Parastoo Anoushahpour

This is an exercise in writing.

Close your eyes.

Try to let the figure possess you or you possess her. Maybe give her a name if it helps. 

Become as monumental and opaque or as porus and vast as needs be. Follow her stare, doubled across the border.Multiply it even further, take space. Spread across the arid landscape, under the heavy dead water, across the river, through the shifting border. Or move in an interior landscape of time, language or desire…through darkness, disobedience, earthquakes, punishment and tectonic plates, where continents met and cities got swallowed up by fire. Witness their joys, their desires, their fears, their flesh. Come back up through the earth to breathe once again, maybe this time as a plant, containing the memory of all that has happened and nothing at all. Maybe a plant with purple and white flowers and fruits that contain ashes of the burnt cities, at once poison and remedy.What can you see? What do you see?

Try to write but as you write try to imagine a black hole opening up in the middle of the page. Opening up, swallowing your images and your words, try to continue writing despite the hole. Try to love the hole that is eating your thoughts, your vision.

Think of the beginning before and after the hole.

The hole-word.

The absence-word.

​​Longing for the pink hues on stone
the faint moon presiding upon ruins
The taste of salt on his skin
wet from seas once living, alive
The cacophony of voices and bodies
before dawn. Choruses of delirium,
elation.
The mountains, stubborn, heavy,
light, yielding.
Reveries upon, under, against
words, golden trees, necks

See me here resemble the man in this story
leading unassuming little girls
by a divine force
He is entitled to.
Always he.
See me involuntarily decide
with proud certainty
that the past is past
and mere remembering
is dwelling
is tender
and so its weak.
See me leave again
and again
but not revisiting.
And in the presence of beings
of things
that spark to surface a memory
realize I’ve forgotten.
Lady of salt,
I didn’t look back.
Not once.
Mind you,
inside I am consumed by what is inside.
By the time I’m at the threshold
the inside
is so distant
and unreal
It can’t have happened.
Lady of salt,
I don’t look back
I don’t look back
Because the inside of my chest is cool
Not even cold
Certainly not as hot as this damned place.
How do you bear it?
How do I not?
If I looked like you
I’d look back
Knowing punishment
Knowing pain
Knowing that I’d be allowing
For hot
For tender
For felt
For acheI’d revisit and revisit
and remember and remember
and love and love
and maybe even call.

Is desire poisoned?
Why is desire poisoned?
Desire is poisoned
Perhaps desire is poisoned?
But desire is poisoned
Desire is poisoned
About poisoned desire
Because desire is poisoned
As if the desire is poisoned
Desire is surely poisoned

After the wine has been drunk and the bread has been broken.
After the children have grown and the years have passed.
I am told to leave
without hesitation, doubt, or questioning.
The streets that raised me and the community that taught me
are to be dismissed, dissolved, destroyed.
I stand witness to that violent truth
and those that followed.
The earth has been plundered, the tar has been poured. 
The trees have died and the animals migrated.
An exodus, and then another.
Time and again, love is abandoned.
Greed and anger abound.
As the sea recedes.
I have witnessed the actions of pride
dig deep into the ground
extract and export.
I long to sing these sorrows
and soften this tongue…Heal the wounds… and place balm on the scars. 
Show affection where I see only despair.
My arms are open.

A fruit by any other name
Would taste as bitter
Crowded among ironies
A home to life and death
symbols to realities
A teacher of interpretations stands patient
overlooked, unattended, avoided

A sexy fruit
A fruit that is sexual
that is sensual
Eve’s apple
Apple of Sodom
The big apple
She says the next words like the entire sea
Is drowning Adam’s apple in her neck.
Why do you need to go? What do you need to get away from?

ضاقت فيكي الدنيا مافي مكان تروحي؟

She’s crying. She thinks loving her is reason enough to stay.
She says going is proof enough that I don’t love her. 
I think she’s not making any sense.

.رح يفترسوكي
مين؟
جد مين اللي عم يستنى أروح عشان يفترسني؟
وليه لم أفترس إلى الآن هون؟

God will not be protecting you.
She cries. She believes it.
If I trusted your faith & values, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
How can you see that, those two and not flinch
You didn’t even skip.

Wrong is wrong.
Wrong is wrong.
Wrong is wrong.

They poured wrath over her body
Chained her      burnt her    and turned the earth over her

Remaking her into a temple for all cults

They stole HER NARRATIVE and replaced it with a false one

Terrifying 

She is a notion                    ـِ
An illusion                           ـَ
She is a myth                                              ـُ

She is a tree with roots tied to her river banks
A separate tree

Two trees at once 

Not a tree, Not a root
She’s the salt of the sea short after erasure

She’s a cursed land, blessed with destruction weapons

The root         the gas pipe            are the same

Connecting the two banks under the name of God

The root       the gas     the two banks belong to God 

And those who use the name of God, claim the rights to the land

 

**Translator note

“Dear Khalid, I translated the poem, I changed some of the words to keep certain poetics. I also added two visual translations- you can edit them- I wrote “her narrative” in capital letters and crossed it off so that the word narrative can become visually dominant as an attempt to represent the struggle. I also used a lighter font color for the word erasure – the Dead Sea is subjected to continuous erasure”.

Reem Marji