Abstract
Jailed British-Iranian charity worker
She writes from prison about her experiences and thoughts via her poetry, published below, and describes how the writing makes her feel.
“It is hard to write about freedom when you have so little of it in your life. It is hard to describe how it feels to be tied by force to one place. But it is the hope of being free that keeps me going, the hope of gaining freedom back one day,” she said.
“I realise now how I took freedom for granted. It is important to cherish freedom today, as you never know what tomorrow brings. The road ahead is bumpy and bendy, scary and still unclear.
“But I could not have come this far without the love and support of those outside – those I know who are out there, and those I don’t – who are following my story and sharing it with shock.
“Talking about freedom when surrounded by brick walls feels tough, but we all share the same sky. One day we will all be under the same blue sky, singing our freedom songs.”
In August 2018, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released for three days from Evin prison, in Tehran, where she is now. Evin is notorious for housing Iran’s political prisoners.
Following a secret trial in August 2016, she was sentenced to five years in prison on unspecified charges relating to national security. She spent eight-and-a-half months in solitary confinement before she was transferred to the women’s political wing.
In October 2017, she was informed of three new charges and told that she could face an additional 16 years in prison. Her family was required to provide bail money to prevent her from being returned to solitary confinement. The court date was later postponed in the wake of then UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s visit to the country, and in May 2018 it was reopened.
Also in the prison is Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, a writer and political activist who is serving a six-year sentence for charges related to an unpublished story she wrote criticising the practice of stoning in Iran.
In September 2014, government forces searched the home of Iraee and her husband, Arash Sadeghi, in Tehran, where they found the unpublished story. They arrested them both. Sadeghi was taken to Evin, while Iraee went to a secret location for three days before going to Evin, where she was interrogated for 17 days. During this time, she had to listen to the guards beat her husband in the next cell.
Iraee was sentenced to six years in 2016 and had her stories and poems confiscated on her first night in prison.
On her poetry, Iraee said: “It is bitter writing about a generation that, four decades ago, had the same hopes that I have today who were hanged, burned, abused and tortured in prison. But it is a reality – to hold onto the image of those men and women, with their pain and suffering, with a song on their lips and aim in their heart, who looked for freedom and justice. The songs of those who endured the most shocking violence without knowing how or why.
“Today I am writing for them from here, from where they once sang the song of freedom. It means that their beliefs are still alive. Alive in me, alive in all of us here, and kept alive by those who hear our words in a faraway land and keep them in your thoughts and hearts.
“I also hope that the day will come when the scale of justice in our song will reach enough people’s ears that those responsible for such pain will be held to account.”
Iraee was released from prison on 3 January 2017 after a 71-day hunger strike by her husband and a campaign on Twitter, but shortly after returned to prison.
In January 2018, she faced additional charges. She was subsequently transferred to Shahr-e-Rey prison, a former industrial chicken farm on the outskirts of Tehran, after she refused to go to court. In early February, Iraee began a hunger strike which seriously damaged her health and in early April she was transferred to hospital in a critical condition. She is now back in the women’s political wing in Evin. For now.
A guard inside Tehran’s Evin prison, 2006, where both Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Iraee are currently being incarcerated
CREDIT: Morteza Nikoubazi/Reuters
Below are poems written in prison by Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Iraee, which are published here for the first time.
For Our Parents
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her then three-month-old daughter Gabriella
I am sitting in a corner Reviewing my dreams And ploughing through my memories. I think about my mum, who Every time I touch Gabriella’s hair
Or kiss the back of her neck
Her eyes fill up with tears
I think of her safe hands, full of love,
And her longing look.
I think of my Dad
Whose hair has gone completely grey
Tired of walking up and down in the corridors
Of the courts
And the hope at the end of his eyes
That yet again reminds me
That these days will pass, however hard
I think of your mum
That nothing would make her happier
Than seeing and embracing her granddaughter
After 19 months
To bring a smile on her lips and her pale face
And give her energy on her tired body
Flattened from illness
I think of your dad
Who turned 68 this month without us
His silence is full of words for me
I think of freedom, of return
Of that glorious moment of rolling into your arms
The arms I have longed for the past 500 days
I think of my orchids and African violets
Have they bloomed without me?
It is true that the world in its great hugeness
Sometimes gets so small
As small as the eye in the needle
And unreachable like a dream
And I still
Am sitting in my corner
Reviewing my dreams
And ploughing through my memories
Autumn Light
The diagonal light falling on my bed
Tells me that there is another autumn
on the way
Without you
A child turned three
Without us
The bars of the prison grew around us
So unjustly and fearlessly
And we left our dreams behind them
We walked on the stairs that led to captivity
Our night time stories remained unfinished
And lost in the silence of the night
Nothing is the same here
And without you even fennel tea loses its odour
Standing Straight
Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee with her husband Arash Sadeghi, who are both currently in Evin prison
CREDIT: Richard Ratcliffe (left); Center for Human Rights in Iran
Standing Mountains Firm but quiet While people of the city Full of uproar Crawl on their knees From here to there
It is not that they are restless – No But whoever is shorter Is safer
From constant bullets And their whispers Are not reported To the ears of the city By the wind.
It is the one who is standing Against the grim vultures Of the city Standing straight Holding in the square Of the city for a while Where an unknown grave Repeats their name with a tremble
And it is the one
Who puts their hand on their knee Aiming to stand up
In front of the grim vultures of the city
The vultures who
Dress like policemen
And pull the trigger without asking
Your name
The Lips of the Wind
I’ve left your hands
Beyond borders
Beyond time
Now I turn into wind
Over these mud bricks
Piled on each other
These cement bricks
That fill up the sky of the city
That city that has swallowed me
I turn into an arrow
On Arash’s bow
To pass through the darkness
Of night, whistling
To the sun
I turn into a flag
In the hands
Of Kaveh, fluttering
In front of the eyes
Of the people of the city
Who haven’t even asked
In whispers
What is the story of
This wall
Standing up in front of them
I turn into a poem On the lips of the wind And pass through This inevitable boundary Over the dreams And becomes real
Until the cups of our tea Which are emptied next To each other To fill the loneliness of our afternoons Until they won’t be gloomy anymore And no longer will we be Without each other
Counting Up, Counting Down
One, two, three
I have counted the bricks in this wall
I have counted
Your notches
On the walls of the cell
That has devoured me
And now it has been years That I am counting that man Who is a thousand bodies In a shower of bullets With his eyes closed And hands tied up with a rope And feet in chains
I have counted that woman Who is a thousand women Hanging from a gallows tree Whose feet stayed still When the wind Swirled in her dress
I counted
Those virgin girls
Who had the freedom song
On their red lips
With their plaited hair
When just before execution
They turned to cry to the east of time
To the impudence of an action
Which planned to
Prevent them belonging to heaven
I’ve counted
The children of those rolled in blood Lamenting in distress Over unknown graves
I’ve counted
Every second of this
Open-ended, beginning
This dawnless night
This sewage
This decline
And this reaction
This wall fills up With trembling notches Which picture The firmness of A generation of pain The entangled notches Are an alphabet That write the screams Of the sewn lips
Until then
That sun passes by
Without distress
Over my city, Tehran
That as of many years ago
Has slept counting its own blood
And yet to wake up.
Sign up for updates on Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s story here: https://www.change.org/pffree-nazanin-ratcliffe. For information on the Center for the Defenders of Human Rights, which aids women inside Evin, visit http://www.humanrights-ir.org