پنج شعر بی‌حجاب – از مجید نفیسی

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