Partaw Naderi 1952   

                                   

By Dr. Sharef Fyez

                                               

Partaw Naderi, as a socio-political activist and poet, has more media and public visibility than any of his contemporaries in the country or abroad. To a large extent, his poetry is also a reflection of his social and political views. In the media and public arena, he is often seen as a literary authority and spokesperson of the second generation of modern Afghan poets. Perhaps more than any poet of his generation, he has used blank verse, with a strong satirical tone, to express his socio-political views and visions. He has also used fixed poetic forms, such as quatrains, couplets and odes, to express his inner feelings, but the modern blank verse remains a major medium of his poetic views and expressions.   

 

Like many other Afghan artists and intellectuals, he was arrested by the Communist Regime in Kabul on charges of anti-regime activities and imprisoned in the infamous Pul-i-charkhi Prison in the fall of 1984. He remained in prison until the end of 1986. In September 1997, he fled to Pakistan, where he worked for the Dari program of the BBC World Service until 2002.  His cultural reports for the Dari program of BBC Radio enjoyed popularity among the educated Afghans in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and the Gulf. Since the establishment of the Transitional government of Afghanistan, he has worked as a civic education manager for the Afghan Civil Society Forum in Kabul. Nadiri is also a leading member of the Afghan Pen Association based in Kabul

 

Born in 1952 in an idyllic village in Badakhshan, one of the most beautiful mountainous provinces in northeastern Afghanistan, Nadiri in his poetry expresses his deep love for nature, rural life, and simple mountain people. To escape the suffocating dust, pollution and chaos of Kabul city and perhaps to recreate his nostalgic village life, he has built his own house on the hillside of a small valley in Ghargha in the western part of Kabul, where he lives with his wife and children.   

 

From his early age, he loved reading literature, particularly poetry. The beautiful mountainous setting of his village inspired him to write his own lyrics. After graduating from Kabul Teacher Training School, he wished to study journalism at Kabul University, but, as a graduate of a government-funded teacher training school, he was required to study either social or natural sciences at Kabul University. Despite this restriction, he believes his study of geology and biology has enriched his poetry and sense of realism.

In addition to poetry, he has published a large number of articles on literary, political and social issues. His published collections include: An Elegy for Vine, Leaden Moments of Execution, and A Lock on the Gate of Ashes.      

 

Images of poverty, imprisonment, drought, Taliban-style tyranny and obscurantism, destruction and death abound in his poems.  Like many of his contemporaries, he is haunted by the Taliban’s reign   of terror, whose images recur in most of his poems. In his poetry, he sees the Taliban movement as a diabolic force bent on destroying or disfiguring what is best in Afghan arts and culture. He often associates the movement in his works with what has been most decadent, chauvinistic, and barbaric in the history of Afghanistan and Islam.  On of his famous poems titled “The Other Side of Purple Waves” is an expression of his poetic rage against the savagery of the Taliban. In this and many other poems written since the rise of the Taliban movement, the poet has used images of war, obscurantism, religious ferocity, drought, famine, and destruction caused by the rabid fanatics of the Taliban movement.

 

Latif Nazemi, a known Afghan poet and critic, in an introduction to Nadiri’s collection of poems titled Leaden Moments of Execution writes:

                       

            You are a kind country man, coming from a distant village to Kabul city. For several years, you had breathed the prison air, and then exile swallowed you, the way it swallowed me.

            When there was a “Lock on the Gate,” you wrote the “Elegy for the Vine” and from “The Other Side of the Purple Waves” you opened two windows before you -- the window of life and the window of nature -- and from behind these windows I have known you without having seen you.

In the poem “The Big Picture, the Small Mirror” you wrote the life story of a mother, like many other mothers in villages and cities – the mothers whose bitter destinies are inscribed by the … history, as you have written – women from the green tribe of nobility who speak the language of the people of paradise.

…

You think that poetry is a kind of crying, crying with one’s fresh and crystal words. Your voice is the imaginative voice of an affectionate villager bringing to one’s ears the fragrance of wheat, rice fields, and the songs of sparrows from the orchards of the north. 

 

 

Nadir, like many other Dari poets, wrote the bulk of his poetry when the Taliban were threatening to destroy the artistic and literary heritage of the Dari-speaking people of the country. Indeed, this cultural genocide by the Taliban is a dominant theme and obsession in his poetry during and after the Taliban era, and this must not be interpreted as an anti-Pashtun trend in his works when considering the relentless tribal, ethnic and religious ferocity of the Taliban movement in the second part of the 1990s. In many of his poems translated in this selection, particularly in “The Idol-Breaker’s Calendar,” “Auction,” and “In the Frozen Streets of Eclipse,” the poet expresses a haunting preoccupation about the Taliban as an anti-culture movement threatening to destroy the literary and historical legacy of his people. In his public life, he has also defended this legacy as part of his larger continued campaign for democracy and human rights.         

