LETTER TO A WARRIOR
Monologue for The Swedish Radio Theater by Athena Farrokhzad
Translation: Jennifer Hayashida
My child, kicking warrior, little life inside my stomach.
In a few months you will finally arrive in the world.
If the contractions began now there would be a chance to save you.
I feel your movements reproduced inside me.
Like a wave that flows and as quickly ebbs again.
Like the fin of a fish suddenly breaking a calm surface.
Opposite the bed I have mounted pictures of you.
The first thing I see when I wake is your black and white silhouette.
The last thing I see when I fall asleep is you resting inside me like a half moon.
Packages for you arrive in the mail from other continents.That someone can be so loved before their birth.
That someone can change me before they have begun to exist.
That someone can occupy so much space before they intervene in the world.
I don’t know what you will look like.
I don’t know with what pain I will deliver you.
I don’t know who you will become or what you will make me.
I don’t know what our days together will be like.
I don’t know when our nights will drive me insane.
I wonder if you will be born with hair on your head.
I wonder if your heart will beat with a rhythm that worries me.
I wonder if you will begin your life silently or with a scream.
I wonder if the umbilical chord will be coiled as a sign around your body.
I wonder if your gaze will see through me from the beginning.
I wonder if my conception of mothers will change when I become one.
I have no inheritance for you.
No china, no paintings, no lace cloth, no jewelry.
I have nothing that has been passed between generations.
For you belong to families that have abandoned everything.
That have left with nothing.
Neither of your parents grew up in the same place as our parents.
We have nothing to pass on, since nothing has been passed on to us.
Nothing except stories about decisive hands.
We have stories about the fight that precedes you.
We have stories about the struggles that enabled us to survive.
So we one day could give you life.
We have stories about where we come from.
We have stories about which battle fields brought us here.
Here to the place that will soon be yours.
*
I traveled with your father to your grandmother’s home town.
We went to a park where the names of the dead are written.
There were thirty thousand.
They were arranged alphabetically.
When the same last name was repeated I understood.
An entire group of siblings had been annihilated.
I held your father’s hand when he threw roses into the river.
In the park I understood something about your aunt’s poems.
When she writes about carrying the names of the dead as talismans it is not a symbol.
Your grandmother pointed out the names to us in the park.
She named her children after all her dead.
She named them after sweethearts and comrades.
She gave them the names of the dead because something was already lost.
Because death in all its futility would at least serve as protection.
Your father said his ashes should be scattered in the park one day.
To be reunited with all the dead.
For his death will remain tied to theirs.
For it will belong to the place they were forced to leave.
It was when I saw your father cry in the park that I understood you were possible.
For a love that does not contain such grief can not give rise to life.
For a desire that does not know history can break us can not be dwelled in.
For a future that does not tend to such defeats I have no faith in.
I wonder if you will be the first who is allowed to remain.
If you will end your life in the same place as it begins.
If you will call a place home and not see it devastated.
If you will bury us in a place you can return to.
Or if you must also bid a hasty farewell that turns out to be final.
If you must also stand by prison gates and wait.
If someone will stand outside and wait for you.
If someone will search for your name in lists of the dead.
If all suffering one day will be placed in relation to a freedom gained.
My child, kicking warrior, little life inside my stomach.
I will teach you the language of the dead so you will remember why they disappeared.
I will sing you lullabies I barely master.
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.
I am afraid something will end with you.
If it ends with you I don’t know how we will recognize ourselves in each other.
I hope something will end with you.
If it does not end with you I don’t know how long it will continue.
*
There are so many ways to be annihilated.
One way is to die of bullets and lashes of the whip.
Another is to destroy yourself because you didn’t.
Like your uncle who against all odds evaded the hands of repression.
He who fled and told me how escape routes became dead ends.
He who told me who had gotten married and who had been unfaithful.
He who showed me where I should place my feet to not slip down the mountain.
Then he took one pill too many and never woke again.
I who promised him that one day we would return and make victory signs.
I who imagined how we would lean back and toast each other.
I know that grief is the price of love.
I know that even the earth will go some day.
I know that either one buries or is buried by those one loves.
But his shoes still stand in the hallway waiting for him to awaken.
It was when I kissed his cold forehead that I understood you were necessary.
Because love lives in flesh and not in stone.
Because if someone disappears someone else must become.
Because death is so inexplicable that it can only be soothed by the inexplicability of life.
Because if we do not increase in any other way we must do so through you.
Can there be lullabies that are not songs of struggle.
Can there be children’s hands not taught to form fists.
Can there be daughters not named after warriors.
Can there be fireworks that do not evoke memories of gunshots.
Can there be games of tag that do not recall escape routes.
I am afraid I have nothing to offer you.
I am afraid the only thing I can console you with is stories of our defeats.
I am afraid the only hope I can convey is about our delayed victories.
I am afraid you will reject the stories, as I have rejected them.
I am afraid they are told in too many versions.
I am afraid the guilt is the same regardless if the stories are swaddled or undressed.
I am afraid loss defines us even though we cannot remember what we have lost.
I am afraid our lives are conditioned by experiences inaccessible to us.
I am afraid this is why we must continue to tell.
I am afraid you will not want to listen.
I am afraid freedom will make you a stranger.
*
My child, kicking warrior, little life inside my stomach.
I push home a stroller and think that the next time you will be asleep in it.
I assemble a crib and see you hoist yourself out of it.
I fold a onesie and imagine you crawling around in it.
I match socks and try to understand that this is the measure of your feet.
I will dress you in our stories as mothers have dressed their children for an eternity.
