Maryam Baghi
It was one of the spring days of this year. My father gave me the phone and said, “Qeysar Aminpour is on the line. He is reciting the poem ‘A Plan for Peace’ and you write.” I liked his poems and was happy by the fact that I was going to read his unpublished poem on the day of announcement for the establishment of The Center for Peace Seekers of Iran (Olive Society). He was ill and had to be admitted to the hospital. For this reason he could not be present to the get together to which he had been invited and I had to read his poem:
Martyr sleeping in earth
Said to himself
If conquest is this
That enemy is defeated
Why enmity is still around
Martyr sleeping in earth
Finger tipping in his blood and writing
Two or three words on stone
In the hope of real victory
Not in war
But over war
Today Qeysar Aminpour is gone. Taking flight to the land of eternal, as though he had experienced the flight before in his dreams:
Last night again
As though I saw myself in my dream
Opening wings in the sky
And soaring in between clouds
And as I leaped in the morning
In my bed
I saw a fistful of feathers
Then with disbelieving yawn
Laid hand on my tired shoulders
On my shoulders
As though empty place of something
Something like a wing
I was feeling
Today my father is not with us but he is around here. Tall walls have surrounded him so he would not be among us, not be in his society, since “enmity is still around,” since his pain, “although not like the pain of contemporary people” is “the pain of contemporary people” and others misunderstand his pain because….
It was 45 days that I had not seen my father. His one day trips were always hard for us and we had just gotten over his 3-year absence… I saw him, in person and took him in my embrace. Our greetings in front of the three supervising officials had not finished when he said, “When did Qeysar Aminpour passed away?” Aminpour was no longer more than a month. My father had nothing; no newspaper was given to him, not even a piece of paper and pen. He had just read about the passing away of Qeysar Aminpour in the old newspapers that he did not tell us how he had seen. He was so much in sorrow that in the short 20 minute meeting he remembered his last encounter with him; an encounter in which Qeysar Aminpour was feeling slightly ill and it was agreed that he would write a poem; a poem for “Right of Life.” This was a poem that he apparently never found opportunity to write when his earthly life ended.
My father wanted at least his condolences to reach Aminpour’s family. He did not have paper and pen to write a few sentences to console them. We had to relay his message.
The week after, when 51 days had passed since his arrest, we went to see him standing behind a glass barrier; only my mother and I and not my younger sisters who are pained because they cannot touch my father from behind the glass. My father was also not happy with this type of meeting but we had seen his thin body and his physical condition had become a concern. We wanted to see him one more time no matter what. It was raining and rain was turning into small snowflakes. Autumn leaves had covered the prison yard and we thought that my father would at least traverse the distance between his ward and the meeting hall with a car, will see the rain and snow which he likes and feel the change of season. I was telling myself that once I saw him I would tell him to say a few sentences for consoling Aminpour’s family so that I could relay them. Three times the curtain in the meeting hall went up and down and finally no prisoner entered the hall. The meeting time was over and my father did not come. We did not know why they told us that he is prohibited from meeting with family after all this wait!
***
Dear Aminpour! Pains like yours and my father’s are familiar to me. I walked the streets, closely look around. I speak to a variety of people and say hello. Yes, your pain is not the pain of contemporary people, it is another kind but it is their pain. I recite over and over this part of your “pain remembrance”:
My Pains
Although not like the pains of contemporary people
Are the pains of contemporary people
People whose skins’ wrinkles
Color of their cuffs
People whose names
Old covers of their birth certificates
Are in Pain
But with me all of my boned being
Simple moments of writing
Curves of my spirit
Tired shoulders of my pride
Exposed refuge of my heart is broken
Shoulder of my excuseless cries
Arms of my poetic feeling
Have been scarred
May your spirit be in joy; a spirit that is like life since being alive is not the only meaning of life:
Being after self is not meaning of love
In the same way being alive [not] meaning of life
Yes, dear, Ayeh Aminpour, departure for your father was arrival. He had said it himself:
We are waves and our union, is separation from self
The coast is an excuse, to depart is to arrived
He has arrived to the love for which he wrote a grammar. Accept the condolences of my father, I, and my family.
Source: Sharvand-e Emrouz
Thursday, December 13, 2007
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