15. In one of the most anthologized poems of modern Persian literature, “O, People,” Nima Yushij depicts the scene of a drowning man. His concern, however, revolves mainly around the complicity of all those uninvolved, carefree, and disengaged people who sit—”cheerful and laughing”—on the shore, witness the death of a struggling man “in the rough and formidable sea,” and refuse to offer a helping hand to save him. The anguished voice of the poet and that of the drowning man mingle with the wind and the enveloping, angry waves and remind the reader of an avoidable and cruel death. In his growing distress, the drowning man “raises above the water / now his head / now his feet / he has his eye on this world / and is shouting for help: / ‘O, people!’” Nima Yushij, Majmou’e-ye Ash’ar-e Nima Yushij [Nima Yushij’s Poetry Collection] (1955; reprint, Tehran: Safi Alishah, 1968), 178.

16. The narrator is horrified by the prospect that her daughter might turn into a windup doll, a vessel filled with silence or prerehearsed responses in delineated spaces. She does not want her daughter to take after her. “She has gone mute. A muffled sound comes out of her mouth. I see the fear in her eyes. I recognize silent crying very well. Silent crying means that she cannot leave” (39). Recognizing silent crying well, not wanting her daughter to be like her, she adopts a new strategy. “I sit Shadi in front of me and give her a little lecture—what Maman should have done with me and never did. If I wanted to say something, I would pace up and down the room seven or eight times. I felt my heart in my throat and could not talk because it seemed like my words were stuck at the bottom of a deep well” (17). To teach her daughter a lesson, to extricate her voice from the bottom of that deep well, she grabs her doll, takes its battery out, and squeezes it. “‘See,’” she tells her, “‘if you don’t make a sound, you are as bad as a doll without a battery, without a heart. Then it is possible to hurt you because nobody will even find out’” (18). Forugh Farrokhzad, too, was appalled by the possibility of becoming a windup doll and to “see the world through a pair of glassy eyes.” Repulsed, she lamented: “one can sleep for years and years / in a velvet box / between layers of lace and tinsel / with a body stuffed with straw / With every squeeze of a shameless hand / one can declare / like a windup doll: / ‘O, I am so very happy.’” Forugh Farrokhzad, Tavalodi Digar [Another Birth] (1964; reprint, Tehran: Morvarid, 1972), 71–75.

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