[lbo-talk] Interview with Iranian Poet Farideh Hassanzadeh

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4300>
FPIF Fiesta!
Interview with Iranian Poet Farideh Hassanzadeh

Melissa Tuckey | June 12, 2007

Farideh Hassanzadeh (Mostafavi) is an Iranian poet, translator, and
freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was published when she
was 22 years old. Her poems appear in the anthologies Contemporary
Women Poets of Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets. She writes
regularly for Golestaneh, Iran News, and many other literary magazines
and newspapers. Her poems translated into English appear in Kritya,
Jehat, interpoetry, museindia, earthfamilyalpha, and Thanalonline. Her
anthology of contemporary American poetry will appear in 2007. You can
read her poem Isn't It Enough? here [LINK:
<http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4301>].

Melissa Tuckey: What role do poets play in Iranian society?

Farideh Hassanzadeh: Our great poets like Hafez, Rumi, Saadi, and
Ferdousi have the largest circulation in book fairs of Iran, after our
sacred book, the Quran. This means poets after prophets rule the heart
and mind of my people. To inspire confidence, politicians recite poems
by classic or modern poetry in their speeches. During the imposed war
between Iran and Iraq, one journalist reported about the poetry he
found in the trenches and foxholes that survived after the dead
soldiers, poems like this from Forough Farrokhzad:

     Remember the flight
     the bird is mortal

And everybody knows that one of the most important reasons why people
rebelled against the Shah regime was the persecution and execution of
a young poet, Khosro Golsorkhi, who was a political prisoner. In
military court he refused to ask the Shah for amnesty and bravely
declared: "I don't beg for my life. I have always written for my
people and I defend only my people not my own life. "

My people never forgive the execution of a poet. It is the execution
of words. That is why Federico Garcia Lorca is the most popular
foreign poet in Iran.

Tuckey: How do people in your country learn such a deep appreciation for poetry?

Hassanzadeh: In Iran, from remote places to modern cities, in each
house you may find two books: the Quran (our sacred book) and a book
of Hafiz (our great classic poet). People planning to travel or to
marry or to do business consult with Hafiz by choosing at random a
poem from his book. If Iran is still Iran and after so many foreign
aggressors, has not yet lost his identity, it is because of its
loyalty to its culture. My son, in his latest article, writes that
"losing the lands and cities in wars can't defeat a nation. We
Iranians know we must keep our culture. The real borders of our
country are our culture." And one of the most vivid aspects of our
culture is the poetry of Hafez, Rumi, Ferdousi. Khayam, Nezami, and of
many other poets from classic to modern.

Tuckey: What is it like to be a woman writing in Iran? Do women poets
receive an equal amount of admiration, support and respect?

Hassanzadeh: In recent years, women writers have been more popular
than men writers for they are better to able to express the hidden
realities of family and society. Women writers like Roya Pirzad,
Fariba Vafi, and many others have won the most famous literary prizes
and people buy their books in spite of financial problems. The books
of women writers reach the 20th or 30th edition within a very short
time. But as for poets, our great poets are still Forough Farrokhzad
and Simin Behbahani from the 1940s and 1950s. Meanwhile, among our
great directors, women like Rakhshan Bani Etemad, Samira Makhmalbaf,
and Tahmine Milany have achieved international success and fame. And
our best playwrights have been women too. Increasingly, more women
than men are studying in universities.

Tuckey: How has war affected your life and your writing?

Hassanzadeh: Before war my poetry was not familiar with words like:
bombs, alarming sounds, ruins and fears. The sky and the beauty of
clouds or the brightness of stars turned into a terrible roof above me
where bombs could fall and explode all my dreams. Before war I used to
see the killed only on TV; in the news about Palestine. I never was
able to smell the warm stream of blood shown in massacre reports. War
acted like a sleight of hand to make the distance between me and the
world disappear, beyond the TV. It turned my first little son to a
bird without wings to fly, a bird good only to be buried forever.

Tuckey: I am sorry to hear about the loss of your son. How old was he
and when did this happen? How do you cope with the loss?

Hassanzadeh: I almost lost my second child too. On my way to the
hospital to give birth to my daughter Sufi, Iraq bombed my city of
Tehran eight times in less than one hour. An old man who was looking
at me big with child, shouted to the sky: "God! What is wrong that
this child must fear coming into this world?" With each bomb the baby
inside me tried painfully to take refugee in a peaceful place she
couldn't find. In fact during the war instead of the doctor's
protective hands, bombs gave birth to many Iranian women's children in
the streets. In the past soldiers targeted enemy positions, but now
they drop bombs on women and children. My son, before he could
experience the fear of his first day of school, experienced the fear
of his last breath, his hands gone with the bombs. He never tasted the
joy of putting a pencil on paper to write a word.

As for your question: How did I cope with the loss? Honestly I could
forget his death but my feet, indifferent to me, sometimes go to the
place where my son was bombed. All mothers of dead children know their
children never leave them, never forget them. They wait for the night
to return in dreams. They live behind the closed eyelids of their
mothers.

Tuckey: Do you believe poetry is by its nature political?

Hassanzadeh: In Farsi the word for poetry is "sher"—from" shou-our",
which means wisdom. And wisdom can't ignore political realities. In my
country the great poets from classic to modern, have always been
speaking in their poems of social problems and political events. Hafez
(1320-1389) in one of his most famous sonnets says:
Kings find good reason for the wars in which they are stuck
since truth they cannot see, to falsehood they would flock.

And, in an excerpt from a longer poem, our contemporary poet Forough
Farrokhzad says:

     All our neighbors are planting
     bombs and guns
     in their gardens instead of flowers
     I fear the time
     which has lost its heart

Personally, in the depth of my heart, I have a deep fear of political
poetry. My fear of political poetry as a poet relates to my fear of
producing political mottoes rather than pure poetry. Remember the
Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, who wrote a letter to the New York Review
of Books objecting to a praiseworthy review by A. Alvarez that called
him a "witness." In Milosz's view, the label narrowed the meaning of
his poetry and implied that his poems were a kind of journalistic
response to events. Anyway when you live in a country that is always
prey to superpowers, you feel guilty when you write love poems even
for your husband!

Tuckey: In the current crisis do you see Iran as a prey to
superpowers? I think that is interesting because here in America we
are given an image of Iran as being powerful and dangerous and an
instigator of problems.

Hassanzadeh: Imagine a cottage in the morning of a village. The man is
ready to go to his farm to harvest wheat. His wife and children are
full of hopes and desires. When the man opens the door, instead of a
pleasant breeze, he finds himself surrounded by a band of cruel
invaders. This cottage is my country. After rebelling against the Shah
regime, my people were ready to reap the benefits of their freedom and
independence but they found themselves involved in an imposed war by
Iraq, supported by superpowers for eight years. Now tell me please who
is dangerous and the instigator of problems? Of course, I admit that
my people, in spite of all the difficulties are very powerful in their
spirit. They surely will never accept any foreign country to decide
for them.

Tuckey: How do you feel about US foreign policy toward Iraq and
Afghanistan? And, more recently, U.S. policy toward Iran? How as a
poet do you deal with these developments?

Hassanzadeh: To know my feeling and many other Iranian 's feeling
about the U.S. big-stick policy toward Afghanistan and Iraq, I refer
you to this poem: "You see no one, you hear no one," a poem by my son,
14 years old ,which was published widely in Iranian newspapers and
magazines. This poem was also selected to be published in UN Observer
on Valentine's Day.

     A Letter to George W. Bush
     Hossein Mostafavi Kashani

     You see no one, you hear no one
     You are an important person!
     So important T.V. shows you every night,
     You hold the microphone
     And you talk important words,
     So important even Satan listens with gape mouth.
     Only the flies don't take you very seriously,
     And while you talk
     They are busy with their usual work.
     They search for dirty, stinking things
     And then they rub their hands together
     while saliva drips from their mouths.

     Flies don't have a president
     but some of them are very important,
     So important TV shows them every night.
     But they don't have a microphone,
     And unlike you they are not all dressed, making speeches,
     But with dirty hands and legs,
     They move on Afghani* children's lips and eyes,
     The same children on whom you drop bombs
     And then send them food parcels.

     By the way, how long has it been since you saw a fly?
     How many years has it been since you read a poem?
     Would you recognize the breeze if it passes you by one day?
     Just think! When you were a child, like all other children,
     you saw a fresh rose whenever you looked in the mirror.
     But now you see an important person
     Who will die one day
     Even if he is the president of America.
     If you were to ask your heart
     It would say it doesn't want to beat in your chest
     And be the runway for all the planes
     that bombard cities and towns.
     For, God has created the heart
     Only for love.
     So have pity on your heart even if you can't pity anyone else.
     It is an apple that will burst one day
     And suddenly you will find your self,
     Standing before the gate of paradise, begging
     the pieces of your heart
     from every single person you killed.
     But no one sees you
     No one hears you just as you neither see nor hear any person
     on TV every night.
     You only hold a microphone, and say big words
     Because you are the president of America
     And a very very very important person!

Hassanzadeh: And as for an attack on Iran, I am sure Bush is going to
dig his grave with his own hands. History has proven that all fascists
are successful for a short time but final victory is with the
oppressed people.

Melissa Tuckey is a poet, an activist involved in DC Poets Against the
War, and a FPIF contributor. Farideh Hassanzadeh an Iranian poet,
translator, and freelance journalist.

Recommended citation:
Melissa Tuckey, "Interview with Iranian Poet Farideh Hassanzadeh,"
(Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, June 12, 2007).

<http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4301>
Isn't It Enough?

Farideh Hassanzadeh | June 12, 2007

ISN'T IT ENOUGH?
I gave up love
being satisfied with the quiet of shadows
And memories.

Time was past, lost,
moments exploded
by the rain of bombs.

At nightfall
I don't brush my dreams any more.
At nightfall
I don't care for the wandering sun any more.

At nightfall
I leave the frightened moon in the sky
to shelter under the ground.

I am neither a woman nor a poet any more.

Night by night
more and more,
I feel real.

Like the bloody sound of alarms,
Like the roaring anti-aircraft rounds,
Like the falling bombs and rockets,
which turn the ruins and ashes
into eternal reality;
I feel night by night more real
and old,

so old and real that in the mirror
I see nothing anymore
but an aisle of empty chairs.

Oh, isn't it enough?
What does a man need
more than a loaf of bread,
a quiet night
and an armful of bleak love,
for giving up and being satisfied
with the quiet of shadows
and memories?

Farideh Hassanzadeh an Iranian poet, translator, and freelance journalist.

Recommended citation:
Farideh Hassanzadeh, "Isn't It Enough?," (Washington, DC: Foreign
Policy In Focus, June 12, 2007).
--
Yoshie