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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry off the Shelf: Living in And Times

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: This is Poetry Off the Shelf. I’m Helena de Groot. Today, Living in And Times. When I sat down with Sahar Muradi to talk about her latest collection, the first thing I noticed were her big golden earrings. I know talking about a woman’s looks before her work is bad form, but I think in this case it’s justified, because, Sahar, whose native language is Farsi, was wearing earrings in the shape of a letter.

Sahar Muradi: These are golden waw Earrings. waw is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, which is comparable to W and V. But in Farsi it also means “va.” The word “va” means “and.” And sometimes I say I try to live in the “and,” you know, where the multiplicity of things exists.

Helena de Groot: Living in the “and” is also the key to her collection. It’s a collection that she titled OCTOBERS, for a month that has seen the best and the worst events in her life. The US invasion of the her birth country, Afghanistan, in October of 2001, the death of her father, in October of 2016, but also the birth of her daughter, in October of 2018. So you can imagine that for Sahar, October is an emotional month. And to make matters even more intense, we talked just a few days after the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, which is also the 22nd anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. But, at least in the US, that’s rarely remembered.      

Sahar Muradi: It’s always very potent and painful. I feel like sometimes in communities, like even, you know, I’m part of different communities in New York City, like a community garden. And I’m in spaces where on that day there’s a moment of recognition, but there’s not that same moment of recognition for the invasion. You know, we don’t pause on October—I mean, our family will, but it’s just, you know, it’s not. It’s like that is the anniversary that I will also mark. And more so really, because it’s impacted us more.

Helena de Groot: Of course.

Sahar Muradi: I mean, of course, I think it’s, it’s horrific what happened. And I’m deeply saddened for the families who lost loved ones. But it speaks to the way we process history in this country, which is almost like ahistorical. So, you know, there’s this distinction as if it happened in a vacuum and it didn’t have repercussions. So in, actually, in our community garden. One of my fellows there, she’s from Pakistan, and she said, “Maybe you and I can bring this up at a meeting, how we can also mark the October 7th. So I think just that, like, making space for and reminding people. Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. And like, hopefully at a community garden in a city as progressive as New York, one would hope that people are open to that.

Sahar Muradi: Yeah, I mean, the gardens are always like very contentious spaces, too. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) That’s true,

Sahar Muradi: Territorial.

Helena de Groot: progressive people working together, it’s like, Oh my God, is this? (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: No, but they’re a good group. I love my garden. Love you guys.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) For the record.

Sahar Muradi: No, they’re, they’re good folks.

Helena de Groot: I mean, you mentioned that, you know, this country sort of often deals with history, you know, in a rather ahistorical way. But I was wondering, like, how did you grow up with history? Like, was history a big part of the stories that were told or the things that you were taught growing up?

Sahar Muradi: Yes, totally. My father, he was just like a fountain of stories. And that’s really how I connected with him. He loved, I mean, he loved history. And he would tell stories of, like, former rulers. And I’d written one about this king who wore a pair of snakes around his neck like scarves. And but also, he would, like, our home was filled with poetry and story, not so much their own stories, which is what I was after. (LAUGHS) You know, I was like the little reporter like, “Tell me what happened when, you know, like, like about your parents and about your siblings and da da da.” But my father was really interested in history and he had an incredible memory. So he would read things and just then share, you know.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: I want to ask you about the conceit of the book.

Sahar Muradi: Okay.

Helena de Groot: Because writing about your own life is just horrendously difficult. You were there the whole time. There’s a lot. Your memory doesn’t serve always or it’s treacherous. So I’m just wondering, how did you come to this conceit of, let me layer these Octobers.

Sahar Muradi: Yeah. So this poem spans such a number of years that it wasn’t there. Right? Like, the book didn’t exist. I wasn’t—it wasn’t a project that I was working toward. And I was overdoing it. I was trying to make something else work. I was like, you know, a lot of my poems deal with language, like, can I make maybe even a chapbook that sort of somehow features, you know, like, picking poems that really sort of, sort of deal with language in some way and titling it these very long, you know, these long sort of academic sounding titles. And then I thought, you know, that’s not working. That’s not working. And then I started to sequence them sort of by theme a bit, which felt so … trite, you know?

