The Crossing

The Crossing deals with the theme of exile. Not simply political, geographical exile, but an inner exile. It takes place on one day, from dawn to night, and is set in the kitchen of a boarding house and on the streets of an impervious Western European city. Bâbak fled his native country, Afghanistan, almost 20 years ago and came to live in Brussels where he sought to forget his past, his family, his craft as a gifted calligrapher and his homeland. Now retired from a menial job of cleaning railway cars, the solitary man finds his path crossed by a stranger named Sârbân who shows up in the kitchen of the shabby boarding house that morning. The day gradually becomes for Bâbak a day of reckoning with his past and with the nightmare that cut him off from who he really is. The film seeks to portray a man’s solitude and inner isolation from the ‘inside’, through the ‘state of mind’ of this man as he goes through this one particular day gradually confronting his past. The element of time here is thus totally subjective. The music score has been composed and arranged by Zâher Howaida, Afghanistan’s exiled music legend. The theme song, ‘Beshnauw az Nai’ (‘Listen to the Reed’, part of the opus ‘Mathnawi’) which was written by the great Persian poet Maulana Djalâluddin Mohammad Balkhi (Rumi) in the 13th century, deals with the pain of separation, as told by the reed flute that was cut from its stalk.