The Poets and the Assassin

By Reza Jalali

A play about historical Iranian female poets,including Rabia of Balkh, Mahsati, Tahereh, Taj Al-Saltana, Parvin E’tessami, Simin Behbahani, Forough Farrokhzad, Tahereh Saffarzadeh, Marzieh Ahmadi Oskooii.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781312957138

Reza Jalali

Reza Jalali is a writer, playwright, and educator whose short stories, essays, and political commentaries have appeared in publications in the U.S. and beyond. He has taught at the University of Southern Maine and Bangor Theological Seminary and is the author of the award-winning children’s book Moon Watchers: Shirin’s Ramadan Miracle.

Book preview

The Poets and the Assassin

The Poets and the Assassin

Reza Jalali

Copyright Page

Copyright©2015 by Reza Jalali

Library of Congress Control Number:

ISBN: 978-1-312-95713-8

All rights reserved.

Caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that The Poets and the Assassin is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this play by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured in writing from the author or the author's representative. No amateur or stock performance or reading of the play may be given without obtaining, in advance, the written permission of the Author. 

All inquiries concerning professional and amateur performance rights should be addressed to the Author at P.O. Box 10055, Portland, Maine

04104 

Refuge is an original work of art by Niyaz Azadikhah and is used here with her permission.

All poems in this book are translated by the Author.

Also by Reza Jalali

Moon Watchers: Shirin’s Ramadan Miracle

Homesick Mosque and Other Stories

For Jaleh, Setareh, and women of Iran.

Introduction

Memories. The kind that stays with you for life and capture all your senses: the stories, sighs, laughter, tears, dancing, cooking, the aroma of spices, singing, and whispers. These are the memories I still recall of the women—relations or strangers—who helped me see the world through their eyes, as I grew up in a dusty border town in the Kurdish region of Iran. They are sad, happy and magical memories: my eldest sister, Baji, horseback riding when in her teens in the 1940’s, riding from one village to another, in Iranian Kurdistan. I picture her flying through the landscape like a furious female warrior from the 10th century Persian epic, Shah-nameh, The Book of Kings. I watched our widowed neighbor, Mim-Ezat, raising three children on wages she earned washing people’s clothes, after her husband, a smuggler, was shot dead by the Iranian border police, the gendarmes. The women around me inspired, mesmerized, and frightened me. Some had magic: I watched babies born at home—our town had no hospital but a clinic— and how women had the gift to both create life and bring a child into this world. They had power: the old healers, whose touch mended broken bones, and hearts, whose words saved marriages and sharp tongues made the town’s men behave. When younger, and still tolerated as part of the tribe of the women, I watched them wait for the men to leave the house, to start dancing, raising their arms toward the sky and moving their hips seductively, to the music from the radio. On family outings in the summertime, we picnicked on a family-owned fruit orchard that bordered a river with cool, emerald-green water. The younger kids stood guard to keep away the unwanted gazes, as the women, taking advantage of the men’s customary afternoon naps, went in for a dip in the river, shaded and hidden by the palms and mulberry trees, in their underwear. 

I heard whispers: young leftist and nationalist Kurdish women, peshmerga fighters, taking arms and dying in the mountains of Kurdistan. I wept