Read Fatemeh's Essay
Published by Norsk PEN, From Evin Prison to Norway: The Poet Who Refused to Remain Silent
Naked
I slowly remove my clothes
Take them off one by one
Under my shirt there is a battlefield
A depot of ammunition and guns
Naked, like a beginning
Naked, like a bloody knife
Naked, like a forbidden poem
Like the one you're reading now
I slowly remove my books
From the shelves one by one
The dead heroes rise
Stake their claim on me
Hafez and Eliot’s sleazy stares
Weary Samsa’s scaly hands
Don Quixote and Ali Baba’s twisted cocks
A rape of deaf ears
My skin is a frayed cover
Line by line Regarding the Pain of Others
The world is a cellar
Slaughterhouse-Five
Grief is the title of everything written
Happiness is a footnote
365 days of suffering
365 nights of Sodom
Come, pour petrol into my mouth
Come, burn down the library
Detonate the lump in my throat
Empty yourself on me.
Translated into English by Mohammad M. Izadi, Johanne Fronth-Nygren, Matthew Rana, and Fatemeh Ekhtesari
Switch Places With Me
I want to switch places with a woman
Who left her room a wreck After a lifetime of struggle,
Kissing her divorce papers
I want to switch places with a woman Who has tumors in her brain
Dancing drunk,
Her test results still unknown
I want to switch places with a woman Holding a bloodstained tissue,
Laughing through the pain
After an illegal abortion
I want to switch places with a woman Whose head is filled with the scent of another man,
Pulling her blanket over her shoulders, The thief of her husband’s cigarettes
I want to switch places with a woman - Who is a woman! Neither more nor less
Who just wanted to be in her own place for a few days, Far away from the world’s gaze
My life is a longing past,
The days ahead are drenched in mirages. Switch places with me and see
Whose despair is darker than mine?
My present is more destroyed than whose present?
Come, sleep fearlessly for a few nights, Shed no tears for a few days, Be a carefree, laughing woman I want to switch places with you
Translated from the Persian by Yannets Levi and Fatemeh Ekhtesari
