Photo: Farzad Kamangar and his students
Photo: Farzad Kamangar and his students
To the Phoenixes of My Country (1)
Hello my precious, today is Women’s Day, the day that I always long for.
Today, instead of your kind hands, I ornament my thoughts, more chaotic than your tresses, with a narcissus flower.
It has been two years since my hands have seen the colour of violet and the feel of jasmine. It has been two years that my eyes are restless for a few tears of joy. You know better than me that I count the hours all year long, waiting for this day to come.
But today, I wonder which present suits you better, the song “Kiss Me One Last Time” (2) or “Pacha Garden”, (3) or perhaps a candle to light up our memories…
But my dearest, you can’t hear me sing and I can’t light a candle, because the lord of these walls has bound the candles in chains. I am not a poet to sing like the “old lover who breathes love into the wind to tickle your skin” or to write you a poem with a melody suitable for your agony. I am not a poet to rhyme according to the innocence of your eyes.
You can’t read in our native language. If you could, I would take you to the moon feast every night like “the screams of Hemin. (4) ” I shall write to you with Forough’s dialect so you don’t tell me, “Nobody cares about flowers anymore” or, “I’m depressed.” I will write until I too have faith in the fifth season.
My precious, I was born in a country with women who– like all of the women of the world– are not half of the rest, but each is half of the heavens. I cried my first tears in this country along with the women who taught defiance and resistance to the fire amongst the dancing flames.
The first childish smile blossomed upon my lips when the old oaks envied the mystery of the persistence and strength of the women of my land. I set my first steps upon the same path, that before me, the buttercups had shined the firm steps of women during the most difficult and most rebellious mountaintops of life and history with the morning dew.
The same women who whisper today songs of love and resistance into the ears of the walls. In my land, the lullabies of the children are the same as those that the people were murmuring for the Astartes and Ishtars, humanity’s first deities.
How can your day (Women’s Day) not be my Norooz (Persian New Year) celebration? Just like you, many others are waiting for their dearest ones to return, no matter when; during the first winter snow when a handful of wheat allows loneliness to be shared with sparrows, or by the time the house is swept to prepare for the swallows, or by the time God is the host at the Iftar table. **
On such a day, wait for me and wear a dress the colour and elegance of the sky- that has the elegance of Osman’s Syachmaneh(5) and a stem of Barzaran(6). Also wear a necklace of cloves, because cloves remind me of the scent of women, the scent of my country, the scent of immortality, and in one word, the scent of you.
Until then, I leave you in the hands of the creator of dew and rain. (7)
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1) The title of teh letter refers to the high number of women who set themselves on fie in my city. It is an insufferable pain that has been my mind since childhood.
2) Kiss Me One Last Time: a classical resistance song by Mohammad Naraqi. It is rumoured that the song was written by a partisan the night before he was executed addressing his daughter.
3) “Baghche pasha” or Pasha Garden is a masterpiece by Goran, the Kurdish poet. The poem has been eternalized by the velvet voice of Omar Dezhayi. The poem tells the story of a girl who asks her lover for a yellow and red flower. The lover has no choice but to enter the King’s garden to find the flowers. He comes back with the red flower which has been turned red from the young man’s blood of the young man who was shot while trying to find the flower.
4) It refers to a beautiful poem by mastreo Qobad Jalalizadeh, the imaginative poet of Soleymanieh (the city in Iraqi Kurdistan)
5) Syachmaneh: It is a beautiful genre of Kurdish songs which usually describes nature or the lover. Osman Hoormai is the absolute master of these songs.
6) Barzaran: It is a fragrant and rare flower indigenous to the moutnains of Shahoo (in Iranian Kurdistan where Farzad Kamangar was born, and taught for many years)
7) The letter is addressed to an imaginary lover
* Refers to Forough Farokhzad, the renowned and popular Iranian poetess of the 1950’s and 1960’s (1934-1967). The content and the style of her poems continue to draw fans to today.
**An iftar table is the table set in the evenings after a day of fasting for Ramadan (the holy month when muslims fast everyday from dawn to dusk)
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