Strange Times, My Dear

by Nahid Mozaffari

tell me, for God’s sake,

  who am I

  if not him stretched forth?

  Tell me how, if you know,

  I can wipe off the mirrors of so many days

  the dust of his image

  and not of my own.

  And tell me, please, what to do

  with all these songs

  that constantly call me back to life

  with the sun

  that has leashed me with golden rays.

  For God’s sake tell me

  to get up and walk away

  from the tombstone of the memory

  and wash my weary body once more

  In the roaring rapids of life.

  — Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak

  Ziba Karbasi

  Ziba Karbasi was born in 1974 in Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan. She and her family fled Iran in the 1980s and sought asylum in Britain as political refugees. She now divides her time between London and Paris. Karbasi has published five volumes of poetry, all outside Iran. Many of her poems have been translated into several languages, and a volume of her poetry is being translated into English by Stephen Watts. She is the director of the Association of Iranian Writers in Exile.

  THE REPUBLIC OF HATE

  Hate is a train of dark horses

  carrying fire

  in their manes,

  covering the city

  under their hooves

  in smoke and ashes.

  Rancor is a tiger

  loose on the ridges of being.

  Silence is the scorched larynx of a canary

  decreed not to sing

  even when the roses are in bloom.

  Fear is the meeting of lovebirds

  who know

  and know well

  that the twitter of their kisses

  will end for sure in death’s voiceless cachinnation.

  And love, alas, love!

  Goldfish in a cage of glass

  ceremoniously set

  on some mock

  New Year table.

  It does remember though

  the spring in our homeland

  that never came to fruition.

  — Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak

  Majid Naficy

  Majid Naficy was born in Esfahan, Iran, in 1952. When he was only thirteen, his first poem was published in an influential literary journal, Jong-e Esfahan. His first collection of poems, In the Tiger’s Skin, was published in 1969. In the 1970s, Naficy was politically active against the Shahs regime, but after the 1979 revolution, when the new regime began to suppress the opposition, his first wife and his brother were among those executed. He fled Iran in 1983 and, after spending time in Turkey and France, settled in Los Angeles. As an expatriate poet, Naficy has managed to combine the history and life, sights and sounds of his surrounding in exile with remembrances of his homeland, particularly Esfahan, this in spite of the fact that he is legally unsighted. His concern for women, the disabled, and the disadvantaged has resulted in a steady stream of compositions, which reflect the poet’s will to work for social justice and effect positive change in class and gender relations. He has since earned his doctorate in Near Eastern languages and cultures from UCLA, and has published five collections of poems as well as two books of essays. His latest book, Father & Son (Red Hen Press, 2003), is a collection of poems about his son, Azad.

  THE LITTLE MESSENGER

  For Azad

  You will tell your mother

  that yesterday afternoon

  you went bicycle riding with me.

  then you took a bath,

  studied the alphabet,

  ate dinner,

  slept well,

  and in the morning,

  with your bag on your back,

  you took the number one bus

  from my house to the kindergarten.

  late afternoon your mother picks you up

  and drives you home.

  she opens your lunch box

  and, from your leftovers,

  she will gather what I cooked for you.

  you play with your toy cars,

  order your grandma around,

  paint with your aunt,

  then you fly

  and, on your wings, come to me.

  what do you take from me?

  what do you give to her?

  what do you take from her?

  what do you give to me?

  little messenger,

  I do not want you

  to fill this void;

  to love someone

  there is no need

  to share a roof.

  — Translated by Ardavan Davaran

  Abbas Saffari

  Abbas Saffari was born in 1951 in Yazd, Iran, and moved to the United States in 1979. He was one of the first to write avant-garde, surrealist lyrics in Iran for the singer Farhad. He is the author of Twilight of Presence (Los Angeles: Tasveer, 1995), Confluence of Hands and Apples (Los Angeles: Kaaroon, 1992), and Old Camera and Other Poems (Tehran: Sales, 2002), and has been poetry editor of Iranian literary magazines in exile such as Sang (1997-2000) and Cactus (2000-2002). He has contributed poetry to the online Poets Against the War magazine.1 He has translated into Persian the Japanese erotic poetry of Izumi Shikibu and Onono Komachi, as well as ancient Egyptian erotic poetry, and is currently translating a volume of ancient Chinese erotic poetry. He studied sculpture at Long Beach State University in California and now lives in Long Beach with his wife and two daughters. He is one of a handful of Iranian poets living outside of Iran whose work is published and read in Iran. In January 2004, Old Camera and Other Poems won Poetry Book of the Year in Iran.

  Footnote

  1 The “war” refers to the American invasion of Iraq. To date, over 9,000 poets worldwide have joined this grassroots peace movement.

