Poetry behind bars: The Poems

15 November is the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. Marian Botsford Fraser, chair of PEN International’s Writer Committee said about this day: It’s a way of saying to all imprisoned writers: “You are not forgotten. We stand with you and fight for you”. This blog post and the next one want to deliver exactly this message. To mark this day I want to share with you in this blog post poetry which was written behind bars, in the Women’s Ward of Iran’s Evin Prison by five women: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, Narges Mohammadi, Nasim Bagheri and Mahvash Sabet Shariari. In next blog post I will introduce you to these women and will share their stories. 

The poems were read at a Vigil for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in front of the Iranian Embassy in London on National Poetry Day (28 September 2017). All poems deal with the themes of prison and freedom and some of them were written for and about Nazanin, her husband Richard and their daughter Gabriella (Gisou). 

1. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Autumn Light

The diagonal light falling on my bed
Tells me that there is another autumn on the way
Without you
A child turned three
Without us
The bars of the prison grew around us
So unjustly and fearlessly
And we left our dreams behind them
We walked on the stairs that led to captivity
Our night time stories remained unfinished
And lost in the silence of the night
Nothing is the same here
And without you even fennel tea loses its odour.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

For Our Parents

I am sitting in a corner
Reviewing my dreams
And ploughing through my memories.
I think about my mum, who
Every time I touch Gabriella’s hair
Or kiss the back of her neck
Her eyes fill up with tears
I think of her safe hands, full of love,
And her longing look.

I think of my Dad
Whose hair has gone completely grey
Tired of walking up and down in the corridors
Of the courts
And the hope at the end of his eyes
That yet again reminds me
That these days will pass, however hard.

I think of your mum
That nothing would make her happier
Than seeing and embracing her granddaughter
After 19 months
To bring a smile on her lips and her pale face
And give her energy on her tired body
Flattened from illness.

I think of your dad
Who turned 68 this month without us
His silence is full of words for me.

I think of freedom, of return
Of that glorious moment of rolling into your arms
The arms I have longed for the past 500 days.

I think of my orchids and African violets
Have they bloomed without me?

It is true that the world in its great hugeness
Sometimes gets so small
As small as the eye in the needle
And unreachable like a dream
And I still
Am sitting in my corner
Reviewing my dreams
And ploughing through my memories.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

2. Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee

Couples in Prison

You are under the sky of the same city
Just a little bit farther
And a wall between us
As deep as a hand span
We drink tea without each other
And shape clouds in our dreams together
We experience not being with each other
And together we watch the trace of migrating birds

Our date will be
kissing the first star
That twinkles at us every night

Golrokh Iraee

 

For Gisou

Mummy’s Lullaby
I can’t remember
The scent of daddy’s cuddle
I can’t remember
Gisou grows up
A stranger to her homeland
A stranger to her daddy
To mummy

Between moments
And a misty city
That leads to a building
And stairs
Which have devoured mummy
Gisou grows up
With a poem in her heart
And a story on her lips

Golrokh Iraee

3. Narges Mohammadi

Three Goodbyes

Three goodbyes and a separation, like dying three times

When Ali and Kiana were just three and a half years old
I was arrested by the security guards when attacking my home
Kiana had just had an operation and it was only a couple of hours I had come home.
She had a temperature
When the security guards were searching the house, they allowed me to put the kids to bed.
I put Ali on my feet, and rocked him, and patted him
And softly sang him a lullaby
He slept
Kiana was restless. She had a temperature, and was scared.
She’d felt the fear
She’d clung her arms around my neck
And I, as if gradually sinking,
Was separated from them
When I was going down the stairs, leaving the house
Kiana was left crying in her father’s cuddle
She called me back three times
Three times I came back to kiss her

When Ali and Kiana were five, and their father was away from us in France
The security guards attacked my father’s house
And arrested me
Ali took his yellow plastic gun
And held the hem of my shirt
And Kiana, in that pretty dress,
Ran towards me, and took the edge of my skirt
They wanted to come, with me
Not being able to resist looking into their innocent eyes
I took their little hands away from my skirt
And went into the car of the stone-hearted men

When Ali and Kiana were eight and a half, I got them ready for school in the morning
And they left
The security guards attacked my home again
This time Ali and Kiana were not home
I picked up their photo from the bookshelf
And kissed them goodbye
And was led to the car
With men who had no mercy

And now in September 2017
I have not seen them in two and a half years

My writing might not be correctly worded
But it has the certainty of feeling – the pain of mothers throughout history
The mothers who take pride in their convictions from one side, and feel the pain of conviction being away their children taken away.

Narges Mohammadi
September 2017, Evin

4. Nasim Bagheri

What Prison Means

Prison means tall walls
Prison means limitation
Prison is separation from what
Is precious to you
Prison means being kept in crisis

But a person with faith
Who believes in freedom
Looks for victory in that crisis
Looks beyond walls
Within the limitations and separations

Holding onto human dignity and values
And testing his soul
Be it in prison
Is being free.

Nasim Bagheri

5. Mahvash Sabet Shariari

Not Seeing You

Not seeing you was enough
And
All this torture
The dark and small cell
And the wall of stone
Is for what?

Not seeing you was enough
For the world to become a cage
And I
A lovebird alone
Breathless, with a broken heart

Mahvash Sabet Shariari
(for Richard from Nazanin)

Sitting Alone

Sitting alone
In a corner of the earth
With women murderers, thieves, drug addicts and prostitutes
She is only skin on bones
With worry and stress
Like a stranger
That Nazanin
With the dream of your arms
That she has hidden away
In her heart

Away from the interrogator
The dream of a man with a bird on his finger
And the woman is only skin on bones
As if
She is filled with dreams
Dreams of a man who has a bird on his finger

Mahvash Sabet Shariari

I would like to thank Richard Ratcliffe for allowing me to publish all the poems in this blog post.