User talk:Soleimani2009

To Farzad*, the Teacher Who Teaches on the Death Row

Farzad you remain a teacher … You’re the blaze to burn ignorance and injustice. You are the star in a dark sky. The burning candle in “Zahak’s dungeon”; a dungeon, with “walls as high as history itself” but so insufficient to mute you. These walls are not enough to conceal your height from your people’s sight and to darken the rays of your candle light. These walls are humbled and amused by the loftiness of your stature. The walls long have been used as the site of horror and exhibition of tyrants’ might. They are erected to tear down freedom lovers’ “will, love and humanity and to make them as obedient and docile as an obedient lamb.” Now, those walls, meant to fraught, have become as spurious as the distance between you and the people, as evanescent as those lines that are dividing your nation’s whereabouts. In truth, the walls embody the frustration and fright of the guard[ians] of darkness and the night. Their height and solidness is thrown in to a total doubt. The ceiling of the Zahak’s dungeon has become a sky for “a disobedient star [from up above Zagros] that shoots from one corner to the other tearing down all darkness with light.” A star, whose movements is watched by our youth from across the homeland for their wishes to come true. “This inflicted generation’s” hearts rejuvenate as they once again believe life is worth living. They watch the rise of that star in the sky of their own hopes. No “matter where they live; whether on the shores of Kārūn, in the outskirt of Mount. Sabalan, on the edges of Eastern desert or on the heights of Zagros where everyday they observe the sunrise”, all think of him as their hope; their teacher. His defiant and yearning heart will keep beating and continue to inspire. Every child sleeps with his lullaby and wakes up with his songs, full of stories from their land. The songs contain the love of Mam and Zeen, relate the stories from Dersim and Baytushabab; they are the weeps of Badinan and Halabja. They are the lyrics of hope from the founders of the first Kurdish school in Maku, in 1913, for geyandini (development and training) of a generation, a generation that was to be “more audacious in telling their childhood wishes to the moon and to the stars.” This, the founders cherished to teach the children, the heirs of this land, pride and humanity. The prison guards still use batons when our children’s teacher requests a paper and a pen to write his stories. They can not listen to his songs and they are blind to see his love. The children know that no one can bar them from singing. Now, all of them can sing loudly with a clear throat in a decipherable language! They all sing. They see their teacher compel the guards of Zahak’s dungeon and Zahak himself to listen his songs. The children hear their ancestral songs from the tongue of such teacher; he is “enclosed in a cell” but his voice is heard through the cracks in the walls. Their songs as their language can be “imagined in.” Neither Tehran nor Ankara, nor Baghdad will turn their language into an undecipherable noise from the mountains. Despite their effort, they will fail because this language is breathing. It’s being taught in the dungeon by Farzad. by Kamal Soleimani

http://www.vokradio.com/content/view/421/46/ http://www.kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=15375
 * Farzad Kamangar, 33 years old Kurd, is a member of the human rights’ activists, a teacher, and a journalist in Iran. He was in charge of public relations of the Kurdish branch of the teachers’ union before the union was outlawed. In July of 2006, upon his arrival in Tehran to follow up with his brother’s medical treatments, Farzad was arrested. His prison conditions, torture, and 7 month of solitary confinement has been documented by human rights organizations, including Amenity International. On February 25th 2008, Farzad was sentenced to death for "risking national security.” Below are links to some of Farzad’s letters.