The older I become, the more I understand the value of solitude.
Not isolation. Not sadness. But the quiet privilege of building a beautiful world for oneself, a world so full of making, memory, and imagination that boredom no longer exists.
These days I can spend days at home, inside my studio, without feeling deprived of anything. In fact, the more deeply I immerse myself in this way of living, the less space remains for the noise and chaos outside. The anxieties of life, disappointments, unnecessary social obligations, and the exhausting speed of the world slowly lose their power over me.
Every morning I wake up with an urge to make something.
To transform memory into form.
To turn emotions into texture, folds, stitches, wool, and silence.
Lately, my sculptural handbags have become more than objects. They feel like small portable landscapes of memory. While shaping and stitching them, I find myself returning to childhood, to Shool, the village near Persepolis where some of my happiest memories were formed.
I still remember the coolness of my cousins’ house during summer holidays. Everything there felt magical to me. Touching. Exciting. Impossible to forget.
The vast skies filled with stars at night.
The rocky mountains surrounding the village like a protective skirt embracing a mud-brick child.
Running through wheat fields under the heat of the afternoon sun.
Climbing mountains with fearless little feet.
And inside the house, the endless fascination of watching my older cousins weaving carpets. Their hands moved tirelessly through colourful wools and unfinished patterns. I remember sitting nearby for hours, hypnotised by the rhythm of knotting, combing, pulling, tightening. They warned me not to touch the sharp knife and not to get too close when they combed the rows of newly tied knots, but I could never stop watching.
Perhaps that is where everything truly began.
My relationship with texture.
With fibre.
With patience.
With making.
Today, while folding felt around metal frames or stitching linings into sculptural bags, I realise I am still touching those same memories. My work is not simply about design. It is about preservation. About carrying fragments of a disappearing world into the present.
Solitude allows this process to happen.
Without silence, I cannot hear memory clearly.
Without distance from noise, I cannot recognise what truly matters to me.
In solitude, forgotten landscapes return. Childhood returns. Lost people return. The smell of wool, mountain air, old houses, and village evenings all return quietly through the hands.
And perhaps this is why I no longer fear being alone.
Because I am never truly alone inside the world I have built through making.