Saed News: Stay with us as we explore a memorable photo from the Qajar era and a sweet, fascinating historical story.
According to the historical service of Saed News, let us travel back in time to ancient Iran and recall the past. In preparing this collection, we have used rarely seen images that are certainly worth viewing.
The short story we share with you today in the frame of history is about a Qajar girl on a special day and the photo that remains of her. We have borrowed this story from the page "Untold Stories of Iran's History." The tale is about the unforgettable moments captured in an image, from which many untold stories can be extracted. In short... our story today begins as follows:
Her father, in order to capture the image of his beloved daughter, had called the photographer. On the appointed day, the nannies took the girl to the bath and dressed her up. The girl, filled with joy, didn't know what to do. They had dressed her in a short dress with white fur on the cuffs and shoes that were foreign-style, black varnished with a large bow on top. Her white socks contrasted with her black shoes, adding to her appearance.
Her father had ordered that since the photographer was a non-relative, her head and body must be covered. So, a small black chador, tailored by the seamstress to her height, was wrapped around her, and a white shawl was placed on her head. Her mother, however, wasn’t satisfied and instructed the servants to pick flowers from the garden's greenhouse to tie around the girl’s head and under her chin, perhaps for added beauty. The courtyard was swept clean, a small stool was placed, and a carpet was spread on top. The girl sat on the carpet-covered stool.
The photographer had prepared his equipment, and when the girl saw the camera, she was frightened and didn’t want her image to be captured. She turned her head to look the other way, and what a perfect moment for the photographer to capture a surreal shot. As the sound of the camera shutter echoed, her trembling hands rested on her knees, and with her penetrating gaze, she tried to overcome her fear and looked ahead.
A picture of a young girl has been captured, whose name and identity no one knows, but what is certain is that she comes from a noble family of Tehran, and her image was captured in the courtyard of her father's mansion. The photo is so alive that it feels like the servants just picked the flowers from the greenhouse and tied them with thread. I can almost smell the flowers, but I am mesmerized by that daring gaze and those black shoes with the bow.
I wonder to myself, has that pair of hand-stitched foreign shoes, which traveled through time along with her framed image in a silver frame, been passed down to her descendants? Shoes that accompanied her to the elite gatherings and parties of Tehran during the Qajar era, shoes that surely carry stories within them.