  SATURDAY NIGHT DINNER

  The onion, I will grate

  to keep my stream of tears from drying.

  The potato, you peel

  for your sleight of hand with skin.

  Let Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan, the Sufi minstrel, play

  for he opens us a window to Konya,2

  a window adorned with narcissus, sleepy-eyed and languorous,

  and a handful of homing pigeons.

  If they call

  from MasterCard

  or the Internal I-don’t-have-any-Revenue Service,

  tell them he’s gone to Kashmir

  looking for the long-lost polo ball of King Aurangzeeb of India,

  and it’s unclear when he’ll be back.

  Don’t laugh, my darling!

  Cultural misunderstandings

  dismiss the disturber

  quicker than hollow conversation.

  Now, while this aged Indian rice ripens,

  put two glasses, lip to lip, near our hands

  of our oldest vintage, four years old

  and a reminder of a century past.

  A sip of good wine

  is enough to erase an entire

  century from one’s memory.

  Sip after sip

  we can backtrack so far

  that after dinner

  we can find ourselves in the moonlit

  palm groves of Mesopotamia,

  and around midnight

  in a primordial place naked

  and boundless.

  — Translated by Nilufar Talebi

  A BIRD IS A BIRD

  When I draw open this curtain

  a bent TV antenna

  and often

  a few red robins

  decorate my morning.

  But it is not a scarcity of windows

  that has brought me here,

  this rectangular blue

  I could have had

  anywhere else.

  Birds, too,

  all over the world

  sit in such a way

  that their velvety breasts

  are within eye’s reach.

&nbs
p; Red robins or black crows,

  what difference does it make?

  A bird

  is a bird.

  To be honest, I don’t remember

  what I’ve come here for,

  surely, there must have been an important reason.

  One doesn’t just

  make a vagabond of oneself for no reason.

  When I remember

  I will finish this poem.

  — Translated by Niluofar Talebi

  Footnotes

  2 Konya is the resting place of Rumi.

  Granaz Mussavi

  Granaz Mussavi was born in 1974 in Tehran. She started writing professionally at Donyaye Sokhan magazine as a book review writer and literary critic. Her first poems were published in 1989, and she has continued writing poetry for various publications in Iran and other countries ever since. She earned a graduate degree in film studies from Flinders University of South Australia and has made four short films, one of which won the Best Director Award at Flinders. Her second book, Barefoot Till Morning, was the winner of the literary journal Karnameh’s Best Poetry Book of the Year Award in 2001 and is currently in its third printing.

  THE AX

  Part damp,

  part moist,

  on the ax’s skin:

  Rain.

  Part tree,

  part metal,

  on the tree’s wet bone:

  The ax.

  Part chill,

  part wind,

  on the tree’s pain:

  A cold hand

  Holding the ax,

  Part sigh,

  part loss,

  it leaves

  on the forest base

  a green line

  of wet trees.

  — Translated by Sheida Dayani

  AFGHAN WOMAN

  Far beyond my hands

  a red sky

  is about to crumble and fall.

  The silent sound of feet

  that do not run

  carries the pines far away,

  and the crow behind the window

  no longer has a share in what is green.

  Oh sun, you are a man,

  you do not look at the world

  through a veil’s mesh,

  carry away from the soil of my dreams

  a wave wetter than the sea,

  more naked than the forest.

  Tell the wind to bring a leaf.

  — Translated by Sholeh Wolpé

  THE SALE

  I wrap a scarf around the moon’s head,

  slip the world’s bangles on her wrist,

  rest my head on the gypsy sky’s shoulders,

  and say good-bye.

  But I don’t wish to look.

  No,

  I won’t look

  to see the radio and all its waves

  finally gone,

  and the decorative plate, priced high,

  not sold.

  The bed was taken,

  and the bedding — now asleep on the floor —

  is full of fish without a sea.

  Don’t haggle — I won’t let go

  of my messy homework on the cheap,

  and that book, The Little Black Fish, is not for sale.

  “Always a few steps untaken.

  The latecomer carries away nothing

  but his own chaos and mess.”

  What remains is only a crow

  in love, and never tamed.

  You’ve come too late,

  I gave my shoes to a cloud — a keepsake

  to one who does not crush lovesick ants.

  You’re too late.

  Nothing remains but a dress

  invaded by vagrant moths.

  Remember the gown that was home to tame butterflies?

  Always a few steps untaken,

  and so much time passes

  that we begin to fear mirrors,

  to stare at our childhood hair

  that now plays a gray melody —

  string by string.

  We have forgotten our dance beneath this sky,

  a sky dying of a black hacking cough.

