When you speak of purging gender apartheid
Bear in mind mixing public places would invite
Sexual harassment of anything female that moves
As it was done by men and boys under the Shah.

Their smut ran through sun-soaked streets of Tehran
Group catcalls to women, girls and grandmothers
Brought me a loathing I should have lived without
I wonder how will tomorrow be any brighter.

Boys gathered on street corners, hung out
At all-girls high school entrances
For lewd remarks and spastic gestures
That ripped me like razor blade in open eye.

In the men-filled darkness of cinemas
Screams of girls subjected to invasive touch
By descendents of Cyrus was too much
Blow buried in graves stoned in my mind.

On the cramped buses, groping of girls’ breasts
And buttocks went on like a gangrene
Eating away at nation’s “grandeur“ routine
And made me lean on the air for support.

We were told to simply ignore these molesters
Who were always lechers and thugs, amazingly
Never our brothers, husbands or fathers. Our own
men "too sweet" to make mischief in any crowd zone.

No law to shield us, our protest deemed vulgar
Blades of blame pointed at our short skirts
Our makeup or curves of our bodies at fault
I wonder how will tomorrow be any brighter.

"Don’t let Westerners find out of this place
Of shame, this plague our countrymen inflict
upon us. Swallow all up and point
Fingers at colonisers and the CIA."

After the Blunder 1979, male tormenters cleared up
The streets for the Islamic police to jump in instead
To bother women and girls for showing strands of hair
Gender harassment replaced sexual harassment indeed.

Only at least, wrapped women thrown to the back seats
Of buses and halls feel safe from unwanted touch
Although your sons harass my daughters as soon as
The Morality Police get more lenient and such.

I wonder how will tomorrow be any brighter
When women have to invent women-only taxis
Driven by women drivers to shun men’s filth
In the land of rose and nightingale that cradled me.

I wonder how will tomorrow be any brighter!

2008, Azadeh Azad