It
Is Only Sound That Remains - VIEW
THE POEM
A
real revolution is, in fact, shaking the foundations of Iranian society,
a revolution with women at its very center. Veiled or unveiled, Iranian
women are reappraising traditional spaces, boundaries, and limits.
They are renegotiating old sanctions and sanctuaries. They are challenging
male allocations of power, space, and resources. Exercising increasing
control over how reality is defined, they are redefining their own
status. It is in this context of the negotiation of boundaries that
the veil is now worn by some women, not to segregate, but to desegregate.
The genealogy of this revolution can be traced back more than a century.
Women writers, at the forefront of this movement, have consistently
spoken the previously unspoken, articulated the once unarticulated.
Their voices can be heard loud and clear in their literature. And
the formerly silent, the supposedly invisible have discovered surprising
resources in their re-appropriated voices and presences and sheer dynamism
of their mobility. In the words of one poet, Forugh Farrokhzad:
Why should I stop,
why?
The birds have gone off to find water ways,
the horizon is vertical and moving is rocketing.
shining planets spin
at the edge of sight
why should I stop, why?
Veils
and Words (The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers) page 9
Farzaneh Milani
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