To the Phoenixes of My Country- A letter by Farzad Kamangar

Photo: Farzad Kamangar and his students

To the Phoenixes of My Country (1)

By FARZAD KAMANGAR

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)

Translation: Goli Dasht | Editing by: Siavosh J. | Persian2English.com

Kamangar’s crime was standing for human rights: Bus Workers Syndicate

Tehran and Municipality Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate issued an statement on the execution of Farzad Kamangar.

Intimidation and Execution are Reprehensible

We are mourning a teacher whose gears were those of chalk and pen; a teacher of many children who put their heads hungry on the pillows at nights. His crime was standing for human rights. A crime that, for the last one hundred years, has sent many into their graves and put many families in sorrow. In the last four years, many national and international organizations had condemned the imprisonment of Farzad Kamangar and more importantly had called for impartial and legal examination of his case. Representatives from international organizations had repeatedly requested to send delegations in order to visit him in prison; the requests which were never accepted.

Sadly his family did not have the right and the chance to see him in his last moments. These executions are happening at a time when our people have always and every where denounced violence in any of its manifestations.

Iranian and world labor movements have lost a teacher who did not stop learning and to teaching even in prison. We convey our condolences to the Kamangar family and his class counterparts all over the world for loosing Farzad.

As we have reiterated several times in the past, we call for the elimination of death penalty and consider the sentences by the illegal courts as void and invalid. We all for the release of all civic movement prisoners including Messes, Madadi and Osaloo.

Wishing for the spread of peace and justice throughout the world

Tehran and Municipality Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate
May 2010

HRANA Reports on General Strike in Kurdistan

HRA News Agency- Following the call from Kurdish organizations, civil institutions, political activists, and various parties to hold a general strike throughout Kurdish-populated areas, a general strike was widely held, even though the Kurdish territories were heavily militarized by regime forces.
According to HRANA reporters, the strike was at its highest level in the city of Sanandaj which was completely shut down. A significant percentage of shops as well as peddlers did not open for business in objection to the May 9th executions.

Shopkeepers on Ferdowsi, 6th-Bahman, Gozar, and Namaki streets closed their doors in a coordinated fashion.

A clash was reported between citizens and security forces in the village of Nosood. Bullets were fired into the air to disperse the people.
Reports from Marivan, Bukan, Divandareh, Mahabad, Oshnooyeh, and several other cities indicate that there have been large numbers of participants on strike.

It has also been reported that large numbers of people from various cities visited the residences of the executed prisoners in the Sanandaj and Kamyaran to show their sympathy and support.

Translation: Persian2English.com

Farzad Kamangar Letter: “Burnt Generation”

Burnt Generation

By FARZAD KAMANGAR

Oh storm, put away your rusty axe
a daffodil wants to blossom.
A child wants to go to sleep.
Oh guns! Go silent and dumb

Dear Ms…

Hello,

You said that you liked my letter titled, “Dad gave water”* and that it really resonated with you. To be honest, I wrote that letter from the bottom of my heart for my students and for my own childhood. I put my dreams and wishes down on paper. My childhood of our generation had a deep impact in all aspects of our lives.

I do not remember any poems from my childhood. They never taught us any poems. I only realized in the third decade of my life that I was supposed to receive a round ball as a reward from my father and extend my legs before my mom could [sing to me the Persian folk song] Atal Matal…

It was our teachers who should have taught us to write poems for the sun and the sky. We should have grown taller with the trees. We should have flowed along with the rivers. We should have flown across the sky with the butterflies.

We should have, we should have…

However, instead, our music was a military march. Our poems were of guns and rifle pits and we wouldn’t look at the sky out of fear of fighter helicopters. It was in the third decade of my life that I realized that I don’t know any children’s stories. I did not know that children are supposed to sit and listen before bed to their grandparents’ stories of the brave rabbit and the ugly duckling. I did not know that children should live and grow with their dreams. The end of our stories counted the number of those who died in the mountains or from hours of fighting.

Believe me, they did not let us be children. Perhaps that is why at the age of thirty-something, I still like to play childhood games. Perhaps that is why I enjoy playing along with children. And I still wish to have the opportunity to play.

They stole pleasure, joy, and happiness from our generation. That is why I don’t remember anything from my childhood. Now, you tell me, if they take away protests, screams, and love from your poem, what will remain of it? If they take away spring from nature and the moon and stars from the night, what will become of them?

And tell me, if they take away childhood from a person, what is left of him?

Dear…in the time of our adolescence, instead of reading science-fiction stories, we were after reading the constitution of some political party or the methods of armed conflicts. Our courses discussed the history of religion.

