Five Hijabless Poems

Majid Naficy 

One. The Daughter of Isfahan


(Upon hearing women being attacked with acid in Isfahan)

Daughter of Isfahan!
I love you
For your beautiful courage.

If you have to wear chador
You let it slide down to your shoulders.
If you have to wear scarf
You let it recede to the back of your head.

The one who has to cover his face
Is a sick little man
Who’s wearing a beard and turban today
To hide his impotence.

If acid rains from the sky
Or blood bubbles up from the earth
Daughter of Isfahan!
Do not cover your beautiful face
Hold your lover’s hand
Walk along the waterless river
And speak of love
With your sweet accent.

October 20, 2014


Two. To Ibtihaj Muhammad, the American Hijabi Fencer

Ibtihaj Muhammad, American hijabi fencer!
When you tie your headscarf tightly
And draw your naked saber quickly 
Do you know that in my birthplace Iran
They throw acid
At the faces of “loosely veiled” girls
And lash their feet?

It is not more than a piece of cloth
And yet behind it
There is a  trace of blood
From the threshold of the Revolution when many girls
Put them on as badges of freedom
And men in turbans after the Revolution 
Raised them as flags of their tyranny.

Ibtihaj Muhammad! Is everything better in hijab?*
An anti-hijabist might say the opposite.
Don’t let our clothes become the sign of humanity
And block our ways to freedom of choice.
This cloth that you consider the badge of your faith
Is the logo of theocracy in my homeland.
The day will come
When Gordafarid, the Iranian unmasked warrior*
Will walk to the field
With her hair uncovered.

August 5, 2016

*- “Everything Is Better in Hijab” is a motto inscribed on a “modesty sweatshirt” designed by Ibtihaj Muhammad, The first American Muslim Olympian in saber fencing.
*- Gordafarid: A female warrior in the national epic of Iran “The Shahnameh” composed by Ferdowsi (935-1020). Gordafarid wore a mask to hide her gender.

 

Three. Censoring Love

A mullah censor says that the body parts of women
Must be omitted from songs of my book
Like this two-couplet which I heard
Fifty years ago in the village of Pudeh:
“From the hillside there comes a group of girls
All with white breasts like doves.
May God not bless their mother
Who did not let me kiss their lips.”

My publisher does not know whether to laugh or cry.
So he replaces “breasts” and “lips”
With dot dot dot.
But the mullah censor does not accept the dots
Because they are the signs of empty places.

Suddenly, I remember Ezzat
Who was shot in Evin Prison
And buried in the Cemetery of the Infidels
In a mass grave without any gravestones.

No! No! My dear publisher!
Do not cover this empty place,
Let the dots remain
Otherwise, no one will know tomorrow
That in my book
Love has been torn
To pieces.

October 25, 2020  

     
Four. The Day Chador Is Not Forced 

The day will come when my sisters
No longer wear forced chadors.
Let that day be in summer
So that we can go for a picnic.

We will wrap the first chador as a bundle
And carry our goods in it.
We will spread the second as a carpet
And sit down on it.
We will use the third as a dining cloth
And eat our meals around it.

Then I will climb a mulberry tree
And my four unveiled sisters
Will each take a corner of the fourth chador
So that I can shake mulberries down on it.

How delicious it will be to eat mulberries
When my sisters no longer veil. 
On that day, chadors return to chests
And when posterity asks about this rite
It finds only mothballed fabrics.

May 22, 2021
 

Five. We Remove Our Scarves

We remove our scarves
And use them to knit
A shroud for you.

No!
We will not weave
A hanging rope
With your turban.
You have already been
Dead for years.

We say: woman
We say: life
We say: freedom
And with the third shout
Our dead God collapses.

October 20, 2022 

https://iroon.com/irtn/blog/19365/five-hijabless-poems/

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لینکهای اشعار، کتابها و مقالات مجید نفیسی

 
 
 
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"And yet it does turn!" Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)