ear. Bahram, prideful and relentless, sends an arrow through the ear, and with a second arrow sews the ear to the animal’s head, killing it. Horrified by this act, Azadeh denounces his cruelty, calling it demonic rather than heroic. Enraged, Bahram casts her from the camel, and she dies beneath its hooves. The artist alters this sequence with a decisive shift: in his retelling, the camel bolts before Bahram can release the second arrow.
In Persian literature, the camel often symbolizes both death and patience, and here it becomes the agent of fate. Bahram still holds an arrow in his hand, the deer survives, yet Bahram and Azadeh perish beneath the animal. By revising the ending, Hatami unsettles the hierarchy of power within the myth, transforming it into a meditation on mortality and the fragile balance between violence, desire, and destiny.