Neither Ascent nor Decline: “Parvaz” (Flying)

Extract

Djavad Djavaheri's “Parvaz” (Flying) is a Meditation on the Concept of time and manifold perceptions of it. Does one second mean the same to two pilots, one in a commercial plane and the other in a fighter plane? What does the fighter pilot experience in that fateful moment on which his whole destiny depends— a moment indistinguishable from any other by the pilot in a commercial plane on his routine journey in clement weather? And from men to machines: how do we, in the age of artificial memories, microchips, and nanoseconds, translate time into both power and impotence against a background of cultures, themselves rendered intelligible only by making allowances for ambiguities, nuances, and uncertainties?

Closer to the context of this story, consider the situation of a man at the end of his time.