Written by Maisa Bahar, translated by Sadaf Ghiasy
I write of me,
A woman who is tired and depressed,
There are thousands of me in this city:
People who don’t know what their hearts desire,
People who heard “No, that is not allowed”,
Before they opened their eyes to the world.
The phrase has been repeated at us every day
And carved into our minds, like prayers on tombstones.
We live with fear:
Fear of enjoying ourselves,
Fear of being happy,
Fear of laughing from the bottom of the heart,
Fear even of love.
I am writing of the same little heart
That longs for a glance at someone,
And lays restless and without sleep, all night
But fears stigma and society all day
And can’t take a look at her beloved.
I write of the land where the rape of a girl
Will be forgiven,
But the love of a woman is a great sin;
The land where the woman’s body exists
Only for the pleasure of men.
I write of me:
A woman who does not know her own body,
A woman whose husband burns with lust
And finds the peak of pleasure every night,
But in the depths of her heart,
She thinks pleasure non-feminine.
She envisions her body only in his service.
I write of me:
A woman who is alienated from her own existence,
A stranger with herself,
A woman with fears.
She fears a touch,
Wondering if it is a shameful sin.
I write of me:
A woman who has hidden herself and killed her womanhood
For a man who has spent every night with a different girl,
But expects her to be a virgin for him.
I write of me, whose entire identity
Has been diminished to an imaginary hymen.