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: I was like, Oh, no! God forbid, I shouldn’t do that, but like, let me just, it made sense. So I put them in these boxes and it was like, okay, these are a lot of poems about my dad, a lot of poems about Afghanistan and really about the war, and then a lot of poems about my daughter. And then it was there. It just like was like, Oh, that’s funny. Right. October, October, October, October. And then it was too obvious. It was so obvious that I was like, I can’t, I can’t do it, I can’t possibly like, how would that look in the literary world where everything has to be so … you know what I mean? It has to like, especially today, I just feel like books are so conceptual and it can’t just be this, like, Octobers can’t be the thread, it’s too obvious. But then actually the literary world told me otherwise because I kept getting rejections for these manuscripts that were not working. Where I was forcing something else. And then I thought, You know what? I need to stay true. Like, this book is not for others. This is really my way of surviving these sort of big experiences and I want to share it, but the most honest way of doing that is categorizing it in this very trite way, which is that all of these imprinting experiences took place in the month of October of different years. So there it is. And when I did that, I felt, I felt relieved, I felt it was true, and I let it go. And ] I guess people responded to that.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. You know, the whole book is structured around these four big upheavals, let’s say. Some of them very sad, like the death of your father or the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. and one of them very happy, the birth of your eldest. The birth of your daughter. And so how do you feel sort of on this like layered cake of like the very, very, the saddest things that have ever happened in your life and the happiest thing that ever happened in your life? I’m assuming.

Sahar Muradi: Yeah. Thank God for those happy things. Yeah, actually, Octobers is changing, you know? I mean, it is a month of change, you know, in the harvest cycle. And I am happy to say that the party for the book will be in October. So there’s another happy memory, hopefully.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: So when it comes up now, I feel like it has a different tenor. It’s not, you know, it’s, I think when those things were happening, when like my father passed, that first, second, up to the, you know, even the fifth anniversary, it was very, it was it was very hard. And I would sometimes tell friends, “I’m hibernating for the month. You know, I’ll see you in November.” But now it’s yeah, it’s a light with different things and a lot of beauty. And yeah, I take solace in time, you know, like that time passes. Thank God for that. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Yeah. That’s also what I liked about your book. It sort of invites the reader to layer their own life and to see if there are moments that can sort of be superimposed and that you can sort of see connections between very happy moments and very sad moments in a way that kind of allows you to see like that all that is life, you know? At least that’s how I felt reading your book. Like it gave me another way to look at life. And not in this scary, like onward march always. You know? Where like, every day you’re closer to death. Like, that’s not a nice thing to think about. (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: Yeah, exactly that. That layering. Yeah, that it’s all. It’s really all such a gift. You know, even the pain. I mean, you know, we say things like, “Oh, it makes you stronger,” like going through that. But there is something to be said for, for all that. Like the fact that as people we get to have so many feelings, you know, we—and, you know, I’m not the best at navigating my own feelings. You know, I want them to pass if they’re painful. But the fact that I can experience that depth of sadness or grief, I mean, that’s what it means to be alive. And I think in my darkest hours, I do, you know, like with the loss of my father, because that really just, it was so utterly devastating, even though he was sick and I knew it was coming. But just because of the figure he was, it was just so almost unsurvivable that I think the one little hair that was, it was like, wow, it really, this is how much I loved him. And didn’t know him. And was, you know, so it was such a complicated relationship. But there’s something so beautiful to, to the depth with which we can feel and love someone and be hurt by them or, you know, that’s what it’s, that’s what makes life so exquisite, I guess.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Could I ask you about your father’s death?

Sahar Muradi: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: You tell me what you want to say. And also, if you say it and you’re like, “Actually, can you take that out,” like, you’re in charge.

Sahar Muradi: Okay.

Helena de Groot: But I’m just wondering, so this was seven years ago. Where were you in your life? Like, what were you doing? And then how long was your dad ill for? And how did that sort of impact your life?

