My homeland
Written by Amir Hossein Nikzad<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Winner of Jaleh Esfahani Foundation prize 2010
Translated from Persian into English:
Rouhi Shafii<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wish my homeland was a song
to be recited by heart.
Wish my homeland was a prayer
to be memorised and believed in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They packed the donkeys
with the morning, the bread and water
and left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cattle lingering on the horizon
the sun rising from behind.
A girl in traditional dress,
not a legend woman
A lanky boy
not a brave hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The van filled with the sheep
children running in the wind<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A man resting among the alfalfa fields
a woman\u2019s hand, his bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My homeland is life with no interpretation.
Should her pains be forgotten,
new tales can be told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A boy pulls the shutters down
the chanting of muezzin from the mosque.
A girl takes her cover off
and puts her scarf on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The impatient sheep,
pushing their bottoms
against each other.
The patient, blue van
waiting with a puncture
behind the abattoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wish my homeland was a song
to be recited by heart.
Wish my homeland was a prayer
to be memorised and believed in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
30 January 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My homelandWritten by Amir Hossein Nikzad Winner of Jaleh Esfahani Foundation prize 2010 Translated from Persian into English: Rouhi Shafii Wish my homeland was a song to be recited by heart. Wish my homeland was a prayer to be...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jalehesfahani.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}