Please Do Not Step is a floor-based work with a fantastical text pointing to the great tradition of story-telling in the Islamic world (Dastangoi), with its sense of loss and legacy. The text is florid and obscure with a multiple of possible readings. References include a flying carpet personified, its possible transformation into an aeroplane and the scattering of migrants around the world’s oceans. The shape of the text block recalls that of a magic carpet zooming into space. The original, temporary, version of this work was commissioned by the V & A Museum, London for the Jameel Prize in 2009 and was made from paper cut out with Islamic geometric patterning: successive viewers eventually obliterated it. The new version is inlaid marble, a technique seen on Mughal architecture, transforming what was a temporary work into a permanent, universalized rendering.

Passage:

“I wanted to tell you my story in person, but I do not like the
weather in your country. I am therefore enclosing it in this letter.
Once there was a time when everyone was intertwined with
my magnificent threads spun of fire and thunder, inlayed with
a multitude of stories, abound with love, beauty, romance,
lust, betrayal, and power. I flew at terrifying speeds,
traversing distances unimaginable. On one such journey,
carrying 32,000 families. I had to make an emergency landing
on water due to turbulent weather. According to the plan,
I was divided into multiple parts, each part forming into a
separate raft. The families drifted in the ocean for uncounted
years. Beset with melancholy and desire, they fed on secrets
divulged by the deepest layers of the ocean. Returning on
land the survivors began trading their secrets to buy time.
Until one such day, there was no secret anymore, and no
more time...”