The State of Red   

The stairway of our house was narrow
the stairway of our house was supposed to be
a place for hide and seek, for running up and down.
It was supposed to be white,
gleaming like the Milky Way.

The stairway of our house
was supposed to always laugh.

*                      *                      *

The air raid siren was red.
The siren cursed our stairway,
sullied it with darkness, dirt, and stench.
The siren smelled of hate.

*                      *                      *

The stairway of our house
in its fear of the siren collapsed
into itself and became a deep well,
dark, empty and dry,
and inside it my dreams birthed headless nightmares
wrapped in layers of sounds -- howls of jets and wolves.
My mother would press her head
against the stairway roof
her pulse pounding in her eyes
fearing if the earth should open
trample her beneath our neighbor’s pious feet --
the same neighbor who praised God incessantly
for the war’s boundless bounties.

And my father would shoot my hands
with the bullets of his eyes
all the way from the war at the border
so that he would not forget how young
I was dying beside my dolls.

And Tehran …
never imagined it would become this red.
Its red sky and red earth
rumbled and quaked like thunder,
attacked our stairway in fury.

But tomorrow was always another day!
Another day where the earth was once again pregnant
with my classmates’ dismembered parts.
A day filled with new lies I could slurp up in our history class--
and the school believed it could look for shelter
during the geography lesson
and God…
God always yawned.

Translated from Farsi by Sholeh Wolpé