“The Pendulum of History, a personal testimony dedicated to YOU-the guilty one”

Text and Video of “The Pendulum of History, a personal testimony dedicated to YOU-the guilty one”

THIS IS THE PIECE I PERFORMED IN NY; HOWEVER, The following link is video of my reading performance from SEPTEMBER 27, 2009, right after my return from NYC, for the 21st Anniversary of the mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980’s in Iran. This is my personal testimony “Pendulum of History.”

Only the first 30 Seconds of this video is in Farsi, the rest is in English. Below is the piece for you to follow:

Pendulum of History

Let the world turn their backs,
for even if they do,
and even if the guilty walk free today,
my truth does not disappear,
I am here to testify.

Let the world shut their ears,
stand apathetically watching,
refuse to answer my calls,
ignore or ridicule me,

I confess,
when the reports of systematic rape
of teenage boys and girls
arrive on my computer screen,
when the overwhelming sense of helplessness
catches on like a virus,
by an overdose of youtube scenes,
overcoming gravity seems much more
sensible than carrying on;
I feel awfully heavy.

I am here to speak my truth,
The kind of truth that twists and turns in my stomach,
like clay, takes the shape of sharp multilateral knives,
cuts my flesh,
The kind of truth that erupts like a volcano,
explosions of acid in my being,
burning in my throat,
chokes my need to say “ignorance is bliss!”

The kind of truth that bleeds through hopes,
leaves tire-track prints through my sleepless nights
of following news reports,
weaves into my dreams,
and manifests into nightmares of strangers asking for mercy,
The kind of truth that is triggered like a roadside bomb,
for before I could answer “Where is their vote?”
I ended up asking, “Where are their bodies?”

I am here to speak my truth,
and the guilty may walk free today
but not for long
and in the meantime,
I pace up and down for justice,
like the mothers outside Evin 209,
pace frantically, desperate to hear from their innocent children.

But just because I am waiting,
does not mean I will remain silent,
for I am going to shout,
I will shout the truth until someone hears me,
I will paint the picture of you: the guilty,
until you are identified,
I will point you out until they unmask you,
I will write, speak, shout, cry, even scream,
defend my truth with every fiber of my being.
You cannot stop me!
I am going to grow bigger and bigger- like a dying star
ready to explode.
I will spread the truth,
until the world is forced to open their eyes,
until the world can no longer shake hands with you,
without being guilty!

This stage is my court of law,
I represent one of many, One too many
I am just one from thousands and thousands and thousands

They say that when the atom bomb was dropped,
those who lived even kilometers away suffered the same,

At times vicarious vision can be blinding.

I am a witness;
I witnessed,
my mother and father,
they were blindfolded witnesses,
in black execution fabrics,
and the scare tack ticks of 1980’s,
lying in coffin boxes,
their prison stories printed in the back of my eyelids.

I witnessed,
my mother, refusing to mourn the fetus you killed under torture while she was in prison,
because she didn’t want to seem weak,
only that now that unborn baby,
is haunting us in romantic reveries.

I witnessed,
my mother clutching to her womb,
trying to protect me,
as they beat her,
didn’t allow her to bathe, to eat, to sleep,
she didn’t want to lose me,

prison terms are not passed on through genes

But How free is the child of a prisoner?

I witnessed,
the Iran that the regime of the Islamic Republic created.

And I would like to think,
that YOU and I do not originate from the same earth!
That you and I do not originate from the same earth!
I would like to think, that the blood that runs through me,
the humanity that makes me flesh makes you a monster!

At the age of 6,
my parents were taken into interrogation
because I broke into a revolutionary song,
in the back of a public bus,
from Karaj to Tehran,
singing:
“Sar Oomad Zemestoon, She gofteh baharoon”
While my parents were in custody,
I was taken into a back room,
questioned about the company we keep,
about the songs we sing and the meetings we hold.
In a country where child execution is legal,
child interrogation is not even a human rights violation.
At the young age of 6,
I learned that I really didn’t have
some 25 uncles and 33 aunts and 55 cousins and so on…
I confess; I gave away more information
than my parents would under torture,
and my guilt grew like a parasitic worm
inside of my belly and began eating me alive.
But YOU are the guilty one!

You kicked your boots into my father’s face
and broke his jaw bones and though he never once complains about the 18months he nearly starved to death,
his tilted stern expression when I fix his tie in the mornings,
his permanent disfiguration,
reminds me that YOU walk unpunished
and he walks with history written on his body.

