Darwin Serink | Aban and Khorshid / 2014

hold my wing

by Douglas Messerli 

Darwin Serink (screenwriter and director) Aban and Khorshid / 2014 [13 minutes] [Proudvision TV]  

This short, 13-minute, film made in the US but filmed in Farsi, tells the story of two Iranian lovers, Aban (Mojean Aria) and Khorshid (Bobbby Naderi), now locked away in adjacent cells, both waiting to be executed. Despite their obvious fears, Aban remembers their love, Khorshid constantly photographing him, and their intense lovemaking. But recall how they met on the beach on Chaharshanbe Suri when Aban appeared “out of nowhere.”

     Khorshid recalls Aban’s constant hunger, and tells his lover that his one true desire is that he might fly.

     In response to Aban’s hunger, he pretends to order tea, cheese, and other delicacies.

    The film shows them making love, and their sudden arrestment for illegal behavior in Iran, one the 76 countries where homosexuality remains illegal, and one of the 5 that still has the death penalty as punishment.

      Khorshid has folded a piece of foil paper, which he has reshaped as a rose and throws it out of his cell toward Aban’s, who receives the gift, and opens the paper. Although there is nothing on it but one faint spot of white, he claims that it represents the two of them in their own universe.

     The authorities come for them, binding their eyes, and forcing them to climb to the gallows where they will be hung. Khorshid tells his friend not to be afraid, but Aban clearly is terrorized, begging for them to unbind he eyes so that he might once again see Khorshid before he dies. Khorshid begs him to reach out to his fingers, telling him to hold on to his wing. Aban touches the fingers of his friend as they both are hung and killed for doing nothing but sharing their love.

      This is a painful short work, and meant to be since it commemorates the death of Mokhtar N. and Ali A. a pair of gay lovers hung in Iran in 2005.

    Watching gay films as intensely as I have over the last 26 years, as Vito Russo predicted, I have simply had to call witness to far too much suffering and death. Some days, it is difficult to go on.

      But as Beckett would put it: "You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."

 

Los Angeles, October 8, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2026).