for instance, Sereina is starting a painting. I drop in.
**
(In Zürich. It’s covered in snow in November already because this is Switzerland we’re talking about.)
**
I drop in. “You have SPAM BACON in it.” “Yes, do you know that band?” She plays a song. I listen; we listen.
**
I drop in. “I found you some pictures of clocks,” I say. She paints a clock-face which looks like the moon and a moon which looks like a clock.
**
I drop in.
(In her red studio. Just this once, we eat from the beautiful plate with the blue nude. It doesn’t break but our hands shake, nervous.)
**
I drop in. “My shoes are full of paint,” she says. Tips them out, makes a shape on the paper, like a foot. “Is that what painters do all day?” (It looks easier than writing.) She frowns. “I’m just cleaning my shoes.”
**
(In Bern. It’s summer and the river is so cold and most of the boys are called Heidi and most of the girls are called (Peter??) because this is Switzerland I’m writing about, it is even chli queer, I am a real poet.)
**
I drop in. Why? I think I would rather she dropped in on me. I often write in bed, in my pajamas, with the remains of breakfast, cold tea, and a good view of the walnut tree waving at me, complaining: “You haven’t even mentioned orange yet.” (The walnut tree harbors a strong desire to be an orange tree, just like I’d rather be a painter, but I’m not. Well.)
**
I drop in. She shows me the book: “After the palm, the bird.” (Really? Painters make books?) “Before the palm, the hand,” I correct her. She laughs. “Sit down and have a drink,” she says. I drink; we drink. She calls Kyra. “Come here, quick. That poet dropped in, you know the one. The title was wrong, we have to reprint your book.”
**
(In Berlin. It’s spring and you know, you know, you know spring in Berlin, ev- eryone sitting out on bridges and moaning about the gentry and lounging on the Feld in their trendy denim jackets, and talking about all the art they’re going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next day, you know, there should be so much more, not of Berlin, of words, of how terrible Berlin is in the spring. This is even in prose. It’s twelve poems, I call it LIFE.)
**
I drop in. She’s lying on the floor, doodling alphabets in her notebook. I look up. “You have my booklet in it.” “Yes, it needed something there.” “Oh.” I go and the days go by.
**
I’m in the garden, pinching the yellow flowers off the tomato plants beside the barn. Will she paint a tomato too, is there no end to what painters paint? I want to avoid the walnut tree, which keeps berating me, so I drop in again. The painting is going on, she’s wearing her cap, the D is orange, the paint is orange. “Would you do me a favor when you have time? Would you paint the walnut tree as an orange tree?” She looks at me (is that what painters do, they look at people like that, skeptical, from under their caps?) and I go, and the days go by.
**
(In Mesendorf. It’s autumn. She paints in the barn.)
**
I drop in. She’s inventing new letters. She shows me, pleased. “This one sounds like ‘chli.’” It looks like a cricket.
But me? I invented a color: “strange.” I write a line about “strange.” It’s like orange but spelled differently, and it looks different too, more like a very fresh walnut.
**
One day I am thinking of calendars and seasons. “Spill Simmer Falter Wither” I heard recently. New names. For quarters of the year, the clock, the moon. Bring Glimmer Shorten Splinter. Sprint Comma Lantern Lintel. Fling Summon Pattern Wonder. Song Salmon Caution Glinting. Days go by. I drop in. “It was too much,” she says. “The alphabet only needs twenty-six letters.” (But one day in a gallery I know I’ll see her alphabet, all different but still legible: horseshoe, cricket, pomelo, telescope.)
**
I drop in. All that’s left is just letters: I am out. Her painting of the newspaper is here, Final Edition. I reach out to touch it—is it a collage or did she paint those letters? Then I see a note on the table: Do not touch this painting. I sit down, I write a line about lack. Pretty soon it is a whole page of words, not lines. I go to make a coffee. Another note: There’s no coffee, that’s why I’m out.
Twice per week I’ve been visiting a physical therapist who puts his fingers in my mouth to stretch my misaligned jaw. I think of all sorts of things when his hand is in there. Salmon, of course, come to mind, driving their sex-dumb bodies upstream. I saw them myself once on a day that felt like summer except for the piscine death ritual. Could we please read more about the Hindenburg, my son asks, chin-high in cotton blanket. Some kids like disaster because they don’t know it in their bodies. We live in a river town. Things pass us by. If they stop, as sometimes do trees or dams of ice, it isn’t a good thing. Oprah came to town once to talk to us because we are remarkable for being neither one way nor another, politically. She passed through and we were unchanged. Even though the physical therapist wears gloves I smell onions, but to say so would call up intimacy beyond the obvious, so I’m quiet like a fish and do not struggle.
A young man was standing among six Ponderosas smoking a cigarette on the edge of campus after he left I stood in that spot and finished my cigarette why do the students on the chemistry side look more radical than liberal arts? a black pick-up I liked pulled out of the parking lot but I couldn’t see the make I worry about my vision but I would rather grow half blind than 100 percent in dread which is what not trusting anyone amounts to I convince myself of the Buddhist mantra NO BIG DEAL noting the tarot astrologists all say my Knight is the slowest moving in the deck look that horse is . . . scuffing his toes! spending so much time alone is not made easier by the intimacy of Missoula customer service but it’s preferable to feeling like a paper bag for communal hyperventilation I know I’m merely adequate too while poems can be astonishing and sometimes I through them can be it’s true the deer here will approach anyone they are tenderness tempered with strength I saw seven does on my walk home and for once thought my death might not be so violent having made my last payment for the sins of men with pride in my morphology sure bad things happened to Rome even under Pagan watch what city is defendable? I dutifully looked for the nearest plastic tower filled with sand to dispose my cigarette butt lest I start a fire how carefully we try to live! even with the boot in the face and the brute brute heart of brutes like them
Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) Pseudonym of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko
One of the greatest Ukrainian poets of the 20th-century, who became a legend in her own time as a poet and symbol of artistic integrity. Anna Akhmatova's work is characterized by precision, clarity, and economy. She wrote with apparent simplicity and naturalness and her rhyming was classical compared to such radical contemporary writers as Marina Tsvetaeva and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
No foreign sky protected me,
no stranger's wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
survivor of that time, that place.
(in Requiem)
Anna Akhmatova was born Anna Gorenko in Bolshoy Fontan, near Odessa, Ukraine, the daughter of a naval engineer. She began writing poetry at the age of 11, and adopted a pseudonym to allay her father's fears that as a"decadent poetress" she would dishonour the family. The pseudonym was the Tatar name of Akhmatova's great-grandmother. When she was sixteen, her father abandoned his family. Akhmatova attended a girls' gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo and the famous Smolnyi Institute in St. Petersburg. She continued her studies in Kiev in Fundukleevskaia gymnasium (1906) and in a law school (1907) before moving to St. Petersburg to study literature. Among her teachers were the poet, dramatist and essayist Innokenty Annensky (1856-1909), who influenced her deeply.
Anna Akhmatova
At the age of 21 Akhmatova became a member of the Acmeist group of poets, whose leader, the poet and literature critic Nikolai Gumilyov she married in April 1910, in a church near Kiev. Nikolai was also friend of Annensky, and from Tsarskoe Selo. Nikolai, three years her senior, had fallen in love with Akhmatova when she was just fourteen. Akhmatova become "Gumi-lvitsa" (Gumi-lioness) and her husband was "Gumi-lev" (Gumi-lion).
The Story of Rabia Balkhi, Afghanistan’s Most Famous Female Poet
POSTED ON
The following is a guest post by Munazza Ebtikar,a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Oxford and a native of Balkh and Panjshir, Afghanistan. She tweets at @mebtikar.
سر انگشت در خون میزد آن ماه ز خون خود همه دیوار بنوشت The moon-faced beauty struck blood with her fingertip With her blood she covered the walls
بدرد دل بسی اشعار بنوشت چو در گرمابه دیواری نماندش Many poems stemmed from her agonized heart When no walls remained in the hamam
ز خون هم نیز بسیاری نماندش همه دیوار چون پر کرد ز اشعار So, too, a few drops of blood remained As she covered the walls with poetry
فرو افتاد چون یک پاره دیوار میان خون و عشق و آتش و اشک She collapsed like a fragment of a wall Amid blood, love, fire and tears
بر آمد جان شیرینش بصد رشک Her sweet soul swiftly left her body with a hundred desires.
-Sufi poet Farid al-Din Attar in the Ilahi-Nama
Painting of Rabia Balkhi in the hamam, walls adorned with poetry she wrote with her blood. Source: Lemar Aftaab, 2000.