Sahar Muradi: So that summer, my partner and I went on this wild round the world trip by train. It was like an 80 days around the world, but I mean, just from Uzbekistan to Myanmar, Burma. It was something to do before, you know, we were hoping to start a family. And so it was sort of that last thing. And my father was, had been ill. So in 2004, he had been stricken by esophageal cancer and the prognosis was not good. And at that time, I was in Afghanistan. I was working. I went back as an adult. And once that happened, I returned home for some time. And then miraculously, he was able to recover. They did this surgery and he suddenly had a second chance. And so it was on the eve of my wedding to my partner that I found out the cancer had resurfaced, and now in his stomach. And that was 2014. So two years before he passed. You know, so you’re just, you live in anticipation of a phone call. You live in anticipation. You know, it’s just this, you’re teetering the whole time. And so we didn’t even want to make the trip because we thought, you know, it might, would we leave if something were to happen? But at the same time, it was almost like an homage to him and his love of history. So we were like, we’re going to Uzbekistan because, you know, my father would tell all the time about this beautiful city, Samarkand, in Bukhara. And like the, you know, how literature and poetry were just like, you know, alight in the courts there, and the landscapes. And that also there was, you know, I was so excited to go to another country where my native language or, you know, a version of it was spoken. So I went there thinking like, even though I can’t go with you, I’m going almost for you. So we went and we were in Southeast Asia, I think. Yeah, we were already in Burma, Myanmar, like just towards the end of the trip, like day 70, you know, in the seventies somewhere. And then I just got an email from my sister saying, you know, “It’s not looking good, you should come back.” So we flew there and we didn’t tell him, and he opened the door and, you know (WHOOSH), like such joy, you know. Like my father just erupting in joy, like, “

What are you, you’re here in the flesh!” It was just like such a beautiful moment. And we had a couple of days. I got to see him for that weekend, and we had a lovely time. And I was showing him pictures and like, “Here’s the tomb of Amir Shah. Here’s the beautiful mud brick walls encircling Bukhara.” Just the things that he had, you know, told me about. And then two days later, on October 16th, we got the call that he’s in, he’s been admitted to the hospital. “Come quick.”

(MUSIC PLAYING)

So it was incredible because I got to be there. I got to see him one last time. And my last memory of him, which was also very tender, was just him kissing us on the forehead, which is a traditional way of parents and elders showing love to their, to their young ones. So, that was really beautiful. Yeah. And then I was left alone in the room with him after, you know, his body had now changed. And he wasn’t there. He was there and he wasn’t there. And I spent about two hours just talking at him and, like, trying to, yeah, just saying some things that I’d been carrying for a long time.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: I want to get to a poem. And you mentioned it a few times and it was like the poem that (PAUSES) obsessed me in your book, honestly, it is that poem “Facsimile.” It is very, very, very long. And so I’m wondering if we can, like, break it up somehow, and that you can talk in between. I’m happy to suggest spots.

Sahar Muradi: Okay.

Helena de Groot: And I thought maybe we could start and read the first two pages.

Sahar Muradi: Okay.

Helena de Groot: And maybe just give us a little bit of an onramp. Like what is something that you would want a listener to know before you start reading the poem?

Sahar Muradi: Mm. Sure. So I’ll say that the piece alternates in voice between a narrative voice, which is in third person, and then a direct address to my father. And the direct address is more poetic and actually is taken from journals that I had written in the aftermath of his death. So you’ll hear a bit of that shift back and forth, almost like a dialogue.

Helena de Groot: Right.

Sahar Muradi:

(READS EXCERPT)

Facsimile

My father was an idea from Afghanistan. From Kabul. From Chindawol. Home of the Qizilbash. The red-hatted. The Crimson-crowned. A balloon in twelve parts. One for each imam.

In my mind,

I trace your bony cheek.

Two bumps of earlobe.

God is as close

as the soft of the ear.

Photographs erupt:

The long space

in my eyes.

Had I known them. Or how to lay my head on the stone. To drop my arms at my side in prayer. Had I known how they’d wash his body. Or that only the men could carry him. Or how to wail like a good woman. How to answer when they said “zindagi saret bashad.” May life keep over you.

I rubbed your feet

under the sky blue blanket.

Six blankets.

The oval of your mouth,

drying.

We took turns.

The yellow sponge.

Your teeth

in the styrofoam

cup.

Wouldn’t it have been different if I were not in these un-United States? If family were not marbles scattered. If I hadn’t grown up so far from the community. A community. So lacking of a net, that I mirrored my father in his interiority, in his unsettledness and his own being. Wouldn’t it have been entirely different had we remained in Afghanistan? In so many ways, of course. And yet, somehow, we wouldn’t have lost so much less? Wasn’t that what he was always saying, circling the wormhole of his regrets?

His regrets coupled with romance the way exile courts imagination. What could have been. What should have. And shadows the present. On if only’s he raised a family.

You that what?

That once?

That long?

That should forever?

You what?

You—my.

Irrelevant—all.

I keep coming back.

Faithfully.

To empty.

Had he not left Kabul. Had he not left New York. Had he not worked like a dog. Had they not left us long hours to work like dogs. Had we spoken right, dressed right. Had we not left for school. Had we returned home. Had we married right. Had he not smoked, drank, gambled, faced Qibla so late in life. Had we ever faced Qibla.

