The Lioness of Iran

Tehran Halts Travel By Poet Called ‘Lioness Of Iran’

The authorities in Iran continue to block the travel of the nation’s most prominent poet.

Last week, as she was about to board a flight to Paris, police seized the passport of Simin Behbahani, who is 82 and nearly blind.

Behbahani was interrogated all night long and then sent home — without her passport.

So far, she has not been charged with any crime. Neither the police nor the Revolutionary Court has asserted any legal basis for taking her passport.

. . .

That pressure didn’t hold Behbahani back after Iran’s presidential election last June. Millions of people poured into the streets to challenge the declared result, which gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another four-year term.

The protesters were met with police truncheons and rifle fire. Behbahani wrote “Stop Throwing My Country to the Wind,” a poem adding her voice to that of the protesters:

Stop this extravagance, this reckless throwing of my country to the wind. The grim-faced rising cloud will grovel at the swamp’s feet.

Stop this screaming, mayhem and bloodshed. Stop doing what makes God’s creatures mourn with tears.

My curses will not be upon you, as in their fulfillment. My enemies’ afflictions also cause me pain.

You may wish to have me burned, or decide to stone me. But in your hand match or stone will lose their power to harm me.

Behbahani has been told to appear at the Revolutionary Court in order to get her passport back, but so far she has declined.

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Today is the anniversary of Shock and Awe, George W. Bush’s adventure in preventive warfare. That was 2003. Seven years later, we’ve still got troups in Iraq.