News

/ 28 October 2015

Freedom for Fatemeh Ekhtesari

A Tehran Revolutionary Court published sentenced the Iranian poets Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Moosavi to prison and bodily punishment

October 12 - A Tehran Revolutionary Court published their sentence against the Iranian poets Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Moosavi to 11 years and 99 lashes and 9 years and 6 months and 99 lashes, respectively, on charges of “insulting the sacred” for the social criticism expressed in their poetry.

Fatemeh Ekhtesari was born 1986. In 2013 she participated in a project with six Swedish and six Iranian female poets and Ekhtesari worked very closely together with the Swedish Versopolis-poet Linn Hansén.

– Fatemeh and I worked together with poems from her first collection, Yek bahse feministi ghabl az pokhtane sibzaminiha (A feminist discussion while the potatoes are boiling), in the project A Resistance Movement on My Desk, in which six Swedish poets went to Tehran to work with six female poets writing in Persian. Fatemeh and I worked together for one week in broken English. Mainly we got to know each other and she told me about the basis and methods for her writing, tells Linn.

After the week in Teheran Linn went back to Gothenburg in Sweden and continued to translate the work from Ekhtesari with the help from Persian-speaking friends. Later that year the six poets from Iran came to Sweden to do readings in Stockholm and at the Poetry Festival in Gothenburg, which Linn also coorganizes.

Soon after Ekhtesari returned to Iran from Sweden she and her colleague Mehdi Moussavi were abducted and imprisoned. Eventually they were released on bail, and were instead called to a protracted trial with a number of interrogations and have now have served their sentence of 11 years and 99 lashes and 9 years and 6 months and 99 lashes, respectively.

– Among other things they are charged of blasphemy, insulting the sacred and immorality. In plain language this means that they are punished for their literary work. Fatemeh is also punished for being in contact with foreign media and talking against the Iranian regime during the festival in Gothenburg.

Fatemeh Ekhtesari belongs to a literary movement called Post-modern ghazal, which try to describe the modern society writing with a critical content in the old verse ghazal. 2010 she published her first collection of poetry which was censored by Iranian authorities and was later withdrawn after it was discovered that Ekhtesari had by hand rewritten the censored words in the printed books.

– Last year a new book of poetry was published, but it was also soon withdrawn. Under many years Fatemeh has published her poems on Facebook, where she has many followers. She writes in ghazal, a rhymed verse, but with a contemporary language and works both with and against the form, following its rules and breaking them. Her poems often take place in the sphere of the female body, the poems are filled with pregnancies, abortions and deliveries. But also in that world of women which is the street, demonstrations and resistance. A voice passes by and exhorts you to return to the crowds. The cage door opens and scattered feathers testify about those who have left this place for another. The movement and motion towards, towards something different than the prevailing, is the basis in Fatemeh’s poems.

Ever since they worked together Linn and Fatemeh have stayed in contact and when Ekhtesari and Moosavi first were arrested Linn and many others around the world worked hard to protest, inform and raise opinion against the abduction.

– The current situation is very uncertain. What can be said is that it is important, not only for Fateme and Mehdi's sake but for all who are punished by the Iranian regime for their cultural and political activity, that this information is spread and that the international community condemns the sentence. A very insufficient thing to say in a most urgent situation, but it is nevertheless important.

We can all help to make the voices of Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Moosavi heard through our own by demanding their freedom now.

Run by Fatemeh Ekhtesari

- run

A voice passed by me.

And someone just ran inside my confused mind

- run

The streets were crowded and crowded

- run

The cars were honking in an endless night

Honking after many years of forgetfulness

Entering my ear and confusing my mind

I heard them honking

And I kept a torn up picture in my hands

I heard the sound of being lost in all the dead-end streets

I heard the sound of tears slipping down the rocked eyes

I heard the sound of tear gas and cigarettes all stinging

I heard the sound of batons meeting backs and heads

And I heard the shadows running behind me

-run

Two silences made a voice

The voice of our hands separated from each other

The voice of yours passing by me

The voice of yours becoming the voice of people

And the voice of mine lost in all those bad days

I was sticking to a postern

Sticking to my office to my job

Sticking to my pills in all those nights of insomnia

And sticking to all those duplicated mornings

I used to wake up and practice my laughs and practice my cries

With a duplicated mirror

I used to put my impatient signature in the bottom of official papers

I used to look for one thing in all the newspapers impatiently

And I used to come back from the office in all the afternoons of impatience

Coming back to the silence that welcomes you in every room

Coming back to the cold hands that keep the hot cup of tea

Coming back to the bad days followed by worse

And Coming back to me waiting to welcome my husband

Like a happy wife who waits to welcome her husband

Waiting for him to throw his socks in the living room

- run

My house is filled with the thrown away sounds

-run

Someone touched my shoulder

You should run to the streets of madding crowd

And to a woman in Arabian veil

You should run to those two shadows behind you

And to the fear of keeping a green wrist band in your hand

You should run to yourself stung by a hot bullet

And to your fingers of the V sign

You should run to the clotting blood in the corner of our lips

And to the night which is our sad resumption

To the incomplete night of liberty

And to yourself dying in my arms

To yourself being alive among the deads

And to our hands meeting each other again

Call me

I am you

I am as cold as your hands

Call me

I want to come back to the streets

Call me to whisper in your ears with love

Call me to lose myself in your arms and in my dreams

Come back and resurrect the memoires

Call me

And rescue me from myself.