WELCOME TO THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS

This Roundtable started with the story “Conference of the Birds”of Fariduddin Attar. Jalaluddin Attar is a Persian mystical Sufi poet who lived in the twelfth century and his Conference of the birds brought new light through the art of storytelling – stories that came from and are told by and among people.

Here it goes: "A group of birds desire to find their king, and so they ask a wise hoopoe (a bird with a fanlike crest) to help them with their quest. The hoopoe tells them that the king they are looking for is called Simurgh (meaning thirty birds in Persian) and lives in hiding in the mountain of Kaf; but that it is a difficult and dangerous journey to reach the king. The birds implore the hoopoe to guide them. The hoopoe agrees and starts teaching each bird according to its individual level and temperament. He tells the birds that in order to reach the top of the mountains, they need to traverse five valleys and two deserts; when they have passed the last desert, they will enter the palace of the king.
After hearing the hoopoe’s description of what lies ahead, the birds become so excited that they instantly begin their journey. On the way, some die of heat, and some are drowned in the sea; others become tired and cannot continue, one group is hunted by wild animals, and yet others become so distracted by the attractions of the lands through which they are passing that they get lost and are left behind. Only thirty of the birds reach their destination, the mountain of Kaf".
But this is not the end of the story… that was told in our Roundtable: the Conference of the Birds. I hope to bring you the end of the story later

I continue with the Note written by the coordinators of this Gathering: There are several creative contributions: a poetree, a canvas that will gather our dreams, street theatre, sufi singing… all contributing to drawing another landscape, another imaginary. And who will deny that we are at the end of our imagination as we live in times when even in this city where we gather at least three women are killed everyday. Do we need to unearth the truth in all the universals of progress, of security, of rights, of equality, of justice…? Do we need to challenge the dominant logic that dispossess and denigrate? Do we need to offer ways to know challenging the one rational, objective, scientific way at the only way to know? Through the story, the poem, the analytical, artistic and aesthetic we must challenge the logic of the master narrative, master’s houses, houses of reason, dominant notions of power, of politics attempting to weave together both points in our consciousness, the rational and the affective, the objective and the subjective, the personal with the political, the logic with the lyric. Challenging the dominant paradigms of the universalism – universalism that subsume the differences, the diversity that enriches and therefore as the peasants of Chiapas say can we embrace many worlds? As we listen to the woman weaving into her razai worlds of wisdom, creating new metaphors, new meanings? Connecting the survival and celebration the lives and life worlds of women offering a new imaginary.

The birds who have prepared this Gathering are Meera, Suresh, Amrisha, Corinne, Bhoga, Chitra and Kalpana.