I have witnessed,
refugee homes and running away and hiding at the age of 9
and displaced hearts and living in exile
and being without uncles and aunts and grandparents
and mother tongues
and even in a free land
still being fearful because of the threat of your trigger!
For you have killed many of us while in refuge.

I will NOT let my unborn babies carry your guilt on their shoulders.
My memories,
the knowledge of my parent’s failed revolution,
should not be their burden and travesty,
so even if you walk free today,
don’t forget to remember
that I will keep on shouting and shouting,
someone will hear me;
the blind will begin to see the picture I am painting.
And when my babies are born,
I know which way the pendulum of history will swing.
YOUR time is ending!

Cklara Moradian taking a picture with surviving Prisoners of conscious under the Islamic Republic. All beautiful strong people who really inspire me and my writing:)

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These Hands

(The Text and Video of My Spoken Word Piece for UNITED4IRAN, Global Day Of Solidarity With Iran JULY 25, 2009)

THE FANTASTIC MAZ JOBRANI INTRODUCES ME TO PERFORM MY PIECE “THESE HANDS” –UCLA

These Hands

By: Cklara Moradian

July 25^th

^{UCLA Global Day of Action for Iran-First performed in front of 5000+people}

( This piece is a performance piece and should be read out loud.)

Shhhhh…she whispered through the crack in the wall

Listen!

Do you hear me?

I am still here!

I am still here!

Do you hear?

She stretched her hands outside…

Less than 5 minutes-

that’s all the time MY hands have- to tell YOU what those hands told ME

Less than 4 minutes and 30 seconds for me to convey to you that this girl, in her 20’s, did not make it home,

she left that morning, reassuring her worried mother- in Farsi-that she would be alright:

“na maman joon, I will not get close to University, the students have barricaded themselves inside, the basij are everywhere.”

Her only crime was to pass by the wrong motorcycle at the wrong time, her beauty vibrant and her rebellion intoxicating-

She disappeared; her shawl was left by the curb side.

15 days later her worried sick father received an anonymous phone call that her daughter has “a moral problem” and her nearly unconscious body can be found among the thousands of others in the hospital…

Less than 3 and ½ minutes left for my hands to tell YOU what her hands told me:

Do you hear me?

I am still here…

she said:

These hands are a 20 kms long protest–

These hands locked in thousands of other hands, make human chains,

No they can’t beat us- These hands are protection

Unbreakable, unlike the bars of the prisons they lock us in

These hands grip the torch of victory-

to the Olympic of equality- maybe even to a soccer game

These hands with lines, callused, cut, bruised are a million strong

These hands are the silent march until dawn

These hands are the loud cries- barely heard, barely voiced- on the flat rooftops of homes

These hands are breaking the deafening tone of screeching cries

These hands are seeking light

These hands are carrying the fire of Zarathustra

-ancestry, history, legacy, mystic poetry, beating drums

These hands are rising from the ashes of our parent’s disappointed revolution

Disillusioned votes, movements, university meetings, beatings, war-time memories and lost hopes

These hands are the phoenix -rising from the incinerated past of our grandfather’s basements

These hands are the growing seed from our mothers’ stillborn children

I am here!

I am here!

She whispered, whimpered, cried, screamed, shouted:

I am here!

These hands are rising; rising from the ashes of the bodies they’ve burned

Dumped in the desert, unidentified

Rising from the graveyard where mothers in black walk every Friday with pictures of their children hanging around their necks

These hands are rising from the morgues where there is no more room for death; they’ve arbitrarily filled it with bodies, bodies, bodies,

rising from the stadiums, turned into detention facilities

rising from students who are kicked out, locked up, sent out, exiled for intellectual debate

rising from beaten journalists, professors,

shut down papers and magazines

rising from the foul smell of destroyed photographs, tapes

rising from false confessions and shattered dignities

rising from Evin 209 and Gohardasht- from the massacre of ’88

rising from public executions of children in town squares

rising from violent assault by the basij, revolutionary guards,

by boys in plain clothes who are on Afghan narcotics

rising from tears streaming down, strolling through tear gas, bombarded by white phosphate

rising from carrying the shame and fear of rape,

rising from the 29 days late phone call to our mothers after we’ve been shot

rising from being hospitalized with torn torsos and ripped thighs

rising from toleration for moral police and moral codes,

rising from the assault on the humanity of men-women-children-young and old

rising from the perversion of clerical authority

rising from the iron grip of holy scriptures,

rising from intimidation and scare tactics,

rising from only ONE single color to embrace the full picture

rising into action verbs, collaborated civil disobedience

I am here!