  It’s time to leave.

  In their letters they say the sky

  is not this color everywhere.

  The day my plane takes off with a sigh,

  hand an umbrella to the clouds

  to shield them from my tears.

  If you see someone returning from night roads,

  returning to seek her old bits and pieces;

  if you see a girl who without a reason

  whistles to herself and to the moon;

  That would be me.

  I’d be coming to gather the torn pieces of tomorrow,

  to glue them together before it’s time for dawn prayers.

  That day, go to my house and water the geraniums;

  perhaps spring will come

  and then in five minutes I’ll be there.

  I’d close the door because

  the moon always comes in through the window.

  — Translated by Sholeh Wolpé

  Abbas Kiarostami

  Abbas Kiarostami is one of the most highly celebrated directors in the international film community. A graduate of Tehran University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Kiarostami was first involved in painting, graphics, and book illustration. He began his film career designing credit titles and directing commercials. He founded the film department of the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (known as Kanun), where a number of high-quality Iranian films were produced. He ran the department for five years and directed his first film, Bread and Alley, in 1970. During the 1980s and ‘90s, at a time when the West had such a negative image of Iran, his cinema introduced to the world a humane and artistic face of his country.

  Kiarostami is also a superb poet. In the selections presented here, he demonstrates a major stylistic break with the formal features of classical and modern Persian poetry, although thematically he relies substantially on the conventions that define the Persian lyrical tradition.

  SELECTIONS FROM WALKING WITH THE WIND

  The wild cockscomb

  bides its time

  in the massed company of spring pansies.

  *

  Among hundreds of rocks

  small and large

  dawdles

  a single turtle.

  *

  It sprouted

  blossomed

  withered

  and fell to the ground.

  Not a soul to see it.

  *

  Moonlight

  thaws

  thin ice on the old river.

  *

  A little nameless flower

  blossoming alone

  in the crack of a huge mountain.

  *

  Fearlessly

  the village kids target

  the scarecrow’s tin head.

  *

  White-haired woman

  eyeing the cherry blossoms:

  “Has the spring of my old age arrived?”

  *

  Six short

  nuns stroll

  amid tall sycamores.

  The shriek of crows.

  The spider

  stops

  and takes a moment’s break

  to watch the sun rise.

  *

  Spring noon:

  the worker bees

  slow down.

  *

  As the wind rises

  which leaf’s turn is it

  to fall down?

  *

  This time

  the wild geese land

  on cut reeds.

  *

  At summer noon

  the scarecrow

  sweats under its woolen hat.

  *

  The autumn sun

  shines through the window

  on the flowers of a carpet.

  A bee beats its head against the glass.

&n
bsp; *

  How merciful

  that the turtle doesn’t see

  the little bird’s effortless flight.

  — Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak and Michael Beard

  PERMISSIONS

  PROSE

  Abdollahi, Asghar: “A Room Full of Dust” (Otagh-e por Ghobar) from Gardoon 3 (1999), © 1999 by Asghar Abdollahi. Translated and reprinted by permission of the author.

  Aghai, Farkhondeh: “A Little Secret” from Raz-e Kuchak va Dastanha-ye Digar (A Little Secret and Other Stories) by Farkhondeh Aghai. Tehran: Moin Publishers, 1994, © 1372 [1994] by Farkhondeh Aghai. Translated and reprinted by permission of the author.

  Alizadeh, Ghazaleh: “The Trial” (Dadresi) from Chahar Rah (The Intersection) by Ghazaleh Alizadeh. Tehran: Zemestan Publishing, 1995, © 1373 [1995] by Ghazaleh Alizadeh.

  Daneshvar, Reza: “Mahbubeh and the Demon Ahl” from the short story collection Mahbubeh va Ahl (Mahbubeh and Ahl) by Reza Daneshvar. Uppsala: Afsane Publishing, 1996, © 1996 by Reza Daneshvar. Translated and reprinted by permission of the author.

  Daneshvar, Simin: “Ask the Migrating Birds” from the short story collection Az Parandegan-e Mohajer Bepors (Ask the Migrating Birds) by Simin Daneshvar. Tehran: Kanun Publishing and Now Publishing, 1998, © 1998 by Simin Daneshvar. Translated and reprinted by permission of the author.

  Dayani, Behnam: “Hitchcock and Agha Baji” (Hitchcock va Agha Baji) from Short Stories from Iran and the World, edited by Safdar Taghizadeh and Asghar Elahi. Tehran: independently published, 1992, © 1992 by Safdar Taghizadeh and Asghar Elahi. Translated and reprinted by permission of Safdar Taghizadeh.