FPIF Fiesta |
Poem: "Three Gifts"
Majid Naficy | July 29, 2009
Editor: Melissa Tuckey
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In Memory of Saeed
One day my father called us and said:
I have three gifts for you —
A red heart, an hourglass, and...
O God, I don't remember the other one.
Mehdy took the heart
Opened its two halves
And strummed the strings of its chambers.
I took the hourglass
And along its white sands
I fell from one half to the other
Asking myself:
What can be done in three minutes?
And Saeed
At age ten went to Paris
For heart surgery
And at age twenty-nine
He was executed in Tehran.
I remember him.
He had red cheeks
And strong hands.
March 1994
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Majid Naficy, who is the author of more than 20 books written in Persian, fled Iran in 1983, a year and a half after the execution of his wife Ezzat in Tehran. He has published two collections of poetry "Muddy Shoes" (Beyond Baroque Books 1999) and "Father and Son" (Red Hen Press 2003) as well as his doctoral dissertation "Modernism and Ideology in Persian Literature" (University Press of America 1997) in English. He is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
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Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). Copyright © 2009, Institute for Policy Studies.
Recommended citation:
Majid Naficy, "Three Gifts," (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, July 29, 2009).
Web location:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/6302
Production Information:
Author(s): Majid Naficy
Editor(s): Melissa Tuckey
Production: Jen Doak |
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Hugh Mann |
Date: Jul 30, 2009 |
It's more humane to cure your enemies than to kill them. |
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