This poem is dedicated to Bakhtash Abtin, a political prisoner, poet, documentary and filmmaker who died in custody on the 8th of January 2022.

A Poem Dedicated to Bakhtash Abtin

by Mammad Aidani

This poem is dedicated to Bakhtash Abtin, a political prisoner, poet, documentary and filmmaker who died in custody on the 8th of January 2022. Abtin was a board member of the Iranian Writers’ Association. A group of political prisoners in Iran and the Iranian Writers Association said: “the death of Abtin is part of the Iranian regime’s systematic killing of imprisoned dissidents”.

From this window,

I see

A tree

The empty street

The closed doors

The walls.

Thinking of my desolated city,

destroyed in a futile war

Years of exile

Tragedy after tragedy

Thinking

Thinking

Of my homeland

devastated by dictators

Remembering

Things

Gazing at the horizon in the sky

I go far away

So far away.

I fix my thoughts

on a place called Evin prison

A slaughterhouse built to torture and execute

Evin, your name haunts us every day.

I see the poet in chains

thinking of him and thousands of prisoners

tortured,

executed,

I see the poet with his notebook in hand

thinking of him and his inmates uttering liberating words

Azadi! Azadi!

Freedom! Freedom!

fighting oppression

censorship.

I know their voices

United together,

they sing the song of freedom in captivity

with conviction saying NO to their oppressors.

And the evil willed torturers are watching him suffering

wishing him and his friends to vanish and die

wishing to eliminate their names from the memories of people

The poet in chains, in the torture chamber

will never die.

The noble minds

will always be alive

Their good thoughts,

Acts,

Deeds,

will keep flourishing and live with their people

From this window

I think

I remember

I remember

Your names

From this window,

I look into the far distance.

From this window,

I cry for my sad, desolated homeland.

From this window,

I think of the poet in chain

Crying

Adalat va Azadi!

Justice and freedom.