“Rabia slits her wrists so she can write her final love poem on the walls of the hamam with her blood,” narrates my aunt, sitting cross-legged on a red Afghan rug, designed with repeated octagonal patterns. We are in her daughter Rahima’s house in Khair Khana, a neighborhood in the north of Kabul. The sun rays cast a halo on her braided white-peppered brown hair. She balances a glass filled with steaming green tea in one hand, while the other raises a pink fly swatter in the air. Her eyes search for the buzzing menace and shift to mine, anticipating a reaction. I give her a knowing look of acknowledgment at the story’s tragic end. Her eyes search around the room as she explains the final act in a raised voice. “It must be understood: Rabia did not kill herself for Baktash.” She looked at me again. “She found love in God through Baktash; her heart was too pure in the face of injustice, you see.”
My aunt is narrating the tragic love story of Rabia Balkhi, a medieval poetess from Balkh, located in present-day northern Afghanistan. Rabia is one of the most venerated female figures in the Afghan imaginary. She is credited with having been among the first practitioners of New Persian or Parsi-ye Dari (tr. Persian of the Court). The language flourished in the 10th century after two centuries during which the Islamic conquest transformed the region’s cultural and linguistic composition, infusing Middle Persian (Pahlavi) with new vocabulary and a new script. Rabia was a poet princess in the Balkh court where her father served as Emir. She fell in love with her brother’s Turkish slave, Baktash, and would write poetry to him. Because of her brother’s jealousy and wickedness, he cast Rabia into the hamam and Baktash into a well. In the hamam, Rabia slit her wrists and with her blood she wrote her last love poems until her death.
The mausoleum of Rabia Balkhi. Source: Bakhtar News.
“You see they don’t tell you, her love for Baktash is not like what you see in these TV shows.” We both glance at the Persian-dubbed Turkish show playing on the TV screen. The picture is blurry, but one can make out a man gazing into the hazel eyes of a beautiful Turkish woman. “She was a pure woman. Her burial site is a sacred shrine. I’ve been there,” my aunt says, nodding her head. My aunt narrates Rabia’s love story by adding her own emphasis on what she finds significant, providing her own interpretation of the story. For my aunt, Baktash was the means by which Rabia could reach the divine. It is common to hear Afghans tell and retell her love story with different emphases, reflecting on the world around them to make sense of themselves and their lives in a specific time and place. Rabia is depicted as a feminist icon who spoke truth to power, a martyr for sacred love, or even a victim of honor within a patriarchal order.
Today, Afghans name their daughters and institutions – from schools to hospitals – after her. Monuments were built in her honor and her story became a part of Afghanistan’s national culture through theater performances and film productions such as the historic epic Rabia Balkhi (1974). More than a thousand years after her death, Rabia continues to figure strongly in the Afghan cultural imaginary.
Rabia Balkhi University in Kabul. Source: rbu.edu.af
Although Rabia remains prominent in Afghan popular memory, her life and poetry have not been subject to much scholarly inquiry. In fact, there are scant references and illustrations of her life in literature on Persian poetry in most languages, even in Persian. Scouring through bookshops and libraries in Kabul in 2019, I was able to find only a few works on Rabia. There were some illustrations of her love story in some books and some collections of excerpts of her poetry or, perhaps, poetry attributed to her. How then, do we know about Rabia’s poetry and love story? Why does the afterlife of her love story remain prominent in the Afghan oral tradition? And what do the differing accounts of her love story tell us about the ways in which Afghans imagine themselves?
Statue of Rabia Balkhi in Central Asia, her name written in Cyrillic.
Although no divan of Rabia’s work exists, Rabia’s story and her poetic verses appear prominently in the narrations of influential male Persian poets and biographical dictionaries (tazkirahs). The earliest biographical work of Persian poets, titled Lubab al-albab (tr. The Essence of Essences) written by Muhammad ‘Awfi (1171-1242 CE) in 1220, briefly mentions Rabia, her skill in Persian poetry and her intellect under the title Rabia bint Ka‘b al-Quzdari. The longest narration of Rabia’s life and poetry is in the lyrical poem of the Ilahi-Nama (tr. Book of the Divine) by the Sufi poet and hagiographer, Farid al-Din Attar (1145-1221 CE).