I am here!

There is no question, or debate, it was not a democratic election

These hands are rising from sedation, apathy, cynical submission

These hands are rising, waking from a our slumber

It’s been too long, 10 years since 1999, but we’re rising.

These hands cannot accept that a woman is half of a man

If witness to a crime,

These hands cannot accept being stoned

These hands cannot accept stoning,

barbaric laws of flogging, long hours of no food, solitude,

watching loved ones being tortured for simply speaking, writing, singing, drinking

These hands cannot accept a minority’s second rate position

These hands are rising, grassroots, door to door, petition by petition

These hands are willing to carry dirt

These hands are willing to work for freedom

These hands are not products- manufactured- sold or bought

These hands will not stand to be dismissed during negotiations

And are not formed by any western nations

I am here!

I am here!

These hands were born out of discontent, rising to take a breath- inhale! Exhale!

These hands are ready to sing again, to dance again, to write again, to create again to rebuild again…

Can YOU hear me?

My name appears first where it says Poets

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"A Tortured Cliché, A Fragmented Identity"

“A Tortured Cliché, A Fragmented Identity”

By: Cklara Moradian

(Performed at AOW conference at Cal Arts 1/17/09, slightly revised)
VIDEO COMING SOON!

Before I begin-
THIS is my word of warning to you (gesture to the audience):
If you must, please leave, for I am going to tell stories NOT for the weak at heart!
Leave if you must, please
The truth perceived with open eyes is not for the intolerant!
And no, this is not a poetic dramatization, it is no literary formation

My imagination,

the communications of the neurological axons in my foundation

is by NO means this demented or sensational in creation.

This is in fact no more, no less than the truth

(Wait, pause…look at audience)

No one?

You’re all very brave…

Ok then…

(Begin strong)

I am a story!

(Pause a sec, take a long breath, remember, paint a picture, and don’t read)

The year 1984 behind a desolate building, in an unknown Kurdish province

He is taken out of the box by box coffin of his solitary cell for the first time in months.

He is not the only one.

That day he is accompanied by five others, all of whom he has an irrevocable bond with:

His best friend, his mentor, his uncle, his teacher, his childhood neighbor

Line up (Hand behind back)
Alphabetical order
Rank
Political affiliation
Everyone’s eyes are covered with black fabric
But even in the pitch darkness they can all see each other’s and their own fear
(Wait, look at the audience intensely)
In front of them are 6 soldiers
Lined up
Alphabetical order
Rank
Military standing
(pause, look at audience again, stomp your feet with your heels, 6 times, suddenly fall on one knee, head down, slowly look up)

They fell (shocked and horrified look on your face),

They all fell; they ALL fell and were lost

(Softly say) All but one-

In a land where you cannot trust men, you cannot trust that guns will deliver you to an unjust death! (Mockingly)

Five of these political prisoners of conscious were lost so that ONE would feel the execution stand!

Could taste the bitterness of death on his dried lips; hear the sound of his thumping heart “thump”, “thump”, “thump” shout for another moment of life, only to arrive at the realization of loss and despair, only to appreciate the depth, weight, and length of brutality, to understand torture, to succumb to tyranny.

The man who fell but was not lost is- my father- he was shot with an empty gun!

They were hoping it would break his silence and repent his beliefs of freedom.

I have since stood on the execution stand with him and WE shall not bow down to terror.

***

(Move forward, look at audience, wait)

(strong voice)

I am a story!

The year 1987, in a detention center in the Kurdish province, a solitary cell impregnated with the body of a pregnant 18 year old beauty.

The first sounds I heard were those of her shouts as they threw her against the cemented walls of her cell.

The second whispered sounds of her sweet soft lullabies when she was left alone.

The third were of strange men and women speaking in tongue, demanding, for hours, what she would not give away.

The first thing I felt was fear as she was beaten on a long thin wooden board.

The second was worry and I clenched my newly formed fist hoping she could feel she is not alone.

Then, our tears came streaming down only that mine swan within the protection of the ocean of her womb.   

