I Have Not Found the Key

Translated by Saba Vasefi

Do you remember me?

I am the mourning mother

who is left alone on the island of ignorance.

Like a wounded crow

I was bleeding

scratching the soil

to find a grave

for my son's stateless corpse.

I’m the mourning mother

who took her 20 and six-year-old sons

and our bag of hope,

escaped secretly from Iran

to overcome injustice

and resist our rightless life.

But I have not found a key

for the lock of captivity.

We sat on a fishing boat.

When the salty water

and spiky wind

were splashing our faces.

I held my sons

between wings of hope

to keep them warm

within the arm of longing.

We arrived on the shore

of the torture house of Nauru

where life started to rot

like meat.

I requested assistance,

asked for help

begged for aid

wished for at least an upgrade to our tent

but each time silence was the only answer.

My 26-year-old son,

an athlete

a dentistry student,

had his last breaths in the mouldy government tents,

closed his beautiful eyes to injustice

under deadly heat.

Even death did not save him from cruelty.

I was powerless to bury him

entrust him to eternal peace.

They kept a young corpse in the fridge

for 26 days,

inside a container

near a place I was living.

To find the cause of death

To detect the killer.

For more than four months

his lifeless body

remained in a fridge in Brisbane.

They didn’t permit a burial

as his dead body 

was still a stateless number.

They ripped his body

without my consent.

Four years passed,

I still do not have the autopsy result

they did not smell blood on their hands.

In the camp, I became a number

in the court, I remained a number

I always said if any harm befell my children,

I would not remain silent.

Where hope does not exist

the pen can stitch us to life.

I write not as a number

or a woman defeated  

but in resistance.