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SPEAKER_01: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Encyclopedia Wamanica. Our local legend today is an award-winning poet who used verse to fight injustice. Known as the Lioness of Iran, let's talk about Simeen Behbihani. Simeen Bar Khalili was born in 1927 in Tehran. A love of poetry ran in her family. It was also the force that brought her parents together. Simeen's mother submitted a poem to a magazine edited by her father, Abbas Khalili, a translator and poet. Abbas was so taken by the writing that he proclaimed he wished to marry the author, and he did. Just three days after their wedding, Abbas was exiled for articles he'd written challenging the ruling dynasty in Iran. His conflicts with the regime caused him to be largely absent during Simeen's childhood. Abbas did not meet Simeen until she was 14 months old and then didn't see her again until she was 11. As a result of his prolonged absences, the marriage deteriorated. Simeen's parents divorced when she was just three years old. Simeen was then raised by her mother and stepfather, another journalist who continued to instill in her a love for literature and poetry. Simeen started writing her own poems at age 12 and by 14 had her first poem published in a literary journal. As a teenager, Simeen was a member of the youth branch of the Iranian Communist Party. That fact and allegations that she wrote articles criticizing her school in the student paper led to Simeen's expulsion from school. Looking back on the experience, she said the school president had insulted her and slapped her. She said, from that time, the purpose of my poetry has been to fight injustice. Simeen then enrolled in midwifery school and later pursued a law degree, although she never professionally used it. For most of her career, over 20 years, she taught high school physics, chemistry, and literature. In 1947, Simeen met and married Hassan Behpahani, an English teacher. Together they had three children, two sons, and a daughter. The two were married for 22 years before divorcing in 1969. Simeen remarried the following year but was widowed 14 years later. She chronicled the pain of losing her second husband in her poem, That Man, My Fellow Companion. While Simeen's poetry had always been flavored with social commentary, her work took on a new social consciousness after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent Iran-Iraq War. One unique feature of Simeen's poetry was her reinterpretation of the ghazal form. These traditional sonnet-like poems customarily featured a Persian man admiring a woman. But Simeen played with these gender dynamics, placing a woman as protagonist, gazing upon a wide variety of subjects, including war, self-determination, and the human rights abuses of the Iranian regime. She was criticized by hardline Iranian news sites as unpatriotic, calling her poetry slanderous in a way that could only benefit Iran's enemies. But Simeen saw herself as a patriot, insisting that her writings were only ever intended to make Iran better. One of her most celebrated poems, My Country, I Shall Build You Again, written in the midst of the Iraq-Iran War in 1982, is considered a generational anthem. It begins, My country, I will build you again. If need be, with bricks made for my life. I will build columns to support your roof. If need be, with my bones. I will inhale again the perfume of flowers flavored by your youth. I will wash again the blood off your body with torrents of my tears. Simeen continued to be a divisive figure in Iran well into the 2000s. In 2006, a newspaper was shut down by Iranian authorities for merely printing one of her poems. In 2010, when she was 82 years old and nearly blind, she was stopped in the airport and interrogated about poems she'd written the year prior that criticized a fraudulent Iranian election. Despite the backlash she received at home, Simeen was very much a fan of Iranian poetry. Simeen was internationally celebrated for her work as a poet and activist. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999 and in 2002. She was awarded the Human Rights Watch Hellman Hammett Grant which called her the voice of freedom rising against repression everywhere. In 2002, the Encyclopedia Ironica Foundation honored her for the unparalleled beauty of her poetry and lifelong devotion to justice. Simeen passed away on August 18th, 2014 in Tehran. She was 87 years old. Her funeral was attended by thousands, including prominent artists and human rights activists with commemorative celebrations occurring worldwide. Simeen's body of work includes over 600 poems captured in 20 books on subjects ranging from revolution to freedom of speech. She was a fierce critic of Iranian religious authorities and fought tirelessly to advance the rights of women. Farzana Milani, a professor at the University of Virginia who translated many of her poems, said of Simeen, she became the voice of the Iranian people. She was the elegant voice of dissent, of conscience, of nonviolence, of refusal to be ideological. All month, we're talking about local legends. For more on why we're doing what we're doing, check out our newsletter, Womanica Weekly. Find us on Facebook and Instagram, at Encyclopedia Womanica. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow. Before you go, I wanna tell you about another show I think you might like. As a first generation South Asian born here in the US, host Amy Tucker-Raval found a strong desire to connect with South Asian trailblazers around the world, working in a variety of industries. Her podcast, Amy Tuckered Out, tells the story of the South Asian diaspora one interview at a time. They discuss what it was like growing up brown, personal and professional journeys, and the topics they could never talk about in front of those aunties and uncles they grew up with. Listen and subscribe to Amy Tuckered Out wherever you get your podcasts.
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