One of the mystical stories in the Ilahi-Nama is of the life and poetry of Rabia titled Hikayate Amir-e Balkh wa āsheq shudan-e dukhtar-e ō (tr. the story of the Emir of Balkh and his daughter falling in love).As the longest narration of her story and poetry, Attar narrates her story and poetry as a mystic, a common trend among Sufi poets after her time. Her love for Baktash, her brothers’ Turkish slave, is depicted as sacred and divine love, as it is through seeing him that she starts writing her love poetry and only through him that she experiences this love for the divine.
Attar claims that it was the Persian Sufi poet Abu Sa‘id Abul Khayr (967-1049 CE) who had informed him that Rabia became a mystic and that her poetry was for God. This story of love and sacrifice has parallels to that of Rabi‘a al-Adawiyya (714-801 CE) from Basra, one of the most prominent female saintly figures in Islamic history, renowned for her unwavering devotion to God. About 270 years after this narration, Nur al-Din Abd al-Rahman Jami (1414-1492 CE), the 15th century Persian Sufi writer and poet, mentions Rabia in the hagiography titled Nafahat al-Uns (tr. Breezes of Intimacy), mentions Rabiaamong thirty-three other female saints under the title Dukhtar-e Ka’b, Rahmat-ullah alayh (tr. The Daughter of Ka’b, May God Have Mercy on Her). In this passage, Jami also references Abu Sa’id Abul Khayr’s story, writing that the daughter of Ka’b was in love with the slave but her love was not for him. Building on the same tradition as Attar, he writes that when Baktash saw Rabia close to him, he laid a hand on her sleeve. In response, she scorned him and said, “Is it not enough for you to understand that this love is for God? Have I given you the occasion to enjoy me?”
A poster on Rabia Balkhi’s life made and hung by schoolgirls in Bibi Amina high school in Bazarak, Panjshir. Photo taken by author in 2019.
From these textual accounts, we can infer that Rabia lived during the Samanid Empire, which stretched from Transoxiana to Khorasan in the 9th and 10th centuries. At the time, Balkh served as one of the empire’s main cultural centers and as the epicenter of Islamic scholarship and mysticism. It was home to great poets and Sufi masters, gaining epithets such as umm al-bilad (tr. the mother of cities) or qubbat al-Islam (tr. the dome of Islam). Rabia was the daughter of Ka‘b, a local Emir, and of Arab lineage. As an outcome of the Islamic expansion eastward, Balkh had become an important center of Arab settlement in the 8th century. As the daughter of an Emir, Rabia occupied an elite position as a member of the nobility and was educated and wrote poetry.
Unlike male poets, such as her contemporary Abu ‘Abd Allah Ja‘far ibn Muhammad Rudaki, who served as poet laureates in the court and were compensated for their literary services, female poets wrote more for individual desire. Rabia wrote in both Persian and Arabic. Her poetry has served a crucial and decisive role in the revival of Persian poetry as we know it today: it alludes to pre-Islamic kings and religions, and uses tropes and metaphors which recur in later Persian poetry. It is for this reason that Rabia remains a central figure in the making of the Persian literary tradition. Born three centuries before Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi (commonly known as Rumi), Rabia was a major contributor to the foundation of the Persianate literary canon.
What we know of Rabia’s poetry and life in textual accounts has been passed down by Sufi chains of transmission, all of which emphasize her sainthood. In circumstances where oral transmission is broken or a divān is lost, tazkirahs become the “sole repositories of memory about some individuals and fragments of their verses.”Tazkirahs, according to Zuzanna Olszewska, “offer useful insights into the changing ways in which public narratives of distinction, or the distinctiveness of literary personalities, could be constructed and the types of people whose distinctiveness could be claimed.” Perhaps it is this emphasis on her sainthood that may explain why her mausoleum today, located in Nawbahar in Balkh, is one of the most frequently visited sites by pilgrims, tourists, and locals alike. Nawbahar itself is a famous pilgrimage site comprising tombs of pious men and women. This site holds a sanctity that predates Islam as it was also a spiritual site for Buddhism and Zoroastrianism.
Afghans tell and retell Rabia’s story and poetry through diverse avenues, and in diverse social and political contexts. Rabia is memorialized and immortalized by her narrators. Olszewska describes composing and writing poetry in Afghanistan to be “the most highly prized and widely practiced art form among Afghans of all walks of life, both literate and illiterate.” In one sense, Rabia’s popularity in Afghanistan is like Ferdowsi’s in Iran, which, as Aria Fani writes, was “the product of intellectual and architectural labor sponsored by the state.”