Dear…my childhood started with the smell of lead, bullets, and gun shots. There is nothing left of our beautiful village, despite all the natural springs, but ruins surrounded by mountains.

My memories of the village goes back to the following event (I do not remember anything before that):

One day, we witnessed how the armed youth flooded our village from all roads. This was the first time I saw a gun. The first sight of a bullet gave me a strange sense of fear. There was no opportunity to count the natural springs around the village, something I always wished to do. There was no time to tie the swing to the walnut tree in our yard. There was no time to collect the mulberries from behind our school. There was no time to pick the wild flowers.

Our activity involved seeing the injured and the dead who were brought to our village. We heard the sobs of mothers who heard the news of their children’s deaths. They would come from other villages and towns. Sobs, screams, blood, the smell of gunpowder, the chants of “Long live” and “Death to” filled the space of our village. It saturated our childhood.

One day, they placed a young injured man named Ebrahim under a mulberry tree. Nobody was around him. I approached him with fear. He asked me for water. Without knowing that water was harmful for his condition, I brought him some. Suddenly, one of his comrades yelled at me. I dropped the bowl of water and began to cry. I turned my face to Ebrahim, he had a smile on his face. I didn’t understand the meaning of his smile that day, but since that day, the image of it returns, even in my dreams. It never leaves me.

Perhaps Ebrahim remembered his own childhood when he looked at me. Since then, I have envied the children of our land and a lump sits in my throat. I smile at them to picture my own childhood and their future.

Dear…the day when they left our village, another group came with different guns and uniforms. Nobody stopped to think about the schools. Everybody was thinking of a stronger rifle pit. We were left with no choice but to leave the village and come to town. However, it was there that you could hear the sirens of ambulances carrying the killed youth that the sound of the siren of ambulances holding the killed youth were heardsiren from the ambulance carrying the killed youth ringed the sirens of the ambulances carrying the bodies of the killed youth killed bodies there too, it was the sirens of the ambulances and the bodies of the killed youth that were brought to the town for display. These images did not leave our childhood and adolescence aone.

Every evening after school, from the hilltops outside town, I would watch the burnt wheat farms that burned under the fire from guns and cannons. I used to sit down and watch the burnt acorn forests. There was no time left for us to be children.

I became a teacher later on so that I did not have to leave children and the world of childhood. I returned to the villages in the Shahoo Mountains to visit the wounded Shahoo from close and befriend her. The acorn trees had grown again. The mountain was calm, but was still bearing the memories and the marks of the deep wound it once endured.

Life was going on. I was going to class with passion and enthusiasm. However, the people`s poverty and unemployment and the students’ torn shoes and worn-out clothes bothered me. I would die a thousand times every day when I looked at their pained faces. Although, I did not want to bear witness to the death of the children`s dreams.

I had become a teacher, knowing that being a teacher in this land meant sharing the pain and suffering of others. Pain and suffering in this forgotten part of the world would bestow upon a teacher awareness and a new personality. I had to remain a teacher out of respect for childhood, for my childish dreams- a teacher who liked to stay a child- even at this age and even in prison.

[I am] a child with grey hair, a child who is crazy about the children of his land. I hear from inside the prison and from the wall cracks the whistle of the bullets in my land. Like the children of my land, I wake up suddenly from the sound of explosions, and when they feel fearful, my own childhood horrors take over me. This time the smile of that wounded youth appears on my face, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that tonight none of the children wake up from the sound of a bullet. I wish that the bedtime story of none of them would smell like gunpowder.

My dear, in the name of loyalty, let your eyes take the place of mine and look into the inquisitive eyes of your students and behold the dim spark of hope. Sit down and give the smile I had loaned from you to the children of our land as a gift.

Teacher on death row, Farzad Kamangar

Evin prison,

May 2010

Emotional Interview with the Lawyer of Executed Prisoners: “I Am Speechless”

In an interview with Aso Saleh from Nowrooz TV on May 11, 2010, Khalil Bahramian , the lawyer of executed political prisoners Farzad Kmangar and Shirin Alam Hooli, explained the pain that he and the families are going through in their efforts to retrieve the bodies of the executed political prisoners from security forces to hold funerals.

Khalil Bahrami said that on the morning of May 11, 2010, he was in the Revolutionary Court to retrieve the executed bodies. He stated that after help from the judge, the case of retrieving the bodies was finally referred to the national security committee. Bahramian explained that he has informed the court his willingness to accept full responsibility for the funeral and has guaranteed that there would be no problems.

Bahramian stated that he is still in shock and cannot believe the disaster. He said that he is hoping to get the bodies back by May 12, 2010 so Farzad Kamangar’s will, which states that he is to be buried in his hometown, be fulfilled. He added that at the moment, all five bodies are still in Kahrizak and the judge’s secretary has not granted permission for the release of the bodies.

