He’ll have to be a great man, his determination
Must be still greater if his strength’s to save our nation;
A second Qadesiyeh’s blood must run, and then24
Lost Andalus will hear the Moslem prayers again—25
An arch can’t be repaired once its foundations split,
Not if a hundred times they paint and plaster it.
Our flag is men’s to honor, but you rip and tear it,26
Then bring the tattered cloth to women to repair it,
And if they list your faults, like tousled hair combed straight,
There will be ways to solve the tangles you create.
Now in Orumiyeh the young girls openly
Go begging through the town for help and charity—
And many sisters in Salmas have put to shame27
Their blushing brothers who aren’t worthy of the name;
We need another Noah and his floods of rain
To wash away your turpitude’s disgusting stain,
And those whose constant prayer’s that women should stay veiled
Should talk about their manliness, and how it’s failed.
They put their trust in swords to make them free at last
But men have always done this, now and in the past.
The law was made, it must be unmade, and we’ll be
Like every country that is gratified and free.
Alam Taj
1883–1947
Also known by her pen-name “Zhaleh” (“Dew”), Alam Taj was born into the wealthy Qa’em-Maqami family; she was well educated and wrote poetry from a young age. At the age of fifteen she was married to Ali Morad Khan, a military officer in his forties who was a friend of her father. The bride and groom had little in common; her husband was not interested in her poetry and forbade her to write. She continued to do so in secret, however, and hid her poems around the house, where they remained until they were discovered and published by her son after her death. Her personal poems center on her unhappy marriage and her adversarial relationship with her husband, but she also wrote a number of poems that deal more broadly with social conditions as they pertained to women; in these poems she angrily denounces what she sees as the inequities of women’s status, while expressing a passionate hope that the future will bring reform and gender equality. She is sometimes referred to as Iran’s first feminist poet.28
*
A Wish
Oh would that girls’ heads wouldn’t come
Out of their mother’s womb
Or if they couldn’t stay there that
They’d perish in that chamber29
Or that for rights denied them they
Would dare to stretch their hands out
How sweet if women would with kindness
Defend each others’ backs
If they would plant the seeds of hope
Within each others’ hearts
If they would value who they are
Like men in this proud country
If they’d support each other then
Success’s shoes would be there
*
This strange man who’s my spouse, at least in name,30
Is less a husband than a leaping flame.
He’s slim, dark, tall, and strong, and in my eyes
He’s like a plane tree in his bulk and size;
In his dark face his eyes are sharp and bright
Like stars that glimmer on a pitch-black night;
His beard is black and white, his cheeks are thin,
And like a tiny knife inserted in
An eyeball’s pupil, his sharp whiskers rasp
The skin beneath my ears; in his hands’ grasp
My little body’s like a dove held fast
Within a hawk’s claws when it’s caught at last.
How to describe his henna’d beard at night
Approaching me? It is a dreadful sight!
He’s like the angel that brings death to us
Or like its phantom, pale and hideous!
He doesn’t care for children or his wife
And love’s of no importance in his life—
Horses and guns and money are his love,
And if he dreams they’re what he’s dreaming of.
He only likes one kind of poetry
And that’s the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi;31
He’s proud of Nader, Delhi’s conqueror,32
And likes Rostam, invincible in war.33
He is an army general . . . though it’s true
He has no army and no wars are due;
His fine dress uniform is just the thing
To make him feel that he’s a splendid king,
He wears his sword then, and makes such a fuss . . .
How ardently he longs for war, as though
He’d fight the war alone and blow by blow.
As if it were an empire still, his eyes
Behold the ancient Persian realm arise—
He is a great historian and seizes
The chance to change world history as he pleases,
Now Alexander’s mighty victories,
The Arabs’ conquests, are mere fantasies—
How could that Greek thief think that he’d command34
An army that could enter Dara’s land?
For all he says, this Alexander’s known
As a great prophet now, and from his throne35
He ruled all things on earth and in the sea,
Nothing escaped his royal sovereignty.
Then there’s Vaqqas, the Arab conqueror,36
“Mouse eater,” as men called him, who was poor,
Without a lineage and weak, who won
The crucial battle outside Ctesiphon,37
Because the Persian general’s fatal flaw
Was even greater weakness, as he saw.
He hates the Arab people as a race,38
Their customs, though, he’s willing to embrace;
He speaks to all so piously and well—
His secret deeds would shame an infidel.
