Poetry: Five different translations of Shervin Hajipour’s Persian protest song ‘Baraye’

Published under this note are five different English translations of Shervin Hajipour’s Persian protest song “Baraye.” Released in 2022, in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody, this single rapidly and contagiously became an anthem for the uprisings in the aftermath, within and outside Iran, in institutions and in streets, and has since then rippled out towards other shores, translated and performed by crowds, groups, and individuals in different, related contexts.

The translations here were prepared by the participants of the “Multilingual Poetry” strand of SummerSALT 2024 (of which I was a part), the intensive translation summer school for emerging translators held at Colombo, Sri Lanka as part of The SALT project, and were performed at the concluding presentations.

To listen to five renditions one after the other was to see how each translation was supplementing the other (and the poem), one opening up a line where the other had chosen concision, another abstracting a specificity, another embellishing a suggestion; it was also to be roused socially and emotionally, to be reminded again and again that there is so much for which we fight, and so much more for which we live.

Encouraging us to translate from Persian, within the frame of the summer school, was a deliberate, political decision on the part of the workshop leader – the poet, art critic, and translator Ranjit Hoskote.

SALT is conceived as a project that aims to bring South Asian Literature in Translation to the Anglophone world in the UK and US, where, as of now, literature from these regions are under-represented (and when they are, might one add, studied or celebrated, not only in academic circles, as cultural information). “South Asia,” we must remember, was first a geopolitical category, conceived in American policy rooms after the Cold War, the exclusions and inclusions of this territory tailored according to US requirements and foreign policy, and then supplied to the world and the classroom for use – whatever cultural and affective continuities and dissonances there may be.

Persia has no place in this South Asia. But not only are the many civilisations of South Asia indelibly marked by Persian cultural influence (and vice versa), as historians have time and again remarked, Persian is very much an “Indian” language, widely spoken here in the 18th century, as much as “India” is part of what Hoskote calls the “Iranosphere.” Farsi’s attendance at SALT remembers and recreates this historical space of continuum and exchange, a space larger than both South Asia and Iran.

But even if this historical fact were untrue, and however close or far away the languages and cultures in question are, translation as an act itself would raise its head, quizzically, at these divisions. Translation would ask us to pay more attention to the frameworks with which these categories are made. Translation would ask if indeed what’s next to us is easily comprehensible, and if what’s farther away is so unintelligible. Would translation acts, then, redraw the maps of the world? Do two of us speak the same language only when we speak the same words? Do we not share a language when we are on similar registers in our different tongues, in the case of “Baraye,” as we fight similar battles? Because we fight for similar “becauses”?

Charge ahead in the name of similar things – or in the name of one another? To fight against the air pollution in Sonipat, from where I write, speaking the name of Vali’asr Street; or for the street dogs and the tigers by remembering Pirooz; for the lives of those we lose to sexually moral regimes with the slogan “zan, zendagi, azadi”; for those killed in short police custodies or after long police incarcerations by singing this song. Such possibilities of solidarity are precisely what translation (and the literary) animates. Our translations are a homage to the song, the songwriter, and the countless people who have pleaded this poem to acknowledge their own situations, just as we too, sadly, recognise the necessity of “Baraye” in our own political realities.

What also of the fact that these translations were the outcome of a “multilingual” poetry workshop; had we shortchanged our brief sticking to a single poem from a single language?

In fact, the first three days of our workshop had involved long and productive discussions on the different poems we had brought from homes. And yet, this model of multilingualism can effectively become a legitimator of monolingualism, as what is plural here is simply the coming together of different monolingual objects. What we did with “Baraye” was stare at the multilingualism of a single poem. As translators with different degrees of competence with Farsi, we entered the poem through the other languages we knew, and found happy traces and connections between them.

And as readers and interpreters, we spent many hours first admiring the multiplicity of each line – the tenors, textures, intents, and movements; then peeking at a new cadence of a word, and unfurling a revelation out of a phrase. It’s only due to this multiplicity that the translations, as they took shape, made each other and the original just a bit foreign. These five poems are the five different languages “Baraye” offered us translators.

