The first edition of Perhaps Another Day was published last year by the joint effort of Jameh Iranian and Shahab Publishing House.

1- Over and over we hear that it is said ironically or admiringly that Iranians are all poets. Or all Iranians in some period of life have a notebook in which they write down their feelings and emotions in the form of poetry and they usually hide this notebook from others. It is not that far from the truth, but after an Iranian man or woman marries and suddenly finds himself/herself with the great burden of running a family forgets about that notebook. One should think logically and rationally in such situations! However, there are two groups of Iranians that never give up writing prose even after they are married: those who are in love and future poets.

2- Now we are facing a lofty personality that in addition to being the life companion of a spouse and full of gentle and angelic feelings of a mother, has a heart beating for the oppressed and in addition to refusing to surrender to the black and mire-like silence and stillness, wrote poetry and continued writing to the last minute of her life because of having a loving heart that had changed her chest, the same chest that was stabbed by daggers of her murderers, to a burning hearth, to a blazing fire.

No need to say that in the book of Parvaneh Forouhar's poetry we will not find poems tantamount to the poetry of Hafez, Sadi, Molana or even Parvin Etesami. They are not supposed to be. Parvaneh was a woman in love with her husband and appreciated and welcomed whatever he did. And that is why our lady of poetry and politics wearing the gentle soft robe of verse, must have feared to say something out of a sudden burst of anger or fear of loosing her beloved that could shake or weaken the feet of her husband in walking on the road of politics. Thus she would not waste her feelings and emotions, nor would she abandon them in the air of the family and her house in the form of words that could cast a shadow on the air and even more on the very existence of the house. What did she do then? Followed the path of her husband and entered a non-returnable road and turned all those feelings into verse.

That is why I say that reading her poetry, like reading the poetry of Hushi Mineh, is not only reading some literary pieces, but from word to word of such poetry, one - with little awareness of one's contemporary political atmosphere - can learn about political problems, problems that are not usually found in political articles for thousands reasons, most important of all being the question of censorship. It is here that the poetry of the lady of politics becomes the mirror of the events of her epoch, from the time of Mosadegh to... to when? If only her murderers had not killed her so brutally, then wouldn't you think that the poems of the moment of her death would have cleared up many things, or perhaps... But here we are concerned with the poetical work of this innocent slain.

In the introduction of her book, Simin Behbahani, the contemporary poet, Ali Dehbashi, the scholar and Parasto Forouhar, the daughter of the lady of poetry and politics have said all that needed to be said. Here we would only utter a few words about her poetry or a requiem for butterfly (parvaneh, in Persian) and candle, both dying innocently.

Let us read the sound of the earthquake in the body and mind of a woman who after finding her sense of identity, she held unto it relentlessly, and not like those shaky deserts brought to the table after satiation that tremble even with the smell of wind. The sound of thunder: in me, it is the sound of thunder that is heard /molten death flows in my body/in me, the birth of a scream. And in the poetry of us people, the splendor of grief is so beautifully interwoven with myth. Under this height/ this blue dome/we people/with wounded bloody hands/have drawn a picture/the same color as sun, twin of life/ under this height/ we've been the tassel of Sohrab and Siavash.

-- Translated for payvand.com by Roya Monajem, royamonajem@gmail.com

... Payvand News - 6/4/01 ... --