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Take me to my homeland
to the land of figs and olives
to a scene of red silverberry and roses
if some remnants of them have been spared by the war
Take me to my homeland
I want to stand on the
Pamir peak
on the bed of its old snow
and scream:
I am not holding any gun
I also want you to talk with me without any gun
if they can talk without it
Take me to my homeland
to live under its blue sky
For a moment I wish to breathe its fresh air
if I can find any air free of the gunpowder smog
Take me to my homeland
I want to look for my house key
for my books
for my poems
for my flower vases
not watered for fourteen years
if I can find my house
Take me to my homeland
I want to take my ID with me
and hang it from the top of the colon cathedral
so that all can see that I also have a homeland
if until that day it is not sold out
A writer is a part of his land, society,
cultural and spiritual heritage. It is not fair that he should forget all
this and neglect his obligation to his society. Unfortunately, a number of
out writers have hidden themselves under the mantle of isolation, refusing
to come down from their ivory towers. They keep complaining about
loneliness, singing the songs of despair, disappointment and death. Another
group has gathered around the old shrine of ideology, obsessed with
utopianism and utopian temperament. Unfortunately, during the last thirty
years of war, the ceiling of out culture has fallen down. We have become
displaced and scattered, settling in different places. Life in a foreign
land has weakened our tie to our roots even the tie of a new generation that
was born in another land. The war in our land imposed its own culture – the
culture of violence, the culture of conflict and hostility, the culture of
refusing to accept others, the culture of invasion and aggression. Only the
gun became a means of communication. Attaching oneself to ethnic, sectarian,
and linguistic groups was considered the only way of survival during the
war.
When the war began, our writers and
poets divided into two groups: One group, afraid of the club and scourge of
the regime, wrote for the ruling power. The other group either remained
silent or resorted to a symbolic and sarcastic expression. As a whole, our
literature became a war literature. The difference between the two groups is
that the first one celebrated the ruling power and the second one praised
the enemies of the power. One could not hear the voice of peace, and
tolerance for diversity and dissidence. Unfortunately the same trend still
persists in the country. The war literature became so dominant that it
seriously harmed and overshadowed love and lyrical poetry.
We can clearly hear the voices of peace,
friendship and reconciliation from our classical literature. Early
Farsi/Dari poets in their different poetic genres have reflected the voice
of peace. Even in the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, which is apparently an epic
about war, violence and bloodshed, we notice some most delicate human
sentiments, in which the poet desires peace and tolerance not only for
humankind, but also for the smallest creatures on the earth:
Crush not even the tiny ant that bears a
grain of corn
For she also has life, and that sweet life is a boon
…
In his epic, Ferdowsi speaks of his ideal nation as a society of diverse
peoples of different races:
From Iran and Turk and Iranians
A race will emerge in the world
Which will be neither Iranian, nor Turk or Arab.
This great poet, who considers wars for
the defense and protection of the homeland as necessary and heroic, created
in his epic great heroes, such as Rustem, Sohrab, Isfadiyar and tens of
other heroes. However, he considers all this heroism nothing if a small ant
is hurt on the earth. In another poem, he says: “Dominion of the world from
end to end is worth less than a drop of blood upon the earth.”
Our mystics and poets have accepted love
for humankind and the creation as worship and piety and they know that “love
turns thorns to flowers, copper to gold, and poison to sweetness.” A Sufi
knows that he belongs to a legacy of love and peace and he invites others
for peace, as Sinai says:
I am for peace, why are you opting for
war?
I am for love, why are you so malevolent?
For Saadi worship is nothing but serving
mankind and he believes that all human beings are of one whole body, whose
pain pervades the whole humanity. In his most famous poem “Sons of Adam are
limbs of one another…,” which is inscribed on a UN wall, the United Nations
could not have found a better expression of this feeling:
All human beings are members of one
frame
Since all, at first, from the same essence came
When time afflicts a limb with pain,
The other limbs cannot at rest remain
During our time and with the emergence
of the civil society, the West has emphasized the word “tolerance,” while
Saadi in the 14th century invited his society toward tolerance,
saying:
Peace of the two world is an
interpretation of these two words:
Have kindness for friends and tolerance for foes.
Hafiz witnessed bloody wars in his
homeland, a son blinding his father, a king killing another king, and the
invasion of Timur, to whom he addresses these words:
Would you allow me to say a word?
Oh my eye sight, peace is better than war and arbitration
Maulana Jalaladin Mohammad Balkhi (Rumi)
is one of those mystics in our culture who is unparalleled in his love for
peace and the humanity. He invites mankind for unity, peace and
reconciliation and prefers communication by heart to communication by the
same language.
In Rumi’s view, all paths lead to the
truth; therefore it is not important what paths travelers take and what
beliefs they have. He also believes there is no difference between a Muslim,
a Christian and Jew. If there is any difference, it originates from our
perspective and how we can reach the truth: “It is from perspective… the
difference between the Muslim, Christian and Jew.”
We belong to this culture and it is not
fair to ignore this precious heritage. Instead we should use our literary
and cultural heritage as a dialogue and means for bringing peace. We need to
start a dialogue toward becoming a nation. This is not possible without
developing a common national spirit and converting our restrictive ethnic
and tribal identities to a major national identity. A national identity will
form the cornerstone of our becoming a nation.