A poster of Rabia Balkhi plastered on a protective wall of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court. Pashto text underneath reads, “Rabia Balkhi 4th hijri century poet.” Source: Farhat Chira, 2021.
Afghan nationalists in the 20th century worked to create and promote a distinctive “Afghan” national and historical identity, privileging their own canon of writers whose birth fell within the borders of the nation-state. This explains why one of the first government-sponsored Afghan films was on Rabia and why many all-women institutions, such as schools and hospitals, were named after her. But, in another sense, Rabia’s love story with Baktash resembles the great tragic love stories of Persian literature – such as Leili and Majnun or Khosrow and Shirin – allowing it to be easily narrated and passed down from one generation to the next.
My aunt in Khair Khana retold Rabia’s story to make her own point about the power of love and God. For my aunt, Rabia’s love contrasted with the modern-day love portrayed in the Turkish serial drama airing on the small TV set in front of her. Yet, hers is only one version of Rabia’s love and life represented in the Afghan popular imaginary. In her exhibition of notable women in Afghanistan and the region “Abarzanan” (tr. Superwoman), held in Kabul in 2018, Afghan artist and photographer Rada Akbar displayed a red dress to represent Rabia. She described Rabia as “a symbol of defiance against patriarchy and a continued harsh reminder of the price we’ve [Afghan women] been forced to pay for freedom of speech and love.”
This has parallels to an article written on Rabia published in the popular magazine, Zhvandun, more than 40 years prior in 1974. The first line of this article reads, “the story of Rabia is the story of a cry in the strangled throat of the women in our society in her time and other times that have passed.” Although 40 years apart, both interpretations reflect on the dire place of Afghan women within a patriarchal society – as well as how Afghan women have claimed Rabia’s legacy as a means of resistance.
The film Rabia Balkhi featured in Zhvandun, a popular Afghan magazine published on May 4, 1974. Source: World Digital Library, Library of Congress.
Julie Billaud, in her ethnography titledKabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan, notes the popularity of Rabia among female students at Kabul University. They admired Rabia’s heroism in choosing self-sacrifice and death to defend greater ideals. Self-sacrifice, according to Billaud, is part of these Afghan women’s broad repertoire of emotional performance. Comparingly, when I visited all-girls schools in Kabul and Panjshir in 2019, descriptions or drawings of Rabia adorning hallway walls (See Figure 6) was a common sight. Rabia’s legacy inspires young women to defy and transcend the unjust limitations placed – and worldviews held – within their society. As such, Rabia’s defiance and bravery to reach her earthly love, Baktash, the divine, or both, in her life and her poetry remain central in the Afghan cultural imagination one thousand years after her death.
Although Rabia’s story takes many forms, her story which I heard told and retold in Afghanistan has a common version, and it goes as such.
In the sacred land of Balkh with its one thousand mosques, Rabia, the daughter of the Emir of Balkh, is born. She is bathed in rose water, adorned in silk, and placed in a carriage made of gold. The day of her birth is celebrated by the people of Balkh, and they rejoice as they pray and read poetry on this auspicious day.
Rabia is raised in the palace where she is taught arts and literature, hunting and archery, until she reaches the age of wisdom. She was enchanting, both in her beauty and her words. She moved and spoke with an eloquence that left her with many admirers. When Rabia recited her poetry, it would bewilder the poets and literati of her time. She captured not only the hearts of her mother and father, but the people of Balkh themselves nicknamed her Zain al-Arab (the beauty of the Arabs, or the most beautiful one of the Arabs), Iqbal (the auspicious), and Tela-ye Ka‘b (the gold of Ka‘b). Her youth and charm would illuminate the eyes of her aging father.
One day, a famous astrologer of Balkh named Atrosh tells her that although she is an irradiating star and will set the world aflame with her passion, she may fall into bad omen.
Rabia’s mother passes away and this shatters her delicate being. The women of her court took Rabia to places of worship so that her soul was soothed by the sermons and verses of the great scholars and men of wisdom from Balkh.
Meanwhile, her brother Haris was jealous and envious of Rabia’s skill, eloquence, and the admiration she received from her father and the people of Balkh. When their father is on his deathbed, he calls them both to him. He tells Haris that he will be his successor and advises him to be just and generous with all of God’s creations, and to ensure that he will look after Rabia.
