Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang

by Ava Farmehri

Who will be at my funeral? Only those who are glad to be done with a girl like me. No. I only want birds at my funeral. I want them to dump my soulless body in a Tower of Silence to be feasted on by vultures.

I was born a captive. I was born in Tehran, Iran, April 1, 1979. The day the Islamic Republic was proclaimed.

By the time I had opened my eyes to the darkness of this world, a dynasty had been pulverized. A slate was wiped dirty and a state was robbed clean.

“Ours is a land of fiction, of frictions. And no story is too old to be told time and again,”

I was delivered from the womb of time, from an eternity of darkness to a reality of light, bombs and sunshine, of nightingales that travelled the skies freely, blind to borders while my people perished caged.

I just wanted to hide, to be pushed back into my mother and to stay in her forever. I wanted to go back to sleep in that darkness that was safe. Far away from what was happening.

Physical pain was more real than the intangibility I foresaw of my future.

“My lovesick nightingale, the day the world met you was the most painful and meaningful of my life.”