 

Most of the poems translated in the following selection are recommended by the poet and reviewed by him for accuracy and quality. He considers “In the Frozen Streets of Eclipse” and “The Other Side of the Purple Wave” as two of his best poems. “The Big Picture, The Small Mirror,” a more popular poem celebrating the purity, devotion, love, humility, patience, forgiveness, and sanctity of mothers, depicts a patriarchal society ruled by a dominating father who symbolizes male chauvinism, dictatorship, and lack of all the virtues epitomized by the mother, but he is survived by his wife, the mother and the son, who symbolize life and freedom. In this poem, Nadiri presents a sentimental, but true, picture of the motherly side of the Afghan society often ignored in many books and studies on Afghanistan.

          

 

The Big Picture

              The Small Mirror

 

My mother was from the green salvation tribe

She spoke the language of the people of paradise   

She put on a silk chador of faith

Her heart was like God’s empyrean

majestic as His truth

And no one knew that I heard God’s voice

in the beatings of her heart     

And no one knew that God was in our house

And that the sun rose when she began to talk  

 

My mother was from the green salvation tribe

She put on a silk chador of faith

When my mother walked to me

on each of her small footprint a small window would open

into which I could see the green gardens of paradise and

pick my fortune fruit from the top branch of an apple tree

 

My mother was from the green salvation tribe

She put on a silk chador of faith

Her forehead resembled God’s loveliest song’s exordium

which I droned everyday in a lyrical tone

and then knew what a God’s poem meant

 

My mother was from the green salvation tribe

She spoke the language of the people of paradise 

And waited for a white pigeon to come and wash

its lovely feathers every morning

in the paradise’s most crystal springs

And the white pigeon read His message to my mother

from a sacred sphere of the Koran

 

My mother was from the green salvation tribe

She has such an extended family history

that only the sun can remember it

And the sun told me that when she was born

her father lighted a candle in a leprosy home

to mourn the decline of his tall, straight figure

And the sun told me that my mother with her sacred thumb

turned the pages of her life book

to search the meaning of the word “smile”

Unfortunately she couldn’t memorize the happy meaning

of smile until the last moments of her life

My mother was familiar with crying and could derive

a thousand derivates from “crying”

My mother in a thousand languages had kept the bitter meaning

of crying in the dark memory of her eyes

And my mother’s eyes -- mirrors of God’s manifestation --

had an excellent memory

 

My mother was a stranger to the spring;

her life was like a trail of ants

that passed from the grand rock of misfortune

stricken every season by dark clouds of malice and insult

And everyday my mother would pick up from there  

bundles and bundles of flowers of misfortune

My mother was patient as a stone

When my father sailed his small emotion boat

on the red shore of fury

my mother would seek refuge on the beach of tolerance

and wipe her tears with the corners of her chador

            and united with God

 

My father was a strange man

When my father tied his turban of pride around his head

he thought the sun was a white pigeon

which flew off his high shoulders

And he thought he could ration the sunlight for my mother

And he thought the moon was a colorful worry bead  

that he could hang from his horse’ high mane

My father was a strange man

When he called me before him

I felt a disaster was looming a few steps from him

And my words were like frightened sparrows

which left my mouth’s autumn-stricken orchards

And fear was a dirty shirt, which disfigured my real complexion        

When my father called me before him

my speech blood ceased to flow

in the red vessels of my tongue

And at that time my mother’s heart was a bright crystal

flashing freely in the depth of the darkness valley

And my mother watched her destruction in the broken mirrors

of perturbation and waited for an event to occur  

 

My father was a strange man

When he tied his turban of pride around his head

his small empire would appear before him

within the four walls of our house

And then he would lash freedom, which was me

and life, which was my mother,

and shackled both of us

 

May her soul rest in peace!

She still thanked God and prayed for my father:

May God keep his shadow over our heads!    

The Red Epitaph 

This palm tree has lost all hope for the spring

This palm tree has hundreds of scars of war

the scars of a thousand tragedies of everyday

            the scars of a thousand calamities of every night

It’s a red epitaph at the crossroad of the century

Here by the river -- this river of tear and blood --

the roots of this tree intertwine with

the blind roots of time

            in the chillness of the tragedy

            in the chillness of the blood

Here the sky from the red sterile clouds

has cast this bloody shroud

            on the broken lap of the coffin --

            the coffin of the rain’s mirror

This palm tree has lost all hope for rain

This palm tree has lost all hope for the spring

This palm tree has hundreds of wounds

            by scourges of the polar night winds

Oh my tree! My only tree!

Oh my spring!

Many years have passed since the blossom bird

            left your yellowing branches

How sad I feel

when butterflies are also leaving you!  

