Hearing this, pains my heart
It used to pump new blood in my veins
What happened to my hope?
I guess they killed it
When they put an ugly grey scarf on my head on the 1st day of school
I guess they killed it
When they took my pink backpack because it was pink
I guess they killed it
When they took me out of the singing group in school
Because of my dad who was a modern leftist
I guess they killed it
When I was sixteen
and they took us to jail for being in a house party
I guess they killed it
When they said in court
“You girls can dance naked in front of your future husbands
based on the damn “The Satanic Verses”1 but can’t party with your
male friends”
I guess they killed it
When Khatami2 was about to get elected
And I cried 8 hours to get my hopeless parents to vote
And everything got even worse when he got power
I guess they killed it
When my dad had to revise words like “Wine” or “Hair” in his
translations to be published
I guess they killed it
When they started killing the writers again
I guess they killed it
When literary magazines got closed one after the other
I guess they killed it
When my mom said with a painful smile on her hopeful face
“They say the scarf is not our issue, we have bigger issues, ok”
I guess they killed it
When I got fed up and decided to leave
I guess they killed it
When I heard comments like
“Didn’t we tell you nothing will change when you were 18 and
you wanted to fight, now 9 years later, you left?”
I guess they killed it
When the poets only wrote of blood and tears
I guess they killed it
When on route to Ottawa they announced the new president before
we even voted
I guess they killed it
When CNN, BBC and all the others stopped broadcasting the Green
Movement of 883 and
only showed MJ’s death
I guess they killed it
When I read more history books
I guess they killed it
When I realized nothing will change unless the fucking 1% decides it
needs a change
I guess they killed it
When the middle class in Iran got vanished
I guess they killed it
When even in my 40s I can’t go watch a football match in Iran
I guess they killed it
When the disgusting government people came to Canada with money
And are walking freely
I guess they killed it
When people still judge their friends for their way of protesting
I guess they killed it
When even in the USA women’s rights keep going backwards
I guess they killed it
When I saw my fellow Iranians support Trump in hopes of change for
Iran
I guess they killed it
When flight #7524 happened
And we could’ve been in it if last minute hadn’t changed our flight
from the 8th to the 6th of January
I guess they killed it
When Trudeau couldn’t do anything for those Iranian Canadians who
got murdered mid-air
I guess they killed it
When my favourite Iranian sports TV show got cancelled and they
made Ferdowsipoor5 disappear
I guess they killed it
When my dad spoke less and less
I guess they killed it
When I felt fear walking the streets of Tehran
I guess they killed it
When not only religion is not dead but has expanded to the Yonge
Street
I guess they killed it
When they beat Mahsa6 to death
I guess they killed it
When the human race showed brutality is the new humanity
I guess they killed it
When they don’t care about us
Not just them but “they” in the world
I guess they killed it
When they keep murdering my sisters
Maybe my younger sisters can bring my hope back
Keep fighting.
Notes
1. “The Satanic Verses”: W 1. hat Salmon Rushdie calls the Quran.
2. Khatami: Iranian politician who served as the fifth president of Iran from 3 August 1997 to 3 August 2005.
3. Green Movement of 88: A major event in Iran’s modern political history, and observers claimed that these protests were the largest since the Iranian Revolution of 1978 to 1979. While the protests started out as a peaceful, non-violent movement, people were arrested and killed as protests turned more violent in the following months. The movement eventually had trouble retaining its momentum.
4. #752: A scheduled international civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Kyiv, operated by Ukraine International Airlines. On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737-800 was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 passengers and crew aboard.
5. Ferdowsipoor: An Iranian journalist, football commentator, translator, university professor, and television show host and producer. He was the host and producer of the popular TV show Navad.
6. Mahsa: Mahsa Amini, a 22–year-old woman beaten to death by Tehran Authorities named “morality police.”
Tannaz Taghizadeh, born in Tehran, Iran, comes from a literary family. Her poems appear in LRC, Grain Magazine, Event Magazine, and Plenitude Magazine.
Questions and Answers
Is there a specific moment that inspired you to pursue poetry?
I had to write an essay for a class I took at Ryerson on modern literature, and several sections of my writing came out rather poetic than academic. My professor loved my essay and his encouragement gave me the inspiration to start writing poetry.
How/where do you find inspiration today?
The inspiration is there, in the soft-boiled egg you might have for breakfast, in the horrifying news everywhere in the world, in a poetry night you make yourself go to, in a vintage vinyl store you visit. The challenge is to not let the moment pass and write it down.
Do you use any resources that a young poet would find useful (e.g. books, films, art, websites, etc.)?
I have been lucky to be a part of a poetry group in the past ten years on and off. They’re the best Monday evenings of my life: hearing everyone’s poems, and discussing poetry on a Monday took me on a journey I would never trade with anything. Human interaction still is a profound resource as through it you hear about others’ adventures, what films they like, what books they are reading, what art shows in the world they attended.
As a published writer, what are your tips or words of motivation for the aspiring poet?
To be exposed to poetry, all the time. I’ve been surrounded by Poetry since childhood. My brilliant father who was a writer and translator used to read his favourite poems for me — he translated and published hundreds of poems to Farsi and introduced international poets to me and other poetry lovers in Iran. Reading poetry and listening to it is like listening to music, it heals your soul.
What inspired or motivated you to write this poem?
During the first weeks of the #womenlifefreedom protests in Iran that started with the murder of a young girl, Mahsa Amini, the brave young generation of women were protesting in the streets of all the cities in Iran and all we could do outside of Iran was to watch the news, the social media feeds and shed tears. The barbaric government was arresting everyone who supports the protest in any way, and a song went viral by Shervin Hajipour called “Baraye,” talking about the pain my people are going through. One morning, I had this song on replay, and by the third time, I picked up my iPad and started writing, verse by verse.
How did your writing process unfold around this poem? How did you write, edit, and refine it?
My father always used to say there are two groups of poets, the ones who get inspired in a second and write the poem down and the ones who sit and put effort into writing the poem line by line. I am in the first group, I usually write a poem in five minutes but I have learned to force myself to go through the editing process and, like cooking, taste it, add ingredients to it, and add more spice if needed.
What did you find particularly challenging in writing this poem?
This is the longest poem I have ever written, my challenge was, in this busy world, would people take the time to read it if it is more than a page? Turns out some did!