– Vighnesh Hampapura

because

translated by Ayesha Latif and Vighnesh Hampapura

because on the streets we must dance
because we’re so afraid to kiss when we can
because your sister, my sister, our sisters
because we must wake our rotting brains
because shame because no money
because we just want to live a life…
because even the kid scavenging has a dream
because all these money laws
because all this filthy air
because the trees on Vali’asr Street are dying
and the cheetahs, like dear Pirooz, are dying

because we don’t see stray dogs anymore, innocent, blameless
because we’re crying and crying for so long
because these we must repeat again and again
because look, our faces can smile
because students because future
because this – this Paradise of Power
because the teachers are in jail
because…because Afghani children

because because because because

because all that furore so very empty
because those houses were built as rubble
because then we can all sleep
because long nights need sunlight
because nights we spend with pills and not dreams
because man, fatherland, growth
because here daughters long to be sons
because woman, life, freedom
because freedom
freedom
freedom

Barāye

translated by Ayesha Irani, with contributions from Aron Aji

For dancing in the alleys
For fear of kissing in the open
For my sister, your sister, our sisters
For reviving rotting minds
For shame, for penury
For this regrettable ordinary life
For the child scrabbling through garbage and dreams
For…
this ridiculous regime of greed

For this putrefying air
For Vali’ Asr avenue and its dying trees
For disappearing cheetah the baby Pīruz for banishment of blameless dogs
For these tears that never cease
For the many snapshots of this moment
For this smiling face
For these students, and for those to come

For…
this paradise ensnared

For…
all that talent wasting in jail

For…
Afghani children

For all these endless “fors”
For all this empty noise
For those vagrant shacks coming apart

For…
that experience of luxuriant ease

For the sun after the long night
For those shots that stab at despair, sleeplessness
For man, nation, prosperity
For the girl who wants to be a boy
Barāye zan, zindagī, āzādī

For woman, life, freedom
For āzādi
Liberation

In the name of

translated by Nachiket Joshi and Amna Ali Khan

In the name of dancing on the streets
In the name of kissing even in our fear
In the name of our sisters
In the name of decaying minds, reclaimed
In the name of shame, of being broke
In the name of longing for a simple life
In the name of the kid scouring for hope amidst garbage
In the name of the iron law of the market
In the name of this poisoned air
In the name of the wilting trees on Vali‘asr
In the name of Piruz, who was disappeared
In the name of pi-dogs, taken from the streets
In the name of endless tears
In the name of bearing witness now
In the name of our smiling faces
In the name of those who learn
In the name of the future
In the name of this enforced paradise
In the name of the Afghan children
In the name of every name
In the name of empty shouts
In the name of the rubble of ramshackle homes
In the name of a breath of air
In the name of the dawn
In the name of pills that push you into dreamlessness
In the name of man, homeland, people
In the name of the girl who wasn’t a son
In the name of woman, life, azadi
In the name of azadi
In the name of azadi
In the name of azadi

Azaadi आज़ादी விடுதலை නිදහස آزادی

translated by Balakrishnan Raghavan and Ammara Ahmad

For us to dance in the streets,
For us who kiss, feeling fear,
For khāharam – my sister, your sister, and our sisters
For us, to renew rotting minds
For us, shamed for poverty
For a life, longing to be plain

For the litter-picking child, and her dreams,
For their brutal economy,
For the poisoning airs,
For the dying trees of Vali-asr,
For the living-death of dear Pirooz
For life, to blameless stray dogs-mamnū'e

For nightly tears that do not cease
For daughters and mothers, image, shot, dead, shot, again
For smiles, lips, faces, watching, waiting,
For future, because future, for futures, because futures
For khāharam – my sister, your sister, and our sisters

For their promise of “not-paradise”
For wisdom, imprisoned
For Afghan children, twice exiled,
For us, for them, these, those, and others in-between,

Avar ivar uvar avar / அவர் இவர் உவர் அவர்
Barāye, Barāye, Barāye

For their sorry alms of empty slogans
For hollow homes in rubble, broken,
For sukh, ease to be and to think
For triumph of red dawn over long night

For dreams, drowned by drugs
For ‘mard, mihan, ābādi’
– ‘man, homeland, and prosperity’

For all the daughters under cover,

For Jin, Jiyan, Azaadi,
– ‘women, life, freedom’

For Azaadi
For we want Azaadi
For ever Azaadi

आज़ादी
விடுதலை
آزادی

Because of

translated by Alexander McKinley and Rohee Dholakia

Because of
dancing in the streets
fear to ever kiss
my sister your sister our sister
brains with sense decayed
penniless shame
desire to simply live
junkyard kids whose hopes are trashed
the real gods are law and cash
filthy air
dying trees on the streets of Vali-’asr

Because victorious Pirooz may vanish

Because of
blameless strays now banished
tears that never stop

Because this moment imprints itself

Because of
faces that wish to smile
students with futures offset
trapped in an illusive paradise
a prison made of experts

Because children of Afghans exist

Because of these unending becauses
this empty uproar
brok e n homes fallen over
the need to feel at ease
longed for light after endless night
pills to fix missing dreams

Because of man, fatherland, and fortune
Because of daughters who wish to be sons
Because of woman, life, and liberty

Because of azadi
azadi
azadi