We are still the subjects of this
country with all their characteristics. Unfortunately we have not acquired
the qualification to become citizens for the country nor have we benefited
from the rights of citizenship, which means that we don’t hold the state
accountable before ourselves (the nation) and ourselves accountable before
the state within the legal framework of the Constitution. Elements of
national identity, such as sovereignty, cultural, historical, religious,
linguistic, political system and other common interests and sentiments give
legitimacy and reality to the nation-state.
Although we have a homeland, we live in
isolation from one another, scattered and disconnected. We have not yet
established our own national cutlture while many of us attach ourselves to
our smaller ethnic cultures. We prefer our ethnic interests to our national
interests and we don’t seem to believe in a common national life.
We have a common history, with common
tragedies, festivities, uprisings and resistance, but our interpretation of
this history is not identical, our experiences are different, and every
group considers itself a conqueror of this history.
We have a common religion, but with
different denominations, which, in certain periods of our history, have
hindered a peaceful co-existence, and their followers during the rule of the
mujahidin and Taliban committed sectarian violence, torture, and massacres.
They have not been able to transcend the closed structure of their beliefs.
The other element is culture. In the
mosaic structure of our society, we have several minor cultures, which have
their own manners, traditions, and beliefs. This cultural multiplicity
originates from our trivial, ethnic, and racial diversity. The minor
cultures, which manifest diversity and beauty in our cultural mosaic, should
not become factors for deterring the development of our national symbols.
Unfortunately, with prejudice, we often insist on the superiority of our own
cultures, without paying attention to the minor cultures of our country. The
inappropriate ethnic policy has also caused the minor cultures to be unable
to grow out of their limited circles and join the bigger national culture.
Therefore we cannot talk about peace and co-existence.
These divisions have also resulted in
credibility crisis, which generates baseless suspicion. I am also a victim
of these baseless suspicions. There has been a biased interpretation of my
poetry by those who do not believe in a national culture, being prejudiced
and narrow-minded.
Another component of the national
identity is language, which has a harmonizing role in the social behaviors
of human beings. Afghanistan is a country with forty different languages and
dialects, which creating a national culture in the country because speakers
of each language insist on the superiority of their own language and have
insulted the other languages. This has caused speakers of different
languages to be isolated from one another. A language is a means of
communication, but in our country it has become a divisive factor, not a
unifying and reconciling factor.
If a political system has legitimacy and
enjoys a national consensus, it can be effective in bringing national unity
and moving the country toward nation-state. Unfortunately the previous
regimes lacked these two characteristics and thus could not improve living
conditions for the people in a just way. Co-existence, social and economic
justices were not in the work programs of these regimes. As a result, the
spirit of co-existence and cooperation was not possible among the people.
Some of the regimes in the past even
destroyed our ancient cultural legacies and prides in order to make the
social spirit of our society vulnerable. They changed historical names of
areas to enrage our people by eliminating their historical identities and
harming our national unity. Among hundreds of such examples, we can mention
the destruction of the statues of Bamiyan and the ancient walls of Heart
Ihktiyardin citadel. By changing the ancient name of Sabzawar, we lost
hundreds of our jurists and hadith scholars to others. With regard to this
matter, the late professor Habibi wrote:
If we bring such intentional and
unintentional changes to our historical names, tomorrow their historical
origin and identity will be lost and the events and those who belong to
those place and cities will be forgotten and lost to the posterity. As a
result, many of our cultural and historical prides will be lost. For
example, by changing the name of Asafzar (to Shindand), all those scholars
and famous who belong to that area and are important heritage of our history
will be unknown to the posterity and purposely we lose what history has
given us.
This is very important when printing and publishing the accounts of these
famous figures and old texts. We must preserve these names in the same way
that our ancestors and history have preserved… 3
Rulers in the past, who did not
represent the people, always thought of their subjects as rayet (sheep).
Lacking legitimacy and political competence, they turned their back against
the people. We have witnessed monopolizing and dominating dynastical and
tribal rules ruling this land for years.
Enlightened and honest writers never
adhere to cultural, sectarian, linguistic and tribal factions. They write
their poems and stories and other artistic works for the humanity, for the
cause of freedom and for the country. A true writer is a unifier, a singer
of peace, freedom, friendship, and tolerance. He know well that an
intellectual as a cultural factor beside the political factor is able to
have a credible role in the process of building a nation – state.
However, this point should not be
ignored that peace and reconciliation is possible with those who can
overcome their arrogance and demonstrate flexibility, otherwise
reconciliation with the irreconcilable is like pounding water into a mortar,
as General MaCneil about the enemy had said: “There is no way to reconcile
with them.”
Let me end my words with the voice of an
immigrant poet who screams for peace from another land:
We Shall Return
We shall return
to turn our elegies into epitaphs
on the cemetery of the burned grapes of the north
on the graveyard of the olive fields of the east
on the funeral of the pines of the west
We shall return to sing the song of
stone
on the tomb of Buddha
to plant a basket of anemones
on the sand-hills of Bamiyan
Someday it will grow, I am sure
We shall return
to mourn the anniversary of the pillage of our books and
the anniversary of the shredding of our poems
We shall return
to seize the funeral of freedom
from the geography of flogs and turbans and
ill the hungry mouths of guns
with grime and stone
Oh my traveling mate,
let me hold your hand
so that we may hurry to revisit Rabia and
dress the cut throat of the poetry lady
with the black silk of your tresses
We shall return
with olive branches hanging from our laps
with our fingers twisted
out knapsacks stuffed with the gold coins of love
from the green lyrics of love
from the songs of red canaries
Finally we shall return
(Frankfurt 2002) |
