A Revolution of Words

A Revolution of Words

S. Rouzbeh

The sound of a gunshot,

like the sudden crushing

of a tin can underfoot,

echoed in the narrow alley.

A red stain

settled on the concrete wall,

and the steam of blood

in the cold air

rose slowly.

At that same moment,

in another room,

white papers

with blue stamps

and terse signatures

were spread across metal desks.

Headlines,

like fresh wounds,

settled on the faces of pages,

and a hand tried

to hide a life

inside a few

typed lines:

a name,

a date,

a number,

and the end.

But we

knelt on the cold asphalt,

took his name

from among the shoeprints

and the stains of blood,

wiped the dust

from his photograph,

and said:

No,

you have not been left behind in this alley.

Your name

is stitched into this soil’s veins

and in our memory

like a footprint in wet clay

will remain.

Child of Iran

Grief is no longer

only a hidden sob

in a dark room.

The mother,

without a headscarf,

her hair stuck by tears

to her face,

turns in the earthen courtyard,

and her feet

in the hot ground

cut furrows.

Each turn she makes

is a question

whose answer

she demands of the sky.

The father

leans against the mud-and-straw wall,

his voice

hoarse with so much weeping,

and repeats a verse from the Shahnameh,

like a pillar

beneath his heart’s

broken roof.

From the end of the alley

comes the sound of clapping,

of cries,

and of a local lament

rising.

The people do not want

their tears

stifled behind closed doors.

They do not want their grief

spoken in a language

their killer made for them.

So they choose a new name:

Child of Iran.

Child of Iran

means a mother

is not left alone in her grief.

It means a son’s photograph

does not hang only

on the wall of one home.

It means a little girl

stands beside the frame,

with eyes that do not yet

know death’s full meaning,

and gazes at a face

that should have held

her hand for years,

called to her,

told her stories,

and watched her grow.

Now the girl

places her little finger

on the glass of the frame;

as though she wants

to fill the distance between herself

and that silent face

with the warmth of her hand.

Child of Iran

means the light of one home

stays on until midnight

and the sound of weeping

passes from window to window;

like an invisible thread

stitching a nation’s homes

together.

He is no longer

only one mother’s child.

He is the brother of a city

that has cried his name,

the sister of a people

who have carried his photograph aloft,

and the child of a land

that feels his absence

in every home.

He is not a file

in an office drawer.

Not a number

in a daily report.

Not a brief line

in the margin of a news story.

He was a branch

of the tree of Iran;

and when it broke,

its leaves

fell on all our shoulders.

No one could say:

This sorrow

has nothing to do with me.

Iran is no longer

only a line

on a sheet of geography.

It is a home

with cracked walls,

uncurtained windows,

and eyes

watching the street

from behind the glass.

A home where, each time

one of its children falls,

the sound of a breaking branch

echoes through its whole forest.

Child of Iran

means pain

has come out of one home.

It means the mother

turns within a circle of people

and each person

takes a little of her sorrow’s weight

upon their own shoulders.

One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland

Life

is a human being’s sweetest possession.

It beats in the breast,

creates hope in the eye,

and in the hand

holds the warmth of touch,

and in the foot

the longing to walk towards tomorrow.

No one

wakes in the morning

to go in search of death.

No young person

puts on their shoes

so that they will never again

come home.

He too

did not call for death.

He looked into the cold mouth of a gun,

was afraid,

but did not step back.

For something

heavier than fear

was beating in his breast:

freedom.

He did not love death;

he loved life.

He loved

life so much

that he would not agree

to give the name of life

to a chain.

One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland

means a person

who wanted to live,

to fall in love,

to build a home,

to hold their child,

to plant a tree,

to travel,

and to see their mother’s hair turn white;

but a day came

when he understood

that if everyone bowed their head,

no tomorrow fit to live in

would remain.

For him, the homeland

was more than soil.

It was the scent of the earth

after the first rain.

It was a morning

whose light was not yet complete.

It was an alley

where children

with plastic balls

ran.

It was the sound of a vendor

coming from afar.

It was a window

from behind which a mother

every evening

waited for her child to return.

The homeland

was a tomorrow

not yet built,

whose bright outline

breathed in his mind.

That was why he stood.

Beneath the fierce glare of cars

that burned the eyes.

Among cries

that split the air.

Before a hand

that wanted

to bring him to his knees.

He stood

so the enemy

could not complete its smile.

One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland

means we should not glorify death,

but should not forget

the price of standing firm.

It means knowing

that he did not think his life worth little;

he found freedom

dearer even than his own life.

He did not fall

because he did not want life.

He fell

because he wanted life

for others too.

For a child

not yet born.

For a girl

who wanted

to walk the street without fear.

For a mother

who did not want

to see another child’s body

on the people’s shoulders.

For a generation

that must one day

open its windows

without terror.

Before cold earth

settled on his face,

his name passed from lip to lip.

It passed from mouth to mouth,

from alley to alley,

from city to city.