England and Russia he sincerely hates
Along with all the European states,
He’d never know an Ottoman, although
Their cash is something that he’s glad to know.
According to his faith it’s fine to make
A mockery of some old bearded sheikh,
While his proud lineage is of more worth
Than all the other pedigrees on earth,
As if I had no father, whereas he
Was born into a “wealthy” family.
And he ignores the fact that in this land
My people are accustomed to command;
His ancestors were brave, but I can trace
My lineage to the Prophet’s noble race.
A splendid cap is what he gets to wear
While I’m cloaked in a veil to hide my hair;
For nothing that I’ve done, he’ll roar as loud
As if he were a bellowing thunder cloud,
And if I tell him this is not the way
To speak to women, and go on to say
A woman’s gentle soul requires above
All else her children’s and her husband’s love,
That I love peace, and that I’m unfit for
The rowdiness of a domestic war,
He’ll sneer at me and laugh . . . that spiteful laugh
Is like a knife that cuts my heart in half.
They say that once a woman is a wife
Her husband is the God that rules her life;
So he’s the God
of what we are . . . Ah no,
He is our sorrow and predestined woe—
What is a woman? Just a statue made
By man, the sculptor proud of his cruel trade?
If he should drive me off ? . . . he chooses to
Or hit me in his rage? . . . he’s able to—
I am the woman, he’s the man, I’m just
A little doll whose head’s besmeared with dust.
Who am I? Oh, I’m feeble, weak, I’m one
Whom people laugh at and heap scorn upon;
Alas, in this despotic land there’s no
Place where a woman can securely go.
If we say “being” and “non-being,” then
Woman’s “non-being,” “being” is for men.
Woman’s existence is her shame . . . she’s frail,
Invisible, wrapped in her pitch-back veil.
*
What If
What if I’d never married, mother, how would it have been?
What if I weren’t imprisoned in my own catastrophe?
By my bad luck, I swear I wouldn’t have believed the tale
If I’d been told before that this is how my life would be.
Were my few bones so heavy then that my poor father’s back
Would have been doubled over by the unwed weight of me?
Tell me, what was I at our household’s feast? A little kitten,
Asking for what? A scrap of bread was quite enough for me.
I was a humble girl, I never asked for all the gold
And splendid jewelry he was good enough to give to me—
If he had put me in the kitchen, like our Khosh Qadam,39
I would have served as well as her in that capacity.
I bowed before your shoes, they were a crown to me, and if
They weren’t, you could have thrown them at my head, or poisoned me.
I thought my suitor held the Fount of Life within his hand—
If I had not drunk down that proffered wine, how would it be?
Not just that he was old, short-tempered, mean . . . how would it be
If we’d not married when I hadn’t yet reached puberty?
If this was how I’d finish up, why was my childhood spent
Learning my lessons, then, at this or that great savant’s knee?
Why read the Maqamat? Why learn the Maqulat? And why40
Tell accidence from essence with such assiduity?41
What profit or what harm would come to rhetoric and meaning
If I could not explain what meaning should be logically?
*
You’re in the grave now, as my father and my husband are,
I wish that I weren’t writing here all that’s befallen me;
I wouldn’t blame my father or reproach my mother if
I weren’t alone like this, and grieving’s all that’s left to me;
You’re in the ground, and I am like a candle on your grave,
Or I would not attack these ashes so insistently.
O father, mother, if you’d known what you were doing then
I wouldn’t now reproach the stars with their brutality,
And if I could be patient and accept, I would not now
Complain of you like this, or of God’s anger against me.
My dearest mother, sleep; may this familiar pain not touch you;
If I could weep, you wouldn’t hear reproachful words
from me.
*
Complaining to my Samovar42
How comforting to me, how kind you are,
My sweetly sympathetic samovar—
As if your murmuring were a trace of wine
Within this fragile, broken cup of mine.
You burn with such peculiar unrest
You seem to share the fire within my breast;
Your eye is filled with tears, your heart with flame—
It seems that you and I are just the same
As if you learned this crying trade from me
Whose weeping eyes are wet perpetually.
How many days, how many nights, we two—
I and my mother—have sat next to you;
My sister’s slender fingers fed with coal
The fire that burned within your needy soul
While dearest father—bless his memory—read
The holy scriptures once his prayers were said,
And after morning prayers were done he’d look
With care and pleasure through my homework book;
But both these angels have now spread their wings
For heaven—my wings are tattered, broken things.