Had he not wished into the vacuum of his own father. Had his father touched him except with the back of his hand. Had he not worked for his father. Had he not worked for him for free. Had he not watched his father bring women to the house. Had he not watched his mother draw them baths and serve them tea. Had he himself, with his beautiful bride, not frantically checked behind the doors of their new home. Had he not left his home to squeeze into the trunk of a Volkswagen in the dead of night. Had he not crossed so many borders to freedom. Had freedom not meant becoming a dog to new masters.

“Why do we blush before death?”

Trauma is a door simultaneously open and shut.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. The first thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, this, this part is so full of compassion for your father. And full of compassion for the hardships he faced. You know, how hard he worked, how humiliating that was in this new country. How tough his own upbringing, you know, the violence of his father, the way that his father, I think, again, humiliated his mother, you know, by bringing these other women home. And I’m wondering about that compassion, you know, like, is that something that you felt always, or is that something that you came to later in life? And if so, how? How did you start understanding that he was the way he was because of things that happened to him also?

Sahar Muradi: Mm. That’s a good question. I think as a young person, I didn’t know—my parents worked a lot. And I didn’t see them a lot. And like a lot of new immigrant families, you know, they were just trying to make it, and when he came home, he was exhausted and would just sort of sit in front of the TV. So, as a young person, what I felt is like, this person is unavailable to me. And I, you know, I didn’t know why that was, but I knew that there was something. And sometimes I think, you know, as young people, especially if you don’t have the tools, then you think, “Is it something I’ve done?” So there was a lot of trying to, you know, get the attention or get approval or, you know. Like we came together on school projects, you know, like, “Can you help me glue this thing together?” I remember, you know, he loved making kites, actually, which is, you know, tradition, as a lot of people know, in Afghanistan. And so I would do that with him. And for this one project, ironically, it was like, patriotic poems in the sixth grade. And we made like a red, white, and blue flag. I look—

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: Yeah, I know. Can you believe it?

Helena de Groot: And he humored you, without comment, or he did comment?

Sahar Muradi: No, he was, like, proud to do it! Like, even though, yeah, I mean, I talk about how he, you know, it’s, you know, it’s, the United States has not been particularly kind to him in many ways. But no, he also was, yeah, well, he was like, “We’re going to show him a kite.”

Helena de Groot: Right, like, “We know about kites.”

Sahar Muradi: Yeah. And it was frickin’ beautiful, like, just, you know, with the bamboo and the

red, white, and blue tissue paper, and I can’t remember what the poem said, but. Anyway, so I, I found these ways of connecting to him. But I think the empathy really came later because it took me so many years to understand and unpack, you know, what had happened. And he did, you know, he did share, like, as I said, like I would ask him a lot of questions and he would share about what he’d gone through. But it took me a long time to piece everything together. And I think, especially now as an adult, as a parent, I have even more empathy for how he was able to, I mean, he really just did the best he could. They both did.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sahar Muradi: Yeah. I mean, I just want to say like, this is one part of my life, and he is one part and one aspect, and then even in the book. So I—he is absolutely a big force in my life, but he’s also not the only force. And I think especially as writers who are writing from a diasporic perspective, I think sometimes when we enter the territory of writing about family or, you know, in the past, it’s always happened with food or other things. There’s this kind of like pigeonholing or sort of stereotyping or expectation about how we write about certain topics. So, I also want to tread lightly, like, carefully here and say that what I find interesting about—or meaningful to me about writing through this relationship and experiences is about the unknowability of someone. You know? And here it happens to be my father. And it is definitely colored by these historical experiences. But, I’m interested in that, you know? That I, if there’s someone in your life that, you know, is so beloved but is also so unreachable and, and how do you, how do you navigate that? How do you, um, you know what I mean?

Helena de Groot: Totally.

Sahar Muradi: Like, I mean, we’re all unknowable to each other to some degree, but when it’s someone you really want to near, it can be very painful.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sahar Muradi: So that’s the part that is the interesting part to me.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. And I think parents have this unique way of being unknowable, because I think for the biggest part of our life, their role sort of obscures who they are as people sometimes. Right? Like maybe they are, if you would just meet them as a friend or something, they might be just the most fabulous people, right? Interesting, charismatic, knowledgeable, funny. Maybe they’re not the best parents, though?

Sahar Muradi: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: And so, like, as a child, you kind of, that’s what you notice and that’s what impacts you, and that’s what will send you to therapy.

