Simin Behbahani, a poet who put ointment instead of lamentation

Simin Behbahani's poems "Ba Shab Ke Har Margh O Mahi" and "A Man Who Doesn't Have One Leg" transform a mother from an individual emotion into a moral, social and nursing action that stands face to face with collective suffering.

Ambassador of Arjan Culture and Literature Group, Tahereh Tehrani: In the frenzy of official historiography, which is often governed by numbers, figures, victory declarations and dry circulars, it is literature that bears the heavy burden of preserving the emotional memory of a nation. Among the figures of contemporary Persian poetry, Simin Behbahani should be considered one of the most accurate chroniclers of social wounds. A poet who sat watching Iran's great historical crises from the window of ghazal, which many thought was only suitable for expressing individual love.

Among all the current themes in Simin's poetry, there is a continuous and rooted concept that has been less discussed: motherhood as an ethic of "care and nursing". If we divide the poetry of war and natural disasters into two categories; One is a passionate epic writer and the other is a mourner and elegiac singer, Simin Behbahani opens a third way: the way of "caring and narrating standing and being together". In his view, the narrator's mother or wife does not stop at crying in the face of destruction; He rolls up his sleeves, approaches the soil, touches and acknowledges the wound, and finally tries to apply salve and let life flow. Examining two of her prominent poems - one about the July 1369 Rudbar earthquake and the other about a young veteran in May 1366 - shows how maternal affection turns into social and humanitarian action in a workshop of pain.

Mourning, soil and treatment; Rudbar earthquake and maternal ointment

In July 1369, the ground shook under the feet of the people of Gilan and cities like Rudbar and Manjil turned into a pile of dirt. The disaster was so terrible that language could not describe its dimensions. In the meantime, Simin Behbahani, by composing a shocking piece, recorded the image of a mother whose entire being is buried under the rubble. The poem begins with an eerie and dark atmosphere; It is night and everything is asleep, but a mother is awake in her ruins:

In the night that every bird and fish have seen two together, a woman has put a mourning lamp on her ruin

From those two hands, Hamayl placed two branches of Maryam on a pile of bricks and mud that became the grave of his son

His two free fountains, flowing from his eyes, blamed the stagnant water on the well

He has depicted the tension of "Aza Zalzlat" and has given an interpretation of that strong word

In memory of the child, a hand stretched out to the stone and soil is an image of him

He gave a hundred kisses to the ground in memory of that person who gave his life as a sign of surrender

He tells himself that: Yari is not blessed by his wound, no one has kissed his eyes, he has seen each other

No turpentine juice has dripped on his palate by a friend of one's heart, no ointment has been applied to his wound by a trusted doctor

Then he tries to treat the patient, to increase the help that luck has given him

When Sahar is gone, look at what he has done: he has put ointment on the stone tied to the soil!

If we look at the movement of this poem, we are faced with a classic tragedy that has an unexpected ending. The bereaved woman first performs all the mourning rituals; He puts Maryam flowers, sheds tears and kisses the soil. But the turning point of the poem is in the final stanzas; Where he comes out of personal mourning and turns to "treatment".

This is exactly the point where motherhood leaves the closed circle of "your child" and becomes a human and universal concept. A woman who has lost her child does not get lost in the dark corners of grief; Rather, he deals with the work of the patient to compensate for the shortcomings of luck. This phase change can be called restorative responsibility; A reaction to collapse and mourning that does not allow humanity and motherly love to be buried under the debris of grief of an inevitable natural disaster; So he does something and gets up.

Anger, dignity and nursing motherhood; Facing the war veteran

Leaving aside the natural disaster of Rudbar, we come to the wounds of the war years. It is May 1366; The cities of Iran are facing the wounded bodies of young people who have returned from the fronts. In the meantime, Simin Behbahani, with her sharp poetic and motherly gaze, draws an image that official literature often ignored with slogans, a young veteran who lost his leg and walks in the street with crutches in hand and a strong face:

His pants are folded, a man without a leg is anger, and the fire of his gaze means he has no attention

I smile at him, but in my eyes he is very young and maybe not over twenty

For many years of suffering, after this bada, like me, even though it is suffering, it does not have "bada bada".

Did you see how difficult I went with my nimble feet? How long is he a river that does not have nimble feet?

He puts a stamp on the ground with his stick, although he does not need a signature to register his presence.

My dear smile became a thorn in his eyes and it turned into a sting.

There are lines of boredom on his cold and dry face, which means that he is not patient with the loss of body

I say that I will kindly advise him to be patient, take motherly advice, he is not careless

I turn to him to start a conversation, the instrument is gone and there is a man without a leg...

Contrary to the stereotypical image of veterans, this poem presents a realistic, bitter and deeply psychological image. The female narrator wants to approach the young man with a pure intention and out of motherly feelings, advise him and put a salve on his heart with a smile. But he faces a strong barrier: anger and wounded dignity from the pity of a proud youth returning from the war.

The young man does not want to be "watched". He rejects the pitiful look and sees the smile in his eye like a thorn. The beauty of this poem is that Simin Behbahani does not shy away from showing the failure of this emotional effort. The narrator turns to start the conversation again, only to find that the man is gone, leaving only his empty space. This failure reminds us that nursing and embalming are not always accepted with open arms; Sometimes the suffering is so deep and full of anger that it has the right to distance itself from any external pity. Respecting this distance is a high level of moral understanding.

Nursing tradition in Simin's poetry; From loneliness to social solidarity

By juxtaposing these two poems and of course poems like "Hanging Neck" and "I will build my homeland again", Simin Behbahani's intellectual trajectory becomes more obvious in the face of national tragedies. In both works, the "woman" element is in the center of the scene, but not as a decorative or passive element, but as a "restorative and narrative agent".

In Rudbar, the grieving woman crosses the border of tears and begins the treatment. He reaches out to the injured to compensate for the lost fortune. In Tehran or any other war-torn city, the female narrator tries to heal the tired and angry soul of a proud and passionate young veteran with words and a smile; And even when he fails, he recognizes his right to be angry.

In both cases, Simin's poetry leaves the sphere of personal poetry and becomes a statement about the ethics of care. In a society that is under the tremendous impact of events (whether natural such as earthquakes or human-made such as war), what preserves the bonds of society is not big slogans, which are the thin threads of attention, nursing, care and coexistence with other suffering.

In a cultural world and in the context of bio-culture, man has the duty to go beyond the daily headlines and analyze the intellectual roots of the phenomena. Rereading motherhood and nursing in Simin Behbahani's poem shows us that the terrible national phenomena are not only the statistics of deaths and destruction; Tragedy is individual human beings who struggle with loneliness, disability, loss of loved ones and spiritual erosion.

In this world full of chaos and wounds, Simin Behbahani's answer is neither indifference nor empty epic; The response from her femininity is to stand by the wound. Whether a mother puts ointment on the gravestone of her child, or where a woman looks longingly at the empty place of an angry veteran, the message is the same: a wounded person should not be left alone. In this sense, Simin's poetry is an emergency room where the society's conscience is revived and reminds us that nursing and caring for others is the bravest form of being human.