What Is Life?
Ahmad Talebi Nezhad
Last Thursday, the 30th of Farvardin, a group of people working in the fields of literature and politics, along with several of my journalist colleagues and I, went to see Around the World in Eighty Days, written and directed by Jalal Tehrani. Despite its title, the play has nothing to do with Jules Verne’s novel, nor does it resemble Tehrani’s previous works. It is an absurdist performance, strongly influenced by Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, exploring the place of human beings within the vast dimensions of the universe. It suggests that we are constantly moving in a closed circle while endlessly searching for the beginning and the end of our lives. Ultimately, it does not really matter how conscious we are of our existence. The play’s two characters, Babaei (a symbol of knowledge) and Javan (a symbol of ignorance), are simply two sides of the same coin.
Both are mad in their own way: Babaei through his obsessive pursuit of knowledge, and Javan through his careless indifference. In the end, there is little difference between them. Both are equally lost in the mystery of life. Javan answers all of Babaei’s questions with, “It is what it is,” implying that there is nothing we can do. Babaei’s profound and obsessive understanding, which has driven him to madness, represents the other side of the same coin—one that is ultimately no different from ignorance. In Babaei’s view, there are only two ways for people to move through life: either they dwell on the past, which becomes meaningless and monotonous through repetition, or they pursue the future, which is equally absurd. That is the play’s central philosophical question.