Auction  

I drank all night

I drank all night

I used so much of my freedom that I ran out of it  

Why should I worry if Afghanistan falls?

Why should I worry if one hot noon

zealots of lash and iron

with their rope of fanaticism hang my brothers?

Why should I worry if the virgin girls of the Hindo Kosh hills

are auctioned off beyond the Gulf’s salt waters

at the vicinity of Mecca --

who knows?--perhaps at Mecca itself.

Let Islam rule over my homeland;

Islam is the supreme law of Muslims

To the zealots, my father and

            your father are not Muslims

even though the poor old men pray five times a day

at the local mosque

My father and your father

            must believe in such a way

that the one-eyed Amir ul-Mumineen can see them

And Osama Bin Ladin is the last Messiah 

My father and your father must believe

Your father and my father must believe

 

Peshawar, July 2002

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We Are Afraid of Darkness

(To Naimat Husayn)i

 

My God!

My God!

I am worn-out in your land

I am worn-out in your land

In your land, there is no chance to bloom

In your land, the sun is beheaded behind my house wall

In your land, all windows of expectations

facing sunrise are closed

We are afraid of darkness

We are afraid of darkness

 

(Leaden Moments of Execution)

April 2001

Peshawar

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Life…..

 

All I had

            was a small knapsack

            which I carried from one house to another

One day I lost it

in one of the old city streets

 

Kabul, 1981

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The Idol-Breaker’s Calendar

 

The spring is dead and a flock of black vultures

have laid on the sun’s bloody seat

a feast of stars’ bones and skull of the moon

The spring is dead and nobody measures life and light

with the sun’s breaths

And nobody knows that the sun in my land

has grown several centuries old

in three hundred sixty-five days

Spring is dead and nobody knows

who from the devil party fired the first bullet

during the execution rite of the sun

Spring is dead and the ashamed mourning multitudes

in the blue seclusion of Nirvana

heard only the sound of a blast

that blew apart the history’s millennia-old mind

The spring was dead when the “Islamic Gateway”

was auctioning pieces of our torn body

at the crossroads of conspiracy

at the crossroads of the “Idol-Breaker’s Calendar”

The centuries-old dead bodies died

several thousand times in their old graveyards

And the centuries-old dead bodies

died of shame several thousand times again

in the old graveyards

When the “Islamic Gateway” on

the broken faces of Kabul walls

inscribed in bold-faced letters:

Congratulations on the Victory

 

April 2001

Peshawar

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Lantern of Apprehension

 

I hang the lantern of my apprehension

from the ceiling of an old cave

fearing the terror of a savage intruder 

I speak in the language of all birds, flowers, and plants

I cause to flow the spirit of the river

            in my permanent isolation’s vessels 

I make a song from the breeze’s disheveled syllables

            to rhyme with freedom

I hang the lantern of my apprehension

            from the ceilings of ancient caves

I become a bird out of freedom

            whose flight links one edge of the sky to another

And I call love by its real name

And I ask life to tell

what ID it has beyond its nickname

And with what a story

            it goes to sleep when cuddling death

I feel a tremor in my heart

            perhaps a bleeding dear is crashing

            in a desert amid some spreading fear

And why so hastily, as the breathings of the wind,

            I hang the lantern of my apprehension      

            from the ceiling of a cave

            in which death is born for the first time

 

March 2002

Peshawar

           

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Overwhelming Grief

  

I beg the wind before it blows away:

Wind, oh dear wind!

From where did you bring this aroma of bread?

For in my house, bread is still an unending tale                                             

 

The wind is also bringing fear from deserts

where wolves are thirsting for the history’s blood

All this caravan of tulips and green thoughts

with swallows once heralding the spring

-- all lost and wandering now  --

is rotting in the depth of its grief

And the ringing sound of the caravan’s bell,

with awful grief, warns:

This disaster, still small, is growing in size

 

The wind arrives and the orchard --

empty as the palms of an orphan—

keeps its gate closed 

for not having much to offer

Save its colorful banquet cloth, everything else is despoiled:

not a piece of bread on its table cloth

not a blade of grass on its stream’s bank

not a lantern under the canopy of its pine trees

not anything else to offer 

This house is in utter ruins, fluttering, like a disaster flag,

over the dome-tops of the tall pine trees

Bodies of green trees are fallen on the ground

like martyred bodies

as if deceitfully stabbed from behind 

Their branches bearing leaves of destruction with

every leaf from the bud turned to ashes

with their eyes searching for water

The wind is no longer humming behind the door

knowing that for years now – to the woe of the orchard!--

fire has flown from the stream’s recollection

in place of that crystal water

 

نوشته شده در سه شنبه نوزدهم بهمن 1389ساعت 12:38 توسط Partaw Naderi | |