Are We to Be Set on Fire?

Before reading:

Are human beings naturally vulnerable to greed, fear, and envy? Are these merely flaws of individual character, or are they deeper forces that shape societies, institutions, and systems of power? When fear becomes stronger than reason, greed stronger than conscience, and envy stronger than solidarity, does corruption become inevitable? And when a society becomes corrupt, who bears responsibility — the few who exploit these forces, or the many who accept, obey, and participate?

Perhaps the more unsettling question is this: do corrupt systems corrupt people, or do people create corrupt systems because the seeds of corruption already exist within us?

The Original Writing

Unfamiliar and ancient passersby move along long, filthy streets toward a withered and lifeless goal. Beautiful yet troubled eyes search for unrest along an eternal path. Dark and coarse faces in heavy, numbing air. The cries of sparrows on bent electric poles, the croaking of humiliated crows, the ominous laughter of a man seated on a broken chair in a mysterious wooden room where spiders have spun webs over the candle on the table. A dusty, cracked window. A ruined building. The tears of a child with a distressed face and open mouth, among a crowd that exists one moment and disappears the next.

The wandering child is hungry. He turns to the garbage on the street and eats. A scream — an ominous warning of someone crushed beneath a vehicle. Owls are migrating to their summer lands. A useless person suffocating in the ocean in a scene from an adventure film. The stunned eyes of a madman crumpled beside a volcano’s mouth. Whispers among people speak of destruction that is said to be on its way, arriving silently. The corpse of a human is lying beside a pedestrian bridge. The dripping sound of street water collectors. The wind howls hurriedly, runs off, awakening a scrap of paper on the pavement. The creaking wheels of a carriage approach; a ragged woman pushes it, humming softly. A skeletal hand hangs from the side of the carriage.

Drops of blood drip from the chandeliers of a grand hall where guests sit together in conversation. One becomes agitated and howls; another barks just to say something; the host roars with complete composure. A table filled with delightful and “appetizing” papers. In the center of the table, a trap made of hyena and fox heads decorated with wolf teeth, and upon it the skull of a cow crying, its tears soaking the wolf’s teeth. An elaborate dessert of fried horse and dog intestines and mouse droppings. The cherries are filled with the blood dripping from the chandeliers. A quarrel erupts. One guest, enraged, urinates on the respectable body of another, and in retaliation, the other bites his rival’s long neck until his snout turns yellow. They say vultures and scavengers have entered the city, carrying bells and books, beginning to bleat like goats, promising good days elsewhere. A piece of bone falls from the highest window of the pillarless building where the feast is held. The hungry child picks it up and begins licking it. A scavenger arrives and tells the child to wish that a piece of meat would descend from above — from the heavens — for him. The child looks upward in astonishment. The scavenger snatches the bone from his hand and runs away, laughing theatrically. Televisions broadcast advertisements announcing that a factory produces the finest dessert — a mixture of pure blood and vomit.

Night falls. They say even night lies. Death walks slowly through the streets. Everyone is afraid. Some read charms to protect themselves from the fear of books, as their elders instructed. Others hang small statues around their necks. They say that at night, death sits and converses with the scavengers, receiving from them the corpse of life and giving them magic speech and realized dreams so they may distribute them among people, taking in exchange life and bones. They say that on the night when the scavengers sing in one voice, leeches will rain from the sky. In this terror and dread, the cold arrives. They say everyone must wear donkey skins and attend the warm gatherings of the scavengers. They say death never rests from morning to night, constantly building idols.

The grand feast still continues. The food has ended. The guests remain hungry. They begin an old game: they blind one person for hide-and-seek, spin him around, then drag him near burning coals. As soon as he falls into the fire, they throw themselves upon his dying body and begin eating. The game continues until two remain; those two mate and fall asleep, and the clever one eats the other in their sleep. The streets are frozen, and in cold houses warm dreams are seen — dreams of attending grand feasts or entering the land of the scavengers. The screams of monstrous mice beneath the bridge mix with the whistles of trains and raise the hair on one’s body. They say whenever the crescent moon turns the color of filth, death, terror, and magic will destroy everything. Then the scavengers will begin to dance and sing: “Whoever is with us shall enter the land of magic.” How do you sell yourself to join us?

Have we sold ourselves? We who, according to instructions, wear the skins of donkeys and mules, have we then sold ourselves? Are we going to the land of magic, or on the day of destruction, when they say we will be destroyed, will we be set on fire?

A Visual Echo of the Text

Reflection After Three Decades

I wrote this when I was sixteen. At that age, I did not yet have the vocabulary of political theory, sociology, or philosophy. I did not know the names of the thinkers who question power, corruption, fear, or mass manipulation. But I felt something was wrong. And this text was my attempt to give shape to that feeling.

Looking back, I see excess. I see intensity without restraint. I see images piled upon images like a mind trying to process too much at once. But I also see something else: the early instinct to question spectacle, to distrust empty promises, to notice how fear is manufactured, and to ask whether we participate in the systems that consume us. The scavengers, the feast, the hungry child, the ritual games — none of them were literal. They were emotional truths disguised as grotesque images. At sixteen, metaphor felt safer than accusation.

The final question still matters to me: have we sold ourselves? Not in the dramatic sense of flames and apocalypse, but in the quieter, more dangerous way — through comfort, conformity, silence, or distraction. I no longer write with the same fury. Age brings structure. Experience brings nuance. But the question remains alive.

And perhaps that is the real continuity — not the imagery, not the darkness, but the refusal to stop asking.

— Farshad