By Forugh Farrokhzad
From the summer of 1964 through December 1966, Farrokhzad published five poems in various issues of Arash. One of them was “Someone Who Is Not Like Anyone” (1966). In it, she scrutinizes the new Pahlavi Tehran of modern, Westernized, mechanized ways and goods, indicts upper class Tehranis, and calls for social justice for lower class Tehranis. In this poem, Farrokhzad presents a dream of an egalitarian Iranian society. The poem reads:
I’ve had a dream that someone is coming.
I’ve dreamt of a red star,
and my eyes lids keep twitching
and my shoes keep snapping to attention
and may I go blind
if I’m lying.
I’ve dreamt of that red star
when I wasn’t asleep.
Someone is coming,
someone is coming
someone better,
someone who is like no one,
not like Father,
not like Ensi,
not like Yahya
not like Mother,
and is like the person who he ought to be.
and his height is greater than the trees
around the overseer’s house,
and his face is brighter
than the face of the mahdi,
and he’s not even afraid
Of Sayyed Javad’s brother
who has gone
and put on a policeman’s uniform.
and he’s not even afraid of Sayyed Javad himself
who owns all the rooms of our house.
and his name just like Mother
says it at the beginning
and at the end of prayers
is either ‘judge of judges’
or ‘need of needs’.
And with his eyes closed
he can recite
all the hard words
in the third grade book,
and he can even take away a thousand
from twenty million without coming up short.
and he can buy on credit
however much he needs
from Sayyed Javad’s store.
And he can do something
so that the neon Allah sign
which was as green as dawn
will shine again
in the sky above the Meftahiyan Mosque.
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