Aso Saleh asked Bahramian whether this is the normal process for retrieving bodies and whether it is in accordance to the law that the National Security Committee needs to have a meeting before releasing the executed bodies for funeral purposes. Bahramian answered that it is not possible to question the law at the moment. Bahramian explained that this ordeal has come to be because of Ayatollah Larijani, since the case should have been referred to the Supreme Court, according to section 18 of law.

Bahramian added that when he was in Tehran on May 10, 2010, the court discovered that their request to send the case to the Supreme Court was ignored. He then explained that Saeed Mortazavi never sent any of the reports since a year and a half ago to Mr. Shahroudi.

Bahramian stated that he is speechless and cannot answer to the families why the young political prisoners have been executed.

Aso Saleh asked Bahramian if he had any plans to follow up on the case, since the executions were against the law and the case was not finalized at the time the prisoners were executed. Bahramian replied that there is no point since they have all been already executed.

Bahramian explained that Shirin Alam Hooli had told him that she planned to continue her studies at university. Bahramian then began to cry. Through his tears, Bahramian said that Shirin Alan Hooli was an ordinary young woman who was not able to speak Persian (she spoke Kurdish), but the security officers still filled out the confession papers (in Persian), claiming it was Shirin Alam Hooli’s confession. Bahramian explained that section 168 of the law states that these cases must be presented in a public court with the presence of a jury.

Bahramian asked, “How is it possible that they could execute five innocent people based on one person’s orders?” He added, “I am asking this judge who has ordered the execution, even if they where guilty (which they were not), is it still reasonable to execute them? Would you do the same to your son or daughter? Farzad was one of the most honourable citizens and I can’t believe this is how his life ended.”

Translation: Banoo Sabz | Persian2English.com

Shirin Alam Hooli was scheduled to be released

LATEST NEWS ON THE EXECUTION OF SHIRIN ALAM HOOLI

According to reports from inside Iran, Shirin Alam Hooli was close to release before she was executed.

The following is a letter received on the news:

Dear friends, I have received this news from my sources in Iran and a source inside the Revolutionary Guards.

The details of this news have been transmitted to international news agencies and you can distribute:

Shirin Alam Hooli who was executed along with four others on May 9, 2010, unlike what many believe, was scheduled to be released or have her sentence reduced.

Two years ago she went through the most severe torture at the Revolutionary Guards detention center. She was also raped many times. Later at Tehran’s Prosecutor’s Office, her mother was told to ask her daughter to keep her silence on what has happened to her. Although Shirin promised not to talk upon her release, she released a few letters from prison written in Kurdish that were signed with the word “Serkeftin,” which means victory in Kurdish. The letters made the authorities change their minds on her release.

In a session with the representative of the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office (Mortazavi at that time), Shirin Alam Hooli claimed that she was repeatedly raped and asked for prosecution of the interrogators.

Following that session, she was taken to the gallows, against the normal judicial process. According to a witness, when Shirin realized what was about to take place, she pleaded to talk to her mother for the last time, but the representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office did not even let her write a will.

The same source adds: “Just like all other executions, the May 9th executions were filmed by a special representative from the Ministry of Intelligence. But these representatives did not allow the filming of scenes where Farzad Kamangar was chanting slogans of “Death to Khamenei” and “Long Live Freedom” while he put the noose around his own neck.

Kurdistan Strikes May 2010

The town of Bukan has joined the general strikes

Bukan- In response to the call for a general strike by the Kurdish people to protest the execution of five Kurdish political activists, citizens of Bukan went on a coordinated strike. All shops, bazaars, and public places have been shut down. Security forces are situated in various street corners.

Today the city of Bukan is on a general strike. In most places in Bukan, along with most of Kurdistan from Maku to Ilam, all stores are closed. People are not leaving their houses.

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Bazaar in Sanandaj shut down

Despite all of the security measures in Kurdistan for today, reports indicate that the bazaar in Sanandaj is completely shut down and the students did not attend their classes. The streets of Sanandaj are full of special guards. The city seems to be shut down.

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City of Divandareh: complete shutdown of Divandareh

At 10:30 a.m. on May 13, 2010, the bazaar in the city of Divandareh was shut down. The city looks deserted. Only security forces can be seen roaming the streets on foot in order to prevent any filming.

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Bazaar shut down in Mahabad

City of Mahabad- In the province of Mahabad, military presence is high. The city’s bazaar has been closed and the people are on strike. The slogans ‘Death to the Regime’ and ‘Death to the Dictator’ have been written in various places (walls, etc) around the city.

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The students in Mahabad and Bukan have refused to go to school.