The first thing I tasted was starvation, as she was not fed for days. There was only the vacuum of her apologetic umbilical cord.

The first nightmare I had was her sleep deprived nights, as they bombarded her ear drums with the beating sound of women and young girls being tortured and interrogated.

The second was that of monstrous loudspeakers roaring the Quran for hours on end with no remorse. 

The first light I saw was the bright blinding darkness of being born into shackles.

The first breath I inhaled (inhale) was the pleasant scent of her shit on the floor.

But it was the smell of her strength.

The guards gave her weeks in a tiny cell with no toilet, and she gave back a breathing, fighting, living being by herself.

She is- my mother-a prisoner of conscious. I was a fetus, nourished and formed by her tenacity and resilience and swam out of her womb into love.

I have since been conscious with her and together we work for emancipation, for WE will not be tied down to horror.

***

(Move forward, look at audience, wait)

(strong voice)

I am a story!

The year 1992 during the celebrations of Nowroz when everyone was dancing to the Kurdish drums and strings and flouts and were lost in their reveries of possibilities,

Of victorious revolutions,

Of the end to humiliations,

The end of mass executions,

The end to annihilation,

(Emotional, tearful, childlike)

HIS filthy hands were penetrating my six-year old being with confusion!

Yes, he was a soldier!

Sent to the region to protect the Kurdish borders from intruders; he was only there to intrude on our serenity. Behind my grandfather’s house he parted my thighs and ripped apart innocence and brilliance from my childhood, rubbed himself on the shattering pieces of my sanity, just as years later I cut myself with the broken pieces of my disgust.

His inhumanity was empowered that much more by his uniform of authority. His rifle, the same size as my entire body, ripped apart my delicate colorful dress, my nakedness exposed to brutality.  

When I was left for dead and found by family, I was told to never speak. Cruelty like that was better left unsaid.

Fear forced silence on me for years, the same way HE forced his body on my youth.

Self-censorship is a lethal weapon of the patriarchal society.

The same silence that molested me IS the reason why little nine year old Kurdish village girls are still circumcised so that their future husbands can be confident in their manhood and not fear infidelity.

It is these traditions of taboo, the self imposed silence about crimes against humanity, it is the sealed lips that perpetuates the cycle that continues to infiltrate the thighs of other five, six, seven, twelve year old innocent Kurdish girls and WE want to say, what we were not able to say then, we want to shout:

 (scream)“STOP”-

(softly, crying now) “Noooo more!”
(LOUD and PROUD, LOOK PEOPLE IN THE EYE)

I am a story but I am NO one’s victim! I had to stitch up the scars you carved on me but I will not remain in submission to this trauma and tragedy.

No more… I choose to heal, I am the voice of the silenced, and I rise above!

****

(Move forward, look at audience, wait)

(strong voice)

I am a story!  

The year 1996, a Kurdish family of four is on the run NOT towards the safety of home but from the threat of death from the house they called home.

Four suitcases, four coats on their fragile bodies, they take with them nostalgia and the promise of no return.

Why? Because they asked for equality!

I had a doll with hollow crystal blue eyes wearing a pink polyester dress. She recited the English alphabet; she must have been royalty. She did not fit into the suitcase. She was left behind.

I had a best friend with deep almond eyes; I didn’t have time to say goodbye to her as I did with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the playground where I was first forced to abandon my mother tongue.

In my nine year old mind, having to seek asylum from my own home seemed strange, but this is the story of crossing arbitrary borders drawn by the white men of history.  

We ran. We ran. And we ran the distance.

I am still running for home.
***

(Move forward, look at audience, wait)
(strong voice)
I am a story!
The year 1997 in a United Nations refugee camp outside of Turkey, there are no watch dogs to watch the dogs.

Still born babies are fed to the hungry German shepherds, as morality is eaten up by inhumanity. “Humanitarian aids” ask for flesh in exchange for bread. A twelve-year old girl is sent by her own father to line up and offer herself to savage beasts so that her little brother does not die of hunger at night.

Is this asylum from brutality?  

The cargo ship that brought them there remains afloat. Men, women and children sow their lips together in protest.

Hunger strikes and self imposed silence does not bring mercy.

Deportees cut their own fingertips off to avoid recognition by fingerprint.

Perhaps, on this earth, purgatory is better than the hell they come from.  

