I am a professional visual conceptual artist (www.inamgallery.com) known around the world for my artwork, who found my “Bridge to the Soul” when I was first exposed to the magnificent Farid al-Din Attar’s epic poem Manṭiq al-Ṭair, The Conference of the Birds.
I was so moved by the intricacies of wisdom and spirituality in the Conference of The Birds that I felt a calling to find the appropriate resources to study it in depth. I discovered a professor of Persian language specializing in Sufi Writings and studied Manṭiq al-Ṭair with her for 6 months. I soaked up each lesson with such depth and passion as if drinking a bottle of fine wine. As the months passed, I realized that nothing had ever had a more profound effect on me than his writings and the underlying mystical concepts in these manuscripts.
Amidst my studies one early morning around 4 am I awoke – charged with the thought that I should organize and translate Attar’s powerful messages into a novel for an average English reader interested in the mystical aspects of life. It seemed I was channeling a powerful energy that allowed me to keep writing almost nonstop – finishing my novelin only 14 days.
My edited version of the book is about 212 pages (52,000 words). Long enough to cover the matter and short enough to be interesting. I hope you enjoy it.