The Nightingale and the Blind Potter of Isfahan

In the golden age of the Safavid dynasty, Isfahan was like a piece of beeswax bathed in sunlight. The mosaic tiles of the Royal Square refracted rainbow-like glows at noon, while the scent of spices from the Grand Bazaar tangled with the smoke of pottery kilns, drifting toward the Zagros Mountains. Deep in an alley lined with fig vines on the east side of the square, there hid a pottery workshop no larger than ten square meters, owned by Karim, a blind potter.

Karim’s eyes bore the marks of a smallpox outbreak in his childhood; when his eyelids drooped, they looked like they were covered with two layers of thin gauze. Yet no one could explain why these eyes, which could not see colors, were able to endow clay with the most vivid soul. His workshop always had half a wall stacked with unbaked clay pieces: there were wine jugs wrapped in grapevines, with the tendrils coiling from the neck to the bottom of the jugs. Every raised section of the vines was clearly tangible, as if green shoots would sprout the next second; there were shallow plates painted with 波斯 chrysanthemums, their petals spreading out in layers, with faint finger-pressed marks deliberately left on the edges, like flowers bowed down by morning dew; the most exquisite were those mini water jars, with mouths no thicker than a thumb, yet the bodies were carved with intricate geometric patterns—the "Heavenly Patterns" that Persian craftsmen took the greatest pride in. Even the masters of the royal porcelain kilns marveled that he had "shaped the form of the wind."

The neighbors always said that Karim’s fingertips had "eyes that could touch the soul." Whenever he sat in front of the pottery wheel in the center of the workshop, sunlight filtered through the small skylight on the roof and fell on his calloused hands, and the pottery wheel would start to turn with a creaking sound. He kneaded the clay very slowly, his palms pressing against it, gently rubbing upward from the base, as if soothing a sleeping elf. At this moment, a nightingale with feathers like black jade would flutter down from the beam of the workshop and perch on the edge of the clay basket beside him.

This nightingale had wandered into the workshop three years earlier. At that time, Karim had just lost his only apprentice, and the workshop was so quiet that only the sound of the pottery wheel turning could be heard. One early morning, as he was staring blankly at a piece of clay, he suddenly heard a clear chirp—not as gentle and soft as the caged nightingales in the market, but rather carrying the freshness of the mountains. He reached out to find the source of the sound, and his fingertips touched a patch of warm feathers. Surprisingly, the bird did not dodge; instead, it gently pecked his knuckles with its beak. Since then, this black-jade nightingale had become a regular visitor to the workshop.

It never made a fuss when Karim was resting, only singing loudly when he was kneading clay. And the tunes it sang were not ordinary ones, but imitations of sounds from the mountains: when Karim kneaded the clay for wine jugs, it would sing in the tone of gurgling water, with the ups and downs hiding the crisp sound of streams crashing against rocks. Karim’s palms would unconsciously slow down, making the curves of the clay more in line with the growth of the grapevines; when Karim shaped the Persian chrysanthemums, it would sing the rustling sound of wind blowing through the grape trellis, mixed with the faint buzz of bees flapping their wings. Karim’s fingertips would gently press on the clay, carving out the folds of the petals blown by the wind; once, when Karim tried to fire a highly difficult peacock-blue glazed clay piece and failed repeatedly, he sat on the ground sighing. The nightingale flew to his shoulder, patted his cheek with its wings, and then sang the sound of rain hitting sycamore trees—that was the usual background sound when Karim’s mother told him Persian myths in the courtyard before he lost his sight.

No one else could understand the nightingale’s songs, but Karim could accurately capture the meaning behind them. He always said, "This bird is telling me stories from beyond the mountains. Listen, this sound is a spring flowing over stones in the moonlight, and that sound is grapevines sprouting at night." He would adjust his techniques according to the nightingale’s chirps: when the bird’s song became lively, he would carve more vivid patterns on the clay; when the song became slow and deep, he would make the lines of the clay pieces more calm and solid. Over time, all the pottery in the workshop carried a unique "sense of breath." When held in the hand, one could almost feel the fresh mountain breeze and flowing water.

Every evening when he finished work, Karim would feel for a dried fig from the clay basket and place it on the windowsill. The nightingale would pick up the fig, fly to the skylight, chirp three times at the setting sun, and then fly toward the distant vineyard with the fig in its beak. When the neighbors passed by, they would always see the blind potter sitting beside the pottery wheel, tilting his head to listen to the nightingale’s chirps fading away, a faint smile on his lips. The scent of clay and the sweetness of figs in the workshop would spread in the dusk, becoming the softest scene in Isfahan.