Returned Portraits project by Roberto Pazzi

Piece #2 of 15

This is the story of an elderly man who earns his living by selling second-hand books in a backstreet of Shiraz (Iran). The returned portrait shows him with long white hair but during the six months in between our two meetings, he had been hospitalized for a serious illness and in the hospital they had to cut his beloved long hair. Once he understood I was returning him his portrait, he started to cry, laugh and screem. Only after I knew his story, I understood that it wasn't only a nice gift but mostly, a memory of his lost long hair. Suddenly, he started to search for a book among the tens ones aligned along the street. He come back to me while browsing the pages until his gaunt, bony finger pointed me out a specific line. The English text was the traduction of the same sentence written in Farsi right above: the thanks of a shepherd to God. His way to thank me...

Edition of 1