Pedestrian

It is not just thugs like Mortazavi who leave, but brilliant poets, artists and scientists. Each goodbye is melancholy. It is mourning and departure. Who knows if there will ever be another greeting?

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Maybe the travelers in Imam Khomeini International Airport did not know that the poet of “In Neishabour Garden Alleys” was forced to pack his bags and leave on the fateful trip which he had been avoiding for years because he could not longer endure what was going on around him.

Last Thursday, Dr. Mohammad Reza Shafii Kadkani, renowned poet and academic, left Iran for the United States to begin a new chapter in the midst of the seventh decade of his life. But there is no doubt that the empty seat of the Dr. will remain empty for years at the University of Tehran and the students will look back with regret to the days that passed in haste. There is no  doubt that Shafii Kadkani was, for the cultural community in Iran, much more valuable than what some may think. Even though there were no reporters or photographers at the airport to document his departure, and there was no one there to say farewell, except for his family.

He is leaving for an invitation to teach at Princeton University. He is not the first prominent professor to prefer a life abroad to one at home. But he is the last of the generation of golden professors who could no longer bear to stay. Perhaps he can be considered the most important professor to leave Iranian universities.

From Donyay-e Eghtesad.

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Here’s a translation of one of his poems from the the book “In Neishabour Garden Alleys” published in 1979.

“Where are you rushing to?”
Asked the goat’s-thorn of the breeze

“Don’t you want to take a trip away
From the dust of this wilderness?”

-”I am all desire, but,
No hope, since I am shackled here”

“Where are you rushing to?”
“to any better home than this home”

“Have a safe trip, but, for the sake of our friendship,
and for God’s sake,
When you have safely passed this fearsome desert,
Give the blossoms, give the rain,
Our regards”

From Persian Literature