The composition of medieval Persian manuscripts is echoed in Songs #1 and #2 (1956) (pp. 24–
25), but everything is out of order. Elaborate nastaliq calligraphy gives way to khatt-e shekaste; columns of text are placed in random fashion across the page; and pictorial figures are imposed
onto the script, which flows spontaneously across the borders’ edges. In both folios, Armajani
references Sadeq Hedayat, known as the father of the modern Persian novel. Writing in the
interwar years, a time of political and social upheaval, Hedayat’s prose is emblematic of a
modernist angst. And just as Hedayat upturned literary conventions, so too the young Armajani
subverted the traditions of illuminated manuscripts.