To her

To her,
The United States of America is nothing but a moist room,
The entire universe except that sophisticated cat, Iran,
Is nothing but nostalgia, pain and coldness to her,
Flowers that grow else where but Iran,
Are only capable of reminding her how faraway she is from Iran,
The snow here reminds her of her loneliness,
Of her irritating presence in America and her sorrowful absence in Iran,
American food makes her stomach upset
English hurts her ears,
And suppresses the flowing river of thoughts in her mind,
She hates the way I have started to have grammatical mistakes in Farsi
She hates the way she is abandoned to help young women and men
In Iran
With their ambitious projects, articles, books and thesis


Every night she has dreams that take place in Iran,
In her law office, in the Islamic Judiciary building
Each night, in her dreams she goes back to Iran,
She goes to prison; she gets stood up in the court for hours
But still, the next night she goes back to Iran,

In reality, I beg her day and night
Not to return to Iran,
I am scared of them,
I don’t have the tolerance
To see her in their forceful hands
Anymore
To see them torture her,
They way they tortured him
Based on the law
Based on legitimacy
Based on morality
Based on their view of religion

I beg her day and night,
“ please, please, don’t go”
“I beg you to cancel your booked ticket for next month”
And she roles her eyes at me
And thinks about Iran.



As for me, with my forgetful youth
I am conveniently used to this country,
The United States of America
And these habitual American ways
That I have adopted in my gestures and manners
Create black holes of incomprehensible distances
Between the two of us,
Between me and HER


It is sadly called EXILE
They tell me that she is exile,
If you go to
www.dictionary.com
and type in 'exile'
it tells you that exile means,
“Enforced removal from one's native country”
In 6 words,
This is what has happened to my Persian legend,
To my other half,
To her

We have been told over and over
That she will be imprisoned
The minute she arrives in Iran.

Her crime: ay, don’t be too naïve!
Her passion for Iran?
No, that is the way you and I might perceive her,
But for THEM
It will be every single lie you can think of:
Being a threat to the regime
Being a spy for various places,
Being anti-revolutionary,
Being westernized,
Not being religious enough!


I beg her day and night,
“Please don’t return to Iran”
And she roles her eyes at me

Enforced
Removal
from
one's
native
country,
IRAN.

Azadeh