My brother and my sister have both gone
Before me on that road; they’ve traveled on,
While in this ancient den I still remain43
With no one left but you to share my pain.
There is no kindly hand to clean away
The dust that lies upon my head today,44
No foot to guide my wasted body from
This wretched hovel to a heavenly home—
That place of meeting, love, and friendship lies
As if now washed forever from my eyes.
Like fading footprints, every memory of
My loved ones leaves me here, bereft of love.
Dear storyteller, singer of your song,
Sit down beside my bed, where you belong,
And with your gentle murmuring conspire
To splash sweet drops of water on my fire,
Since when I’m with you I’m not sad, my dear,
It gives me happiness to have you here.
I know that I’m imagining this dear friend,
And as my tale began, so it will end—
The future’s yet to come, but from the past
Above my head the water’s rising fast;
So sit beside me here—for now you are
My happiness, dear murmuring samovar.
*
Life’s Image
1. Life
What is our life? What’s seen and what is dreamed . . . mixed together
Comfort and pain, eagerness, weariness . . . mixed together
Pleasure, its joy, but melded with maliciousness and spite,
Gold and possessions, straining and struggle . . . mixed together
Hope’s flicker of bright light, which is the lamp by which we live—
Its lovely flame, the wind that blows it out . . . mixed together
Truly, what’s possible? What’s man, who swells up with such pride?
A tale beset with queries by the hundred . . . mixed together
That star of the high heavens, this rotting core that is the earth—
Are nothing inside nothing, dreams involved with dreams . . . mixed together
Our every certainty hedged round with doubts and hesitations
Our every cause a mass of possibilities . . . mixed together
Are you aware what death is? It’s a lesson learned in anguish,
A silence squabbled over endlessly . . . mixed together
The blessings of the afterlife are dreams spun out of dreams,
Earth’s glory is the sun’s rise, and its setting . . . mixed together
2. Woman
What is a woman, then? O God . . . ! This player, plaything, essence
With no substance, what is she? Potshards and dirt . . . mixed together
Her life’s years dragging on, her mind’s new growth that comes too late,
Seeing what’s here, longing for what might be . . . mixed together
The scalding fire that is her tears, the blaze of her deceit,
Her chastity, and her immoderate lust . . . mixed together
An artificial face, made up of eye-shadow and rouge,
A dreadful sight, the leering of a pimp . . . mixed together
An evil nature that is covered over with false beauty
A weak soul hidden with a brazen lie . . . mixed together
3. Man
And what is man? This empty show, this nothingness, this vegetable—
As though, to make him, heaven took dirt and sin . . . mixed together
He lifts the great flag of his manly glory to the skies
But woman’s insight sees right through that flag . . . they’re mixed together
What’s man but one who scrapes a nasty morsel for himself—
His wife’s tears and her blood have made that morsel . . . mixed together
His blazing love is soon extinguished in the sheets— he’s present
But he’s absent; he’s kind, and then he’s angry . . . mixed together
And what’s religious marriage in our irreligious age?
It’s what’s unlawful and what’s lawful now . . . mixed together
It’s wedding candles that were lit with an untruthful hand
It’s wedding candies cooked with mortal poison . . . mixed together
Is this religious marriage, or religious fornication?
But no, I’m wrong, it’s marriage and it’s torture . . . mixed together
The thing I’ve understood from my ill-omened marriage is
Companionship came with calamity . . . mixed together
Man is the more deceitful one, woman’s the more unfaithful,
One’s bad, the other’s worse, and both are evil . . . mixed together
If one of them should turn out to be good (which happens rarely)
That person’s filthy earth and limpid water . . . mixed together
Let me sum up: if someone sees existence as it is,
This world is ugly, with a bit of beauty . . . mixed together.
Zinat Amin
Late nineteenth/early twentieth century
Nothing is known about this poet except that she was still a schoolgirl when she stepped forward and recited the poem given here at a demonstration outside the Majles (parliament building) in 1908. The “Russian enemies” were the Cossack troops (a mainly Russian force in the pay of the Persian monarchy), under Colonel Liakhov, sent by Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1907–9) to bombard the Majles and put an end to demands for constitutional reform. Like a number of poems by women written during this period, Zinat Amin’s poem is as much a reproach to Iranian men as a call for political reform and a rejection of foreign interference in Iran’s domestic affairs.