Recently, I was asked by Consequence magazine to translate a poem by Mohammad Kazem Kazemi into English. Kazemi is an Afghan poet living in Mashhad, Iran. His poem, Bazgasht (Return) narrates the story of an Afghan migrant worker who had decided to return to Afghanistan after a period of hardship. The poem has become extremely popular in poetry recitations and it has been anthologized in several books of poetry.
Co-translating Kazemi was interesting on many levels. Many Afghan refugees lived in Shiraz, my birthplace. I grew up with a healthy distance from them; mainly I grew up with an unhealthy set of inhumane misconceptions of Afghans. That is a long story. Ironically, it was in California, thousands of miles away, where I first shared a meal with Afghans, at their home, and at the home they soon created in my heart with their exceptional hospitality.
I travel to my adolescent years to find specific instances of what it meant to be an Afghan in Iran, through my own eyes. Now, I am contemplating on every verse of a narrative that was around me, but I couldn’t hear its cries of desolation. In my research, I found Zuzanna Olszewska’s excellent scholarship and translations of Afghan poets. I have ordered Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, which features her translations. I look forward to re-visiting a story of struggle that is intertwined with my past and occupies a dear place in my present.
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