∙∙∙
One day as Rabia stands on her balcony overlooking a garden, she catches sight of a beautiful man serving wine to Haris. Baktash, Haris’s Turkish slave and a guard of the treasury, captures Rabia’s heart. This moment marks the beginning of Rabia’s love story and poetry, and her tragic fate.
Rabia would compose love letters to Baktash in verse, longing for him. These would be delivered by her loyal court maiden and friend, Ra‘na. Her love for Baktash was an affliction that no doctor of Balkh was able to cure.
Rabia writes:
الا ای غائب حاضر کجائی Oh the absent and present one where are you به پیش من نهٔ آخر کجائی If you are not with me then where are you دو چشمم روشنائی از تو دارد My eyes are illuminated by you دلم نیز آشنائی از تو دارد My heart is acquainted by you بیا و چشم و دل را میهمان کن Come and invite my eyes and soul وگرنه تیغ گیر وقصد جان کن Otherwise take a sword and end my life
Baktash, in response, says:
ندارم دیدهٔ روی تودیدن I don’t have the sight to see you ندارم صبر بی تو آرمیدن I don’t have patience and rest without you مرا اکنون چه باید کرد بی تو What am I going to do with you now که نتوان برد چندین درد بی تو How can I carry this pain without you چو زلف تو دریده پردهام من Your hair has pierced my veil که بر روی تو عشق آوردهام من With your face I have fallen in love ازان زلف توام زیر و زبر کرد From your hair I have become under and over که با زلف تو عمرم سر به سر کرد Because from your hair my life has been destroyed
∙∙∙
During this time, Asher al-din, the ruler of Kandahar, sought to attack Balkh and subject it to his rule. Haris, who had claimed his throne, was fearful and prepared to stand in opposition. With the consultation of his advisors, he knew that without the help of Baktash, he was unable to defeat his enemy.
Haris tells Baktash that if he kills Asher al-din, he will reward him with what he pleases. In the battlefield Baktash was victorious but at a dear price. As he nearly lost his life, a soldier with a covered face came galloping into the battlefield to save him and win the war. This soldier was none other than Rabia.
∙∙∙
Balkh was the epicenter of literary events, but it was unmatched by Bukhara. Amir Nasr, the king of the Samanids, was a lover of poetry and organized grand literary events in Bukhara, the home of the great poet, Rudaki. One day, Haris was invited, together with the newly defeated Asher al-din of Kandahar, the ruler of Herat, and other notables, to witness Rudaki recite his poetry.
When Rudaki recited his poetry, he dazzled his audience. One of his poems was Rabia’s, whom he would join in the Balkh court. After he recites her poem, he attributes it to her and says that although Rabia is a sacred woman, she fell in metaphorical love with her slave Baktash, the inspiration behind this poem. When Haris hears this, he coils like an injured snake. The event comes to an end and Haris takes towards Balkh, thirsty for the blood of Rabia and Baktash who had brought shame to his name.
Upon his arrival to Balkh, Haris orders that Rabia be thrown in the hamam and Baktash in a well. In the hamam, she slashed her wrists, and writes the last few lines of poetry for Baktash with her blood on its walls. After days of being in the well, Baktash is saved with the help of Ra‘na. He first takes Haris’s head and goes to the hamam, only to find Rabia’s beautiful lifeless body on the ground covered with her blood and the walls of the hamam adorned with her last love poems for Baktash. He falls to the ground and takes his life next to his beloved.
One of the poems that are on the wall reads: کاشک تنم يافتي خبر دل I wish my body was aware of my heart کاشک دلم داشتی خبر تن I wish my heart was aware of my body کاشک من از تو برستی به سلامت I wish I could escape from you in peace آی فسوسا کجا توانم رستن Where can I go regretfully
References
Azad, Arezou. Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting the Faḍa’il-i Balkh. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Billaud, Julie. Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
Davis, Dick. The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women. Penguin Books, 2019.
Olszewska, Zuzanna. “‘A Desolate Voice’: Poetry and Identity among Young Afghan Refugees in Iran,1.” Iranian Studies, vol. 40, no. 2, 2007, pp. 203–224.
Olszewska, Zuzanna. “Claiming an Individual Name: Revisiting the Personhood Debate with Afghan Poets in Iran.” The Scandal of Continuity in Middle East Anthropology: Form, Duration, Difference, edited by Judith Scheele and Andrew Shryock, Indiana University Press, 2019.
