-for Ameneh Shahbazi, who was shot in the neck while
bandaging a shot protester's wounded leg.
Ameneh Shahbazi was shot in the neck.
Bullet like a cricket bewitched by light
possessed by window like silence
spellbound by night rain
mesmerized by hair, and a kiss
on her lips;
Bullet,
seven and a half grams of lead and one
gram of gunpowder
shot Ameneh Shahbazi in her neck.
Bullet passed from Basti Hills from the seventy-million-dollar palaces from the kings of coins, stones, iron, and sugar from the Social Security Organization from Caspian in Mashhad from the Shandiz Phenomenon from Niavaran's Office from Lavasan’s Villa and from a distance of two-hundred and thirty-five meters and seventy centimeters with two
not very sharp eyes
spotted
out of five-thousand-nine hundred and forty-six rioters and four protestors
Ameneh Shahbazi her hands two branches
of light her legs two pillars of smoke
her height like a flower blooming
from asphalt her warm lips and mouth her
eyes and Ameneh Shahbazi was shot
in the neck from a palace on Pasteur Street
through a rooftop in Sarasiab one
kiss to Ameneh Shahbazi 's neck.
*
Ameneh Shahbazi! Why weren't you in Elahieh cafes?
Why didn't you wear a dusty sage green uniform to respect that dreamy revolution?
Why didn't you listen to Namjo in the dream of smart socialism?
Why didn't you take a selfie with Pasargad and Apadana?
Why didn't you give your taste to Yazdani khorram?
Why weren’t you happy with Farjami?
Why didn't you celebrate your wretchedness with Imami?
Why didn't you take off your hijab in the voting ballots?
Why didn't you take a photo next to the tiny flag of Iran and a blue tick with a smile of horrible satisfaction?
Why didn’t you treat your skin with snail lotions and aloe vera moisturizer?
Why didn’t you send your neck to Toronto and your hands to New York?
Why didn't you attend Nayak's party?
Ameneh Shahbazi, why weren't you in the Femtrip staff?
*
Instead, you were in Sarasiab and you were beautiful like light sliding
across a woman's throat like a spinning fountain woven into the night like a shy
hand reaching for another's shy hand.
*
Ameneh Shahbazi! Why did you give your neck to the revolution?
Your hands to the foggy memory of your children your face to history and your pockets to the government? Ameneh Shahbazi! Why did you hide the cultural NATO in your 36-size old worn-out shoes? Why did you draw the map of the disintegration of Iran on the back of your father's crumpled prescription, stick it on the empty refrigerator at home and write under it: "Tomorrow for sure."
Why did you hand over the oil wells to America and the yellow cakes to Israel from pockets of your borrowed dress? Why didn't you tell your three-and-a-half-year-old son that you go to Tel Aviv at nights and to Haftpeh during the days? Ameneh Shahbazi, why didn't you kill 500,000 people in Syria and one million people in Yemen to choose peace in New York? Ameneh Shahbazi!
Why weren’t you a guaranteed success? Why were you not a seventy-million-dollar palace? Why were you not Arif's son and Haddad's daughter? Why weren't you Zainab, Ruqiya and Fatima? Why weren't you a branch of a tree? Ameneh, why weren't you patient, but you were a stone? Why not a stone, but a mountain?
Why weren't you "Painless Song” instead of "Comrades of Folk School Song?" Why were you not anti-war, but you were the battlefield? Why weren't you water, you were fire? Why were you not a mirage, you were water? Ameneh Shahbazi! Why, why were you there at Sarasiab?
*
You were beautiful like a kiss
on grief like blowing blood
in earlobes like Forough’s mirrors like
Nima’s crested larks like the call of
moon like a road.
Translated from Original Persian into English by Rosa Jamali
Transcreated by Catherine Strisik