I will place your arms in our victories as a mail.
I will wrap your legs in our defeats as a shield.
I will arm you with stories to bear you when the ground gives way.
Your grandmother joined the guerrilla when she was fifteen.
When she went underground she was carrying her first child.
When her mother knew the military was searching for her daughter she cleaned the apartment.
She said that she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing them dirty.
From her window she saw the helicopters going to dump the corpses in the river.
In the square the mothers gathered to demand the return of their disappeared children.
When your mother had crossed the border her father brought the passport home.
So that someone else’s child could also be saved.
He continued to dream that there would be enough champagne for everyone.
It was when I heard about the price of his exuberance that I understood you were essential.
For there are traumas so defining that to move on would be a betrayal.
For there are damages so decisive that they can only be left as inheritance.
For there is grief so dumbfounding that it can only be told in fragments.
*
We who consist of all these stories.
We who spoke with our cousins on crackling phone lines.
We who cried in airports during the summers.
We who knew what was concealed in the lining of the suitcase.
We who called our parents different names depending on who wanted to know.
We who longed for a place that had never been ours.
We who were nostalgic for a time we had never experienced.
We who armed ourselves for battlefields already abandoned.
We who bandaged the wound before it had occurred.
Our only inheritance is stories we hope will exist when we no longer do.
Your grandmother distributed flyers and agitated at the factories.
Your grandmother delivered babies during bombings until it was her turn to give birth.
When she got married the taxi driver was a witness since everyone had gone underground.
When she returned she packed her suitcase full of bananas for her nieces and nephews.
Her brother remained even thought everyone else had left.
He did not want to live anywhere other than the place that had robbed him of life.
They planted weapons in his office so he would be unable to prosecute his cases.
Thirty years later he said that he should also have left.
That he had hidden hope deep in his closet until it withered like a plant.
Your grandfather spent nine years in a prison cell.
When I was a child he said that he was fed and didn’t have to pay rent.
When I became older I read about the mock executions.
Your grandfather will never be the same and I don’t know who he could have become.
It was when I realized he could not tell that I understood you were critical.
For I wonder what it feels like to see oneself in a face regarded as precious.
For I wonder what the changing seasons are like for someone who is not in a place temporarily.
For I wonder what it feels like to have a body shaped by the earth one treads on.
For I wonder what death means for someone with a grave to visit.
*
My child, kicking warrior, little life inside my stomach.
I rub my skin so the sheath that surrounds you will stretch.
I practice breathing so I can bear the contractions when you rush forth.
I learn that the pain is not dangerous so I should not be overcome with fear.
I dismiss the thought that one of us will not make it.
I will kiss your feet and hope they will never have to cross a border.
I will wash your skin and imagine it will never be scarred.
I will speak your name and think of what its vowels will let you bear.
I will tousle your hair and wonder where its blackness will take you.
I will brush your teeth and hope they will never be knocked out.
What is quaking in the future erupts at the thought of your stomach’s smallness.
What is baffling in the present appears when I see myself caress your back.
What is cyclical in history blooms when I imagine your ear lobes’ softness.
I will tell you about all your aunts.
Those who fought so I could decide it is now that I want you.
Those who struggled so we would both survive your arrival in the world.
So the sheets would be clean.
So the midwife would be rested.
So no one would hurt you without punishment.
So I would have time to get to know you.
I will tell you about your aunts with their strollers leading the demonstration.
Those who continued when police ordered them to stop.
Those who had bandages in their backpacks and lemon wedges in their pockets.
Those who did things I cannot recount.
Those who dreamed of fields of flowers and awoke in prison cells.
Those whose experiences were never recognized as knowledge.
Those who survived even though they weren’t meant to.
I will tell you about your aunts who fostered the hatred that is in service to love.
*
My child, kicking warrior, little life inside my stomach.
I will tell you about everyone who precedes you.
I will tell you why your life is connected to theirs.
I will tell you why they are not here to greet you when you arrive.
I will tell you why you receive packages from other continents.
I will tell you about the walls that hold them hostage.
I will tell you about self defense that cannot be punished.
I will tell you about movements that transform us into many.
I will tell you about history that will not be repeated.
I will tell you about abilities that give according to need.
I will tell you about victories that do not make us heroes.
I will tell you about the places you come from.
Where you come from the tanks cross the squares like combines.
Where you come from escape routes becomes dead ends.
Where you come from the dying reach for each other with a prayer for remembrance.
Where you come from the ambulances drive directly to the morgues.
Where you come from the living are worth less than what their hands have made.
Where you come from the present rhymes with history like syllables in a poem.
Where you come from the rivers are cemeteries.
Where you come from the cobblestones are memorials.
Where you come from the profits are individual and the debt collective.
Where you come from we have supported what has destroyed us for too long.
Where you come from we have left our mothers’ houses.
Where you come from we have realized that the road leads to our executioners’ houses.
Where you come from we have thrown gravel into the machinery.
Where you come from we have discovered that the factory turns gravel into grease.
Where you come from no courtroom can give us restitution.
Where you come from even we have taken our testimony as perjury.
*
My child, kicking warrior, little life inside my stomach.
You have a face that resembles mine, one I have not yet seen.
You are the future present here.
You are an unknown promise.
You come into being independently of me, a condition for your creation.
You are foreign and my continuation by other means.
You renegotiate my dependence.
You displace my limit.
The frailty that is life appears through you.
The connection between us grows with every movement.
The body I have been alone in I share with you.
But I have never been alone in this body.
It has always been connected to other bodies.
To other stories that you will hear when you arrive.