Where on my body
are your eyes zigzagging?
I die for you!!
The hungry bludger gambling
With the lice in my empty pocket
and still hung over in the Zipper’s ducts
Where have muted body parts been penetrated by the drill
With shafts as thick as Imperialism
Whose begging is never ending, as the “Taleban” that you are?
Laughter is wounded,
And Samarkand, with a skirt full of pebbles
And a hole,
the forbidden commodity
of the black market.
Hole, hole!
Oh, so ruthless
Fascism has had no mercy
To the body, to the rectum, to the shoulder blade,
Even to the damp pants
So that even the moistest and deepest parts
Get the whooping coughs
From the soldiers’ hard boots.
I know that muteness
Makes me more adorable, but
Forgive me by your greatness, sir!
You who knows as much as a cow
I will sacrifice myself for you!!
You are a great Anarchist among dandruff
of a hairless scalp.
My dear mule, get lost.
Here, the penetration of a neck
Into a noose is a crime
This is not the Republic of executions
This is the festival of holes,
The quarantine of the gonorrheal tribe
Where no woman,
would even chop parsley
to the sound of the chopping knives.
[Translated by Sanaz Fotouhi. Saba Vasefi is a filmmaker, poet and human rights activist. She worked as a university lecturer from the age of 24, before she was fired by the Iranian government. In Iran, Vasefil protested against the hijab and Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist constitution in an interview with the BBC. Vasefi has written articles, poems and multimedia works about human and women’s rights, and against the death penalty and censorship in Iran. Her documentary about child execution in Iran, Don’t Bury My Heart, was screened by the BBC. Vasefi now lives in Sydney. ]