Sahar Muradi: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: But like, you know what I mean?

Sahar Muradi: Yes.

Helena de Groot: Like often it takes us so long to actually get to know them as people. And then, yeah. So much unknowability stays.

Sahar Muradi: Yes. Yes. I mean, I didn’t know my parents were children,

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: like, I couldn’t comprehend that! I think a lot of us, you know, can’t imagine it.

Helena de Groot: Totally!

Sahar Muradi: But I also didn’t have evidence of it. We didn’t have photographs. We couldn’t leave with photographs. So it wasn’t until college that I saw photographs of my mother as a young person, as a child, and I thought—like it was so jarring and incredible to me, you know, to see her face, shrunk

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: like, tiny, like, familiar and suddenly, she, yeah, she multiplied in my, in my eyes, you know, I was like, “Oh, wow. She was this whole other human being.” And even recently, you know, I just got a photograph from my cousin the other day who sent me a picture of my dad in an upstate New York park. We’re trying to figure out where, I think it’s Bear Mountain, on a tandem bicycle with my uncle!

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: I didn’t even know my dad knew how to ride a bike.

Helena de Groot: Oh wow, that’s amazing.

Sahar Muradi: So yeah, like the unpeeling happens.

Helena de Groot: Yes.

Sahar Muradi: So photographs, I mean, that’s why I love, you know, I mean, I turn to this photograph on the cover because we don’t have archives of ourselves. We have a very limited archive. And, I mean, if you, if you see my desk, you know, above my writing desk with shelves and a good chunk of it is just like these color photo copies of photos that different family have shown me over the years, you know, of like my dad’s arrival in New York before we came, or like, him in a leather jacket with a cigarette or, just these, you know, just to help me fill in what I, I didn’t know.

Helena de Groot: Also, parents who were like, I think yours, like mine, were in their twenties in the ’70s?

Sahar Muradi: Yeah, yeah.

Helena de Groot: The best photos. C’mon, the leather jackets, the hairstyles, like the pants.

Sahar Muradi: Oh, my word. Yes.

Helena de Groot: Our kids are going to be so bored with our clothes, you know? (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: I know. And also because we have too many photos,

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sahar Muradi: so it’s not even a special, you know, it’s not as precious.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sahar Muradi: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Okay, let’s. Let’s go to the next part of the poem.

Sahar Muradi: Should we? Okay.

(READS EXCERPT)

It’s true—I saw you shy.

Father had few words. But for history. Ours, that towered, that he declaimed, and in doing, had me at his feet, awing. Bactria. Khorasan. Timurlang. Taking notes, recording his voice. At his feet, making kites. Bowing the bamboo as he glued the tissue paper. Marveling at how he folded the sheet upon itself, cut an almond eye, and revealed a daisy. How he chose his colors: red, black, and green.

He could not name a color I liked.

Today, I am wearing you.

Your peyran, waaskat.

Your traditional

shirt and vest.

The color of khaak.

It is a cold wind at my back.

Constant. A kind of

Draft. Severed

Again.

As if Afghanistan.

Dari.

The stories.

Poetry. As if

every stream of news.

Every mud brick.

Of history (ours).

Is no longer (mine).

Love and fear, our twin occupants. His tender voice, its glassy edges. Persian poetry and Quar’anic verse that fountained of him. Histories and myths that bloomed on his tongue. The hours he disappeared before the television with bottle. His voice pelting at my mother, my brother. The alien parts that commanded all reverence: the pair of knobs at the door of his left ear; his low, cascading eyebrows we’d cut monthly; the ghosted nails of his fifth toes. His growing and rightful tirades against this country that degraded him, that spit on his crooked mouth, his wrong skin and faith. Work that stole his body and steeled his rage.

Today is your birthday.

Your legal birthday.

Not your true calendar.

According to the law.

Which did not accord you

much.

I was seized when he punched the angry cop after the traffic incident, noting that the Soviet army had never conquered him, why should he fear a mere badge.

My wide eyes widened.

And why can’t the image

not be the hospital?

And why couldn’t your mouth close?

That she wrapped you with gauze

—so much white gauze—

and so tightly,

forcefully,

around your chin.

A child

again.

She said custom.

The indignity.

Forcing your body

for the living.

But was it,

just like that?

Had you been

and then suddenly not?

Was that your boat untethered?

Was it you?

Or wasn’t it?

The jaw locking.

Who was it

who wasn’t?

Justice eludes. My father had had only one example from history: Dr. William Brydon, the alleged sole survivor of the Afghan massacre of 16,000 British troops and civilians during the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1842. Bryden was let go to tell the tale of the British defeat. When I was in college, my father had me track down Lady Butler’s “Remnants of an Army,” the 1879 painting of this broken, beaten man on a limping horse. He asked for a large, color photocopy to frame.

He was, again, enigmatic. And my hunger fattened.

I wore you.

To near you.

To approximate the shade of your ear.

I was almost there. Yes,

I was there

in the hollow.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. I want to ask you about language. (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Sahar Muradi: Yay. (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Helena de Groot: Because you said that you came to Dari later in life. Sort of that you really gained an interest, learned to write it also, or?

Sahar Muradi: Yes. So, well, first, I just want to say, I’m going to, like in the book, I refer to it as Dari, and that’s how I refer to it, or have referred to it growing up later in life. But it’s also Farsi. And I need to say that because I think we’re also at a moment in history where people are talking about the naming of this language and why at which point in history was it, you know, the decision was made and by whom to refer to it as Dari because that

Helena de Groot: Is its own political—

Sahar Muradi: Yes.

Helena de Groot: Totally.

Sahar Muradi: And that’s like a very fascinating conversation. But I will just say, so in the book, and also because the name of my son is D-A-R-I also, but,

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sahar Muradi: Anyway, so I, Dari/Farsi, I grew up in it. So I came here when I was three. I—that was my first language. I spoke it. And then I, I was learning English at home before I started to go to school, watching All My Children, I’ll say that.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: And a little bit of Sesame Street.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) Perfect.

Sahar Muradi: Yes. In that order. And then, you know, at some point in elementary school, I started to answer back in English, which is kind of what’s happening with my daughter now.

Helena de Groot: So your parents would talk to you in Dari, and you would reply in English?

Sahar Muradi: Yes. They always talked with me in Dari/Farsi, always. And then, you know, people would make fun of their accent. So I also had a lot of shame. And it took me a long time to embrace the, you know, the fact that we were multilingual or bilingual. And so, in college, I ended up—I was at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts, and I went abroad my third year, and went to Germany and found somebody, a German woman who had spent the ’60s, a year, I believe, in Kabul. And there was a great exchange, you know, I mean, Germany and Afghanistan have a long history of exchange. And she was there as a student, so she was fluent in my native language and I was trying to study German there. So through two lang—you know, like we leapt through another language, but she taught me how to read and write, which was very necessary because my, my parents—oh, I forgot to, I wanted to show you actually I was going to bring, I have all these cards that my dad would, you know, over the years, birthday cards. And he always writes, or, he wrote in Farsi and I couldn’t read them. And he would read—he would give it to me and then he would read it aloud to me.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) Uh-huh.

Sahar Muradi: But then later, it was in college that I could finally start reading them. And that’s what I also mean about the unknowability, you know, somebody who operates entirely in another language. I mean, for him, you know, he read, wrote, thought primarily in Dari/Farsi. So, and then I started to learn in college. And what I love, love, love about our language is how imagistic it is, how playful, how, so, I’m obsessed, obsessed with compound words. A bat is a leather butterfly.

Helena de Groot: What!

Sahar Muradi: Yes! Hello! (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: That is perfect!

Sahar Muradi: Helena, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Let me tell you all the animals. A bat is a leather butterfly. A turtle is a stone frog. A turkey is an elephant chicken or elephant bird.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: It just goes on.

Helena de Groot: Because they have the sort of flap that just hangs here?

Sahar Muradi: Yes.

Helena de Groot: That is amazing.

Sahar Muradi: That like, nasty leather—I forgot what it’s called. And I think that’s the poet part of me that loves these phrases and these images. And, you know, as someone also who tries to raise her daughter, her children in this mother tongue, very imperfectly. But also as a person who’s watching a little, little one grow into language, I also love the imperfections of language. You know, when kids are just learning any language and they make their own kind of funny compound wordplay.

Helena de Groot: Totally.

Sahar Muradi: They’re like jewels.

Helena de Groot: Absolutely.

Sahar Muradi: So I, yeah, I live for all of that.

Helena de Groot: So your husband is South African, right?

Sahar Muradi: My husband is South African, yes. So his first language is Afrikaans. And as a second language, he learned German. So we shared that language in common. Although I’ve forgotten most of my German these days. And then he, when he was courting me, on the sly, he learned Farsi, like, without even telling me. Yeah. Like this man, I gotta say, I mean, that was it. He, when he met my parents for the first time, he said, “Salâm, Muradi. As-salâmo 'alaykom, Muradi.” You know, “Hello, Mrs. Muradi. Hello, Mr. Muradi.” And I just looked over and I was like, “Yeah, he got that from Google Translate.” And he looked at me and he’s like, “No, Sahar, for the past year I’ve been studying your language.”

Helena de Groot: What!

Sahar Muradi: Yes. And then he busts out a card in better Farsi. He’d written to my parents. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: But get this, this is like, this is the kind of family I grew up in. My mom sees the card and goes, “Oh, this is lovely. You spelled these words wrong.”

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: I’m just like,

Helena de Groot: “Thanks, Mom.”

Sahar Muradi: Yeah, I think he was probably like, “Uh, I’m not sure if I want to go through with this.”

Helena de Groot: Wow.

Sahar Muradi: But yeah, he learned, so there was, yeah, I mean, I’m so grateful for that. Unfortunately, at this moment I would say that my daughter’s Farsi has surpassed his.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, I mean, kids, they’re little plastic brains are just unbelievable.

Sahar Muradi: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, exactly. So fast. So. Okay, this is I don’t know if this is a question you relate to, but like, when you wake up first thing in the morning, you haven’t spoken to anyone. What language is inside you?

Sahar Muradi: It’s the language of grunts

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: and annoyance.

Helena de Groot: Universal language.

Sahar Muradi: Yeah. Errr, I don’t want to be awake, what is this.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: Stop crying! Get your own milk! (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: No, I, you know what? I’m so, like, such a frenetic, obsessive thinker that—and that mind is mostly English. So I think I wake up with the list and with the to-do and like the, you know, the regrets. Yeah, I wake up in my English mind. (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Helena de Groot: That is so interesting, because then I, of course, I also wonder about sort of the obverse of that. Right? Like, if English is the language of to-do lists and worries,

Sahar Muradi: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: then what is Dari for you?

Sahar Muradi: Oh, that’s the language of poetry.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sahar Muradi: Yeah. I, you know, I grew up hearing poetry recited at my home, even if I couldn’t understand it, which was the case, because poetry, the poetry that was recited was this, you know, Sufi poetry, like 14th century Hafez.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

Sahar Muradi: That just was so lyrical and beautiful and ungraspable. (LAUGHS) But we grew up with this tradition of—actually, it’s common throughout the region and in diaspora, called Fal-e Hafez, which means using the book as a form of divination.

Helena de Groot: Mm.

Sahar Muradi: So you ask a question and then you open up random to the page, and then you interpret the poem. So my mom was my—she was the reciter and she was also the interpreter.

Helena de Groot: Because you couldn’t read it, like you needed her to.

Sahar Muradi: Yes.

Helena de Groot: Right, right, right.

Sahar Muradi: At that time, I couldn’t read it. And even if I could read it, I could not understand it, because it was like full of, you know, symbols, Sufi symbols, like the eye, the beloved’s eyelashes like arrows, and the, you know, the handsome one as tall as a cypress and the wine, the goblets of wine. And so I was like, “What does this all mean for my question, which is about, am I going to pass my fourth grade math test?”

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) Yeah, or “Does this boy like me back?”

Sahar Muradi: Exactly. Of course, that was a no.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: She was like, “Hafez says,”

Helena de Groot: “Hafez says you are too young.”

Sahar Muradi: Yes. Actually, I was too young until about 30.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

Sahar Muradi: But yeah, but that language, like the poetry flourished. And I think that’s, maybe that’s where I, I, maybe the seed was planted.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Do you want to read the final part of the poem?

Sahar Muradi: Okay. 42. Okay.

(READS EXCERPT)

He—his universe—became the nucleus of my writing. The writing itself a test: how many courses in his alphabet, however haltingly. That he should respond with looseleaf letters and birthday cards inscribed with his free, raw script. Beautiful and illegible. I labored to discern and be revealed to. To near him. In Afghanistan the alphabet-illiterate pay someone to read their letters and documents. In New York, I would do the same.

The family tree.

The table now.

With its missing legs.

The papers.

Your letters I could not—.

Years deciphering.

Our numbers

beginning with cipher.

The oval

of your mouth,

drying.

So many years I waited for those jeweled papers to reveal a question, to ask me something,  specifically about me, my life. About my childhood wall of male artists, my adolescent despair with knife in hand, my short-lived jobs and quick moves. My poetry.

Or had he known I was just a reflecting pool?

The stacks

and stacks

and unfinished

and

your voice

like a harbor.

I leaned to impress. Read the news to recite. Studied our history to repeat. Storied our roots there, our routes here. Collected photographs, conducted interviews, piled out-of-print books. After college, I moved to Afghanistan. Begged that he return with me. Beheld him weep on the plane passing into the airspace, touching the ground. The entire airplane of exiles erupting into tears.

Days with madaar.

Occupying the space together.

And differently.

As if

it’s a single space.

As if

we are singular people.

Decades has eyes darting backwards. When he finally returned to Kabul, the garden was gone. What once was. What might have been. If only. His fingers hung in the air, mid-sentence. Nothing—no one—was recognizable or left or not hungry. His childhood home flattened and squandered by a poor family. Strangers looped his arms and feigned knowing him, for a dollar. The air enflamed his asthma. And he hurried back to Florida. All those years, looking back. Suddenly, at last, he straightened his neck.

He planted flowers, bougainvillea, bright and wild, in the yard.

Tried praying again.

Something of consistency.

Of beyond-human.

Of surrender.

Guidance.

Of nearing you.

Your face is receding behind the ordinary day.

His knuckles softened. And soon flowers rioted. Across his body. In his esophagus. War, exile, trauma Anglicized as cancer. I hurried home from Kabul and saw my myth tangled in tubes. Was it true—could my father be mortal?

And where are you?

Over me?

Beside me?

In a pattern of light

on the white wall?

Where do you reside?

Exactly?

(PAUSES)

I’m going to skip over a part here.

(RESUMES READING EXCERPT)

So much writing is born of longing. So much living. All attachment thins to that lone jewel: to near and be neared. As a child, one’s survival, like a plant’s, depends on looking up, on a greater radiance and warmth, on a deep fastening.

No one knows.

No one knows exactly.

You.

Cut out of.

When are you going to stop writing about your father, another writer asks.

Your face appears.

The faintness of your voice.

You are building a kite.

How to repair the hole

in the tissue paper.

You paste a piece

over a piece.

And let go.

My father had only ever been an idea.

(PAUSE)

Sahar Muradi: Thank you. Yeah. (PAUSES) There are no words after that. (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Helena de Groot: I know.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: I have just one last question.

Sahar Muradi: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: You know, the whole book is set up around this conceit of cyclical time, all these Octobers layering, and I think few things make us as aware of cyclical time as having children.

Sahar Muradi: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: So I’m just wondering, like, in parenting your kids, have you come to understand your parents in a new way?

Sahar Muradi: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: Have you come to meet your parents inside yourself?

Sahar Muradi: Oh yes. For better and worse. Well, I’m in awe of my mother, who raised four children, and I complain about the challenges of two! And even my grandfather, actually, who I paint in kind of a negative picture here, you know, he was imperfectly father to eight, seven?

Helena de Groot: Whew!

Sahar Muradi: So I, I’ve come to appreciate my parents much more. I mean, I, I think just how challenging it is as a person to raise another person. And then to add on top of that what they were going through, you know, when they were here in a new country and like, navigating a new language, navigating a health system, a school system, a legal sys—you know, like all of those things that, you know, I don’t have to do in that way. And, and I want to say, like, my parents took us on trips to the Keys. You know, they couldn’t swim, but they’re like, “Let’s go look at some, you know, dolphins.” (MUSIC STARTS) And my mom would drive me to go volunteer at the Goodwill, where I loved collecting thrift store clothes while earning community service hours. And, you know, we shared so much joy, too. And all of it. All of it, the experiences of growing up, the experiences of being a parent, the experience of being a daughter, of being a writer. I guess it’s just, it’s the “and”, you know, it’s the multiplicity of the joys and the pains and, and the unfathomable and the understandable. So I, yeah, I appreciate learning to be in the “and”. You know?

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Sahar Muradi is the author of OCTOBERS, winner of the 2022 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She also co-authored A Ritual in X Movements and co-edited an anthology of contemporary Afghan American Literature, titled One Story, Thirty Stories. She did that together with Zohra Saed, a previous guest on Poetry Off the Shelf. Sahar Muradi has been the recipient of the Stacy Doris Memorial Poetry Award, a Kundiman Poetry Fellowship, and an Asian American Writers’ Workshop Fellowship. She is also a founding member of the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association, and she directs the arts education programs at City Lore.

To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website. The music in this episode is by Todd Sickafoose. I’m Helena de Groot, and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.