Here from a PBS article I was reading.
Read the full article here.Poet Behbahani Writes for Peace Amid Iran's Political Turmoil
"My country, I will build you again" - This is one of the most anthologized poems of Simin Behbahani, one of Iran's most renowned and prolific female poets, also a women's rights advocate [more about her latter activity here].
My country, I will build you again, if need be, with bricks made from my life. I will build columns to support your roof, if need be, with my own bones. I will inhale again the perfume of flower favored by your youth. I will wash again the blood off your body with torrents of my tears.Simin Behbahani recognizes the power of words, and she has used them to write a different kind of history of Iran...
Because she is not an ideologue, because she doesn't belong to any political party, because she loves the country she lives in, she has presented an image that is fair and judicious, that is [complex] and multilayered.
The Islamic republic confiscated Behbahani's passport on March 8 as she was leaving Tehran Airport for Paris. She had been invited there to deliver a speech and read a few of her poems on the occasion of International Women's Day.
Dictum:
It is my hope that the banner of equality may be raised throughout the five continents where as yet it is not fully recognized and established. In this enlightened world of the West woman has advanced an immeasurable degree beyond the women of the Orient. And let it be known once more that until woman and man recognize and realize equality, social and political progress here or anywhere will not be possible. For the world of humanity consists of two parts or members: one is woman; the other is man. Until these two members are equal in strength, the oneness of humanity cannot be established, and the happiness and felicity of mankind will not be a reality. God willing, this is to be so. ('Abdu'l-Bahá PUP 8)
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