Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement

6. The Gypsy Poet: Fluidity and Flux in the Poetry of Simin Behbahani

155 6 The Gypsy Poet Fluidity and Flux in the Poetry of Simin Behbahani We wrote our books not with ink but with [our] blood. —Simin Behbahani, in Cynthia Haven, “Iran’s Leading Poet” I am the gypsy, oh, yes. Here there is no one else but me. —Simin Behbahani, “Gypsiesque (1)” A National Poet A woman in her eighties, who gleefully calls herself “a seductive Eve” and brandishes a cup of wine in one hand and a red apple in the other, might not be the first image that comes to mind when we think about Iran today. But to understand the work of Iranian poet Simin Behbahani (1927–) is to understand better the paradoxical nature of contemporary Iran. Indeed, if Emily Dickinson so much identified with her community that she occasionally signed her letters “Amherst,” then Simin Behbahani can sign her poems “Iran.” In book after book, in one deeply felt poem after another, she has painted miniature portraits of her country over the decades. She has given voice to the yearnings of the Iranian people, chronicled their hopes and disillusionments, documented with pride and precision the heroic resistance and creative subversion of her nation and herself: My country, I will build you again, if need be, with bricks made from my life. 156 • W I N GS A N D WO R DS I will build columns to support your roof with my bones, I will inhale again the perfume of flowers Favored by your youth. I will wash again the blood off your body with torrents of my tears.1 In death-defying poems of wonder and mystery, Behbahani has offered a multilayered portrait of her nation from the street level up. With poignancy, passion , and a strong sense of purpose, she has written the history of Iran in the past few decades. It is the kind of history that is often unavailable in history books. She has captured the chaos and vibrancy of a culture in transition and of a country defining, undefining, and redefining itself. And she has done so with integrity and an ethos of respect for complexity and ambiguity.2 Her body of work is the voice of a nation in search of itself. Hers is a poetry of immediacy and resonance, of hopes betrayed and renewed, of disillusionment and dissent. It is high art and popular art at the same time, accessible to the ordinary reader, despite its formal traditionalism, its encyclopedic breadth, and its many historical and cultural allusions, both local and global.3 It is a quest for beauty and elegance, clarity and moderation through all the turbulence of war and revolution. The history of Iran over the past century has been one not only of successive political and international crises, of kings assassinated, deposed, executed, and exiled, of hostages taken and a nuclear industry under development, but also of a literary renaissance. And Simin Behbahani is surely a renaissance woman. Within the net of her tightly woven words, she has captured the reality of the Iranian experience during one of the most challenging times in its history, proving that the darkest of nights can produce the most luminous of poets. In her lifetime , she has witnessed the coming to power of a new king, the nationalization of Iranian oil, a coup d’état, the White Revolution, the 1979 Revolution, the end of twenty-five hundred years of dynastic rule and the toppling of a monarchy, the establishment of a republic, the Cultural Revolution of the 1980s, an eight-year war with Iraq, and the trauma of various forms of repression and tyranny. In her own words, “Unbending and harsh rules, constant arrests, an atmosphere of fear and trembling, of terror and cold, repeated blackouts, selfless martyrdoms, shortages of food and fuel, closure of all universities, and the escape of fourteen year old boys from their homes to the warfront have created an intolerable situation.”4 T H E G Y P S Y PO E T • 157 Committed to the truth and prepared to confront power in all its forms, Behbahani has produced some of the most enduring poems of contemporary Iran, such as “Wine of Light,” “Camel,” “My Country, I Will Build You Again,” “A Man with a Missing Leg,” and “Banu, My Lady.” Her poems are memorized, put to music, quoted as aphorisms. They portray the everyday reality of Iranian life while reconciling political...