“If you do not understand your grandmother’s chants, she will have fought for nothing. 

If you do not know your aunts’ songs their struggle will end with you.” 

A woman talks to her unborn child about how she has no family heirlooms to pass on because her family had to flee, leaving everything they owned. But she has stories about the wars and battles that were fought where her family travelled from. She tells about why she has to sing lullabies in a language she does not master, about escape routes that turn into dead ends, and about the sorrow that is the price of love. She both hopes and fears that the story will end with the child. 

Letter to a Warrior is a monologue written by Athena Farrokhzad, a Swedish-Iranian poet, activist and social commentator, who raises issues about the political potential of art, representation, whiteness, and about which voices are allowed in the cultural public sphere. The work consists of two parts. The first part was originally written as radio theatre for Swedish Radio in 2016, and the second part was commissioned for the House of Literature in Oslo for the anniversary production The Political Body (2017). The first part of the work, which is presented in this catalogue, has been translated into New Norwegian (nynorsk) by Kristina Leganger Iversen and Camara Lundestad Joof, as well as into English by Jennifer Hayashida. 

“For me, it's seeing in a moment of despair that people can come together, with the knowledge of people who have gone before, to see how political change can be achieved. Athena's lyrics give strength, hope and knowledge.” So says Saga Gärde, director of a radio version of Brev till en krigerska (Letter to a Warrior) and, before that, Farrokhzad's critically acclaimed debut Vitsvit. 

Both deeply intimate and collective, the radio version blends Farrokhzad’s text with testimonies of the participants, children of revolutionary émigrés who fled to Sweden from Iraq and Kurdistan. We hear stories of radio personalities Shang Imam, host of the podcast Verkligheten (The reality) on Swedish Radio, and journalist Sîlan Diljen, creator of the documentary film and social media project #minflykt.[1] Departing from a state of pregnancy, Saga Gärde has crafted a captivating composition, blending lyrical and realist text, documentary elements and a mix of original and sampled music, all brought to life through David Gülich's sound design.

The `loud` visuality of Athena Farrokhzad’s words make us imagine, even without assistance from the organ of vision. It is in listening that we see the pregnant warrior, and the warrior-to-come, in front of our eyes, here to empower us.  

-        Marianne Zamecznik

[1]  Min flykt (My escape) is a documentary broadcast on Swedish Radio (SR) by Sîlan Diljen, published in 2013 in connection with a documentary for which SR collected refugee stories of escape, using the hashtag #minflykt. Stories poured in and became radio programs in nine different languages. Later, these escape stories were read out at the Dramaten theatre in Stockholm. #minflykt also spread to Norway where NRK collected more and made several podcasts concerning escape stories by refugees in Norway.