Trans. note: This dedication is adapted from the following lines of the poem “Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season” (1974) by Forugh Farrokhzad, trans. Sholeh Wolpé, in Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (University of Arkansas Press, 2007), 88: “I am naked, / naked, naked. Naked / as the hush between words of love.” The Farsi letters are, from right to left as Farsi is read: ‘ain, shin, nūn, ghain, khih, and sīn. In the text I’ve used the following necessarily unsatisfying approximations (or in some cases, simply swaps) in English, relying on only the simple alphabet rather than any system of phonetic transliteration: A, Z, N, G, K, and S. This was done in order to better create the simplicity and anonymity of the original essay.
All the poetry quoted in this piece is by Forugh Farrokhzad, lines that, while writing, suddenly came to me by association. Connecting with Forugh’s poetry, which is part of our collective memory in Iran, allows anyone to recall their youth or adolescence. These verses, which are linked to all of our lives, link us all to one another as well. Trans. note: from “Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season,” 87.
I laughed when quoting this part of the revolutionary slogan. The circumstances in which N and I write to each other aren’t quite so revolutionary and urgent. I haven’t written anything in my own blood. That’s too epic and hyperbolic for the present situation. But this slogan encapsulates the history that our generation lived between the 2009 protests and the Jina uprising. This slogan recalls a Green movement slogan, and only certain words have been changed—keywords that evoke the sociopolitical circumstances of that movement and this one, and the path that our generation has trodden to get here from the 2009 protests. Words that bring back to life the ghosts of the friends we’ve lost.
Trans. note: Or the eighties (1380s), according to the Iranian calendar, as it is put in the original. Subsequent dates have simply been converted to the Gregorian without further comment.
Trans. note: the fortieth day after a person’s death is commemorated as their “fortieth.”
Trans. note: that is, Mahsa Jina Amini and Hadis Nafisi.
Trans. note: Mahsa Jina Amini’s hometown in the Iranian province of Kurdistan, where she is buried.
See → (in Farsi).
From Farrokhzad. Trans. note: from “Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season,” 90.
Trans. note: Farrokhzad, from “Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season,” 87–88.
Trans. note: The word “stories” was transliterated into Farsi. The author possibly intended for two meanings of “story”—as “narrative” (in English) and as the Instagram feature (in its Farsi transliteration).
Trans. note: a video clip that went viral.
Refers to the story of Amir Hasanak, a vizier in Tarikh-e Beyhaghi, an important history book written by Abul-Fazl Bayhaqi in the eleventh century CE. Also a line from an Instagram post by Kamelia Sajadian, the mother of Mohammad Hassan Torkaman, who was among the martyrs of the Jina uprising. Trans. note: Farrokhzad, from “Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season,” 87–88.
An allusion to the famous poem by Ezzat Ebrahim-Nejad, who was killed in the attack on the University of Tehran in 1999: “Remember us! We who were youths of only twenty-two with love and passion in our hearts and who, before we could fall in love, died face down on the soft ground.”
See →.
Trans. note: Farrokhzad, from “Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season,” 92.
See → (in Farsi).
Trans. note: the word in Farsi is “khatereh” which can also mean “a memory.”
Translated from the Farsi by ZQ.