His name,

before his body,

passed through the siege.

One Whose Name Lives On

Power

counts people:

one person,

ten people,

a hundred,

a thousand…

The numbers

like cold counters

spill across a metal table.

Their dry clatter

echoes in the room,

and death

in the tables

is made small.

Power counts

so that faces fade.

It counts

so that mothers

become columns of statistics.

It counts

so that people’s conscience

tires of the repeated numbers.

But a name

breaks the number.

A name says:

Here

a human being lived.

Their eyes

sparkled when they laughed.

Their shoes

are still paired

beside the door.

Their shirt

is still on the hanger.

Their phone,

on the table,

rings unanswered.

And someone

behind that same door

is still waiting

to hear the key turn.

One Whose Name Lives On

means death

has been unable

to write the final sentence.

It means a bullet

could stop a heart from beating,

but could not

erase a name from memory.

It means a gravestone

is not the end of the road.

The stone

is a cold page

whose letters cast shadows

beneath the cemetery’s yellow light.

It needs no wire,

no antenna,

no password.

You cannot close its account,

cut off its voice,

or delete it from a page.

It stands in silence

and tells every passer-by:

Here rests a human being

who once stood firm.

Here sleeps someone

who had hopes.

Here remains a name

that must not be forgotten.

Each grave

is an address.

An address for remembrance,

a meeting place for fellow feeling,

a point on the map of the quest for justice.

A place where flowers

slowly dry,

candles

melt drop by drop,

but feet

do not forget

the way there.

The government

does not fear an empty street.

It fears a street

where footsteps beat time

on the asphalt.

It fears a throat

whose veins

pulse beneath the skin.

It fears a piece of cloth

that in the wind

becomes a flag without permission.

It fears a hand

that rises,

whose fingers

become a fist.

But more than anything

it fears a stone

standing beside fresh earth

with a name

upon its breast.

A name written with a trembling hand

in black letters,

yet beneath the cemetery’s dead light

like a wakeful eye

it shines.

They come at night.

With a sledgehammer,

a torch,

and a fear they hide

behind their faces.

They hammer the letters,

break the edge of the stone,

scratch the picture,

and imagine

that by breaking stone

memory too will break.

But the echo of each blow

rings through the morning’s silence.

Each broken piece

becomes fresh testimony.

And the name

rises from the broken stone

and settles on walls,

on flags,

on lips,

and in hearts.

Memory

does not die under a sledgehammer.

The more they hammer at the name,

the further

its voice travels.

One Whose Name Lives On

means a name

freed from

the prison of stone.

A name that is no longer

only on one grave;

it walks in the street,

is heard in a song,

breathes in a poem,

and in a mother’s voice

is born again.

They are three expressions:

Child of Iran,

One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland,

One Whose Name Lives On.

But behind each expression

stands a world.

Behind ‘Child of Iran’

is a mother

pressing a photograph to her breast,

and people

who will not let

her be alone.

Behind ‘One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland’

is a young person

who did not want death,

but would not accept humiliation,

and saw the future of others

in freedom.

Behind ‘One Whose Name Lives On’

is a stone

that breaks,

but a name

that cannot be broken.

These expressions

do more than replace old words.

Each

opens a door.

‘Child of Iran’

opens the door of grief

from one home to another.

‘One Who Gave Their Life for the Homeland’

opens the door of resistance

towards the future.

And ‘One Whose Name Lives On’

closes the door of memory

against forgetting.

This revolution,

before

it triumphed in the squares,

began in the people’s language.

The people

swept aside the words

that power had made

for their deaths.

They took the names

out of the reports.

They took grief

from closed rooms

to the courtyards of homes,

to the alleys,

to the squares,

and into the heart of a nation.

They

did not fall for one figure

or for one small group.

In different alleys,

in different shoes,

with different dreams,

they fell on the same soil.

One

was still a student.

One

a worker.

One

had a child

who could not sleep at night

without hearing their voice.

One

was to wear wedding clothes

in a few days’ time.

One

was taking medicine to their mother.

One

had the key to a new home

in their pocket.

But when they fell,

the earth did not ask them

which group they belonged to.

Nor did the mothers ask

which home they were children of.

Their grief

did not stay in one room.

It passed from city to city,

from a hand that lit a candle

to a hand that held a frame aloft,

from a mother who turned upon the earth

to a mother who silently

stroked her son’s hair in his photograph.

And one day,

when the doors open,

when the windows

open towards the light,

when the streets

no longer fear free footsteps,

their names

will pass across Iran’s lips:

Children of Iran,

those who gave their lives for the homeland,

those whose names live on,

who rose from the soil

and in a nation’s memory,

like an inscription in stone,

became enduring.

On that day

the mothers will know

their children

were not left alone in that alley.

Their names

passed through the bullet,

passed through the report,

passed through the broken stone,

and reached the future.

A future

they may not have seen themselves,

but with their own lives

they lit

the way towards it.