Resistance moon: Bricks made from my life

Women in pretty much every culture live lives of quiet resistance, learning to persevere possibly as early as through their mothers’ milk. No matter where you are, part of the tradition is almost certainly to make women less-than [whatever men are].

So we have learned to resist in small ways as well as large, despite being told over the centuries to shut up and make sandwiches. Poetry, of course, is one way of doing this. Poems are subject to interpretation, and somewhat like ciphers, unless you have the key, you can miss the message.

This is certainly the case with Iranian women poets. They call on the rich heritage of Persian poetry to frame their depiction of life under the ayatollahs, finding brightness where they can, facing darkness with resolution. The weapons of poetry—language, form, words—can strike with the force of a club, or slice like the sharpest Shamshir.

Siminbar Khalili, who wrote under the name Simin Behbahani, was one such. Coming from a progressive and literary family, she produced a body of work that earned her the sobriquet “The Lioness of Iran”. It also earned her nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice, in 1999 and 2002. (The Laureates for those years were, respectively, Günter Grass and Imre Kertész.)

As you might imagine for anyone known as a lioness, Behbahani made authorities uncomfortable. In 2010 at age 82, she was refused permission to leave the country; arrested and detained as she attempted to board a flight to Paris. She was released, but without her passport. If they thought to contain her strength, they were mistaken. She died in 2014, having never been allowed out of Iran, but her poetry remains as a source of strength and hope for us all. Viz.:

“My Country, I Will Build You Again”

My country, I will build you again,

If need be, with bricks made from my life.

I will build columns to support your roof,

If need be, with my bones.

I will inhale again the perfume of flowers

Favored by your youth.

I will wash again the blood off your body

With torrents of my tears.

Once more, the darkness will leave this house.

I will paint my poems blue with the color of our sky.

The resurrector of “old bones” will grant me in his bounty

a mountains splendor in his testing grounds.

Old I may be, but given the chance, I will learn.

I will begin a second youth alongside my progeny.

I will recite the Hadith of love and country

With such fervor as to make each word bear life.

There still burns a fire in my breast

to keep undiminished the warmth of kinship

I feel for my people.

Once more you will grant me strength,

though my poems have settled in blood.

Once more I will build you with my life,

though it be beyond my means.

This next one paints a grim picture of men’s relationship to women. It’s tough to read.

“I want a cup of sin”

He said I want that which cannot be found.
-Mowlavi

I want a cup of sin, a cup of corruption,

and some clay mixed with darkness,

from which I shall mold an image shaped like man,

wooden-armed and straw-haired.

His mouth is big.

He has lost all his teeth.

His looks reflect his ugliness within.

Lust has made him violate all prohibitions

and to grow on his brow an “organ of shame.”

His eyes are like two scarlet beams,

one focused on a sack of gold,

the other on the pleasures found in bed.

He changes masks like a chameleon,

has a two-timing heart like an eel.

He grows tall like a giant branch,

as if his body has acquired vegetable properties.

Then, he will come to me,

intent on my oppression.

I will protest and scream against his horror.

And that ogre called man

will tame me with his insults.

As I gaze into his eyes

innocently and full of shame,

I will scold myself: you see,

how you spent a lifetime wishing for “Adam.”

Here you have what you asked for.

*    *    *    *

And here’s one more, in her own voice:

“For the dream to ride”