The NATO guards do not know my name; they know me by my geographical region number.

I am just a case.

Snow to my ankles; I am given only one pair of boots.

I have been taught compassion by the bedtime stories of the heroic acts of my father and mother and their dreams for redemption.

No one warned me that empathy is a foreign and dangerous concept in an environment where life is hanging by a thin string.

Once upon a time, I gave my boots away to my first love. Her pair of boots was stolen by a coward. For nine and half hours the sorrow froze in my feet as the blood could not circulate. I became a child again and could no longer feel the world weigh down on my knees.  
I have since given away my shoes and walked barefoot for compassion, and do not seek asylum in the protection of plastic boots. (take shoes off)
***

(Move forward, look at audience, wait)

(strong voice)

I am a story!
The year 2003 the safety of a Los Angeles air-conditioned room and feather blankets, the physical threads of genocide a distant surreal memory by now but the immediate threat of emotional demons have awakened.

“Why did I survive and others didn’t?”

“Why do I get to eat and others are starving to death?”

My own self imposed survivor’s guilt putting me in interrogation rooms similar to those founded by the Bush administration; they’re invisible to the naked eye.

And so time passed by but the wounds only grew deeper. I got older but the stories didn’t.

It was in the safety of central heaters and abundance of material possessions that the gravity of the aftermath of these stories weighed me down.

When I realized I did not care about football games and prom night and could not relate to capitalistic notions of success, when I realized I had been fighting a war I did not start and was collateral damage of imperialism, when I began comprehending that *I* had to clean up the bloodshed, well… I became paralyzed.

The irony is that it was in safety when I first felt threatened.

So one day in a highly competitive class for over achievers, all seeking the American dream, I was asked by my instructor:

“Where are you from?”
I boldly answered, “Kurdistan!”
I was asked again “Where?”
As I explained my history he said “Oh, that’s not a country, you’re Iranian so you’re Persian, ok.” And he moved on.
I learned then that perpetration does not end, degrees change.

I  AM a denied identity, but I am NOT what you want me to be,

what you have imposed on me,

all these binary labels you want to sow on me,

all these false categorizations, pre-conceived notions,

all your demonizing intellectualizations,

psycho-analytic perceptions,

all your stereotypes, minority exploitations, all these unfitting observations

No, I am NOT your image of a savage, uncivilized, nomadic population-

I am Kurdish passion!

Do not underestimate my history or the potential of my pent up energy,

the power of my knowledge and creativity

can be the next Renaissance, enlightenment, revolution

Do not continue living with the notion

that your systematic institutionalization

is somehow not subject to abdication!

Pay attention!

Let me propose the concept of free equal education

to empower my raped but surviving generation

Let me propose that the eradication

of divine intervention

IS the road to emancipation!

Let me propose that progression

is NOT an abstract concept of youthful imagination

Do not remain under the idiotic apprehension

that the Kurds will not overcome oppression

or will eventually accept brutality in some passive form of submission.
We do not feel threatened by your intimidations

and will not become subject to your limitations
Dictators and tyrannical systems of enforcement- in fact the Roman Empire- also fell through due to its acts against human compassion.
Let me suggest that this globalized, monopolized, idea of capital domination
is the root of this syndrome of apathy and disconnection.
(Read all together the following):

You call censorship, trust in media fabrications, animal extinctions, environmental resource eradication, uprooting of ethical foundations, this era of information, technology ruling, corporate domination, pornography, bailing out fat wall street mansions, the bankruptcy of intellectuals, bookstores, and independent stations, silent genocides through drug addictions, child labor and exploitation of women in third world society- A civilization?
Let me clarify that I am NOT a single entity that can be check marked into a box on a college application
To become a white collar slave to loans until the end of my philosophical habitation
I am a story, I am resistance, I am the new Kurdish generation for liberation.
I am a movement; a force.
Do not underestimate, under appreciate, or undermine me!
I am the beating drums of freedom.
(change of tone)
Let’s torture a cliché, shall we?
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!”

Or does it?
Perhaps it makes you taunted, wretched, twisted, forgotten- haunted
I don’t know, insane? Alien in your own skin, believe in sin?
I am a story!
No, this was not a glorification of my person
This was only an observation
These were stories of collective women. Not just mine.
I might be tortured but in fact I am no cliché. Like the Kurds I am fragmented, but I am a complete identity deserving of a nation!

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