Kamran Mir Hazar
(Afghanistan, 1976)
Kamran Mir Hazar is a prominent Hazara journalist, human rights activist, and writer who now lives with his wife and one-year-old daughter in Hønefoss, Norway, where he also works. He has set up two much-read websites: the news site www.kabulpress.org and the more literacy-focused www.rahapen.org.Alongside the writing of educational books and publications on politics and censorship, Mir Hazar is a politically committed poet. His poetry is influenced not only by his own Persian-language cultural tradition but also by Latin American writers such as the Mexican Juan Rulfo and the Colombian Garcia Marquez. He has had two poetry collections published: lahn-e tond-e asbi dar ezlâ'-e parvân-e sjodan (The Cry of a Mare about to become a Butterfly) in Stockholm in 2009, and before that, Ketâb-e mehr(The Book of Mehr). An anthology of his poems in Dutch translation will be launched at the Poetry International Festival.Mir Hazar's criticism of the general treatment of Afghan refugees meant that his first poetry collection was prevented from being published in 1995 by the Iranian censorship board. In 1999, he wrote an open letter to the UN, UNESCO and UNICEF in which he described the fate of numerous Afghan men, women and children, and which was signed by 330 Afghan and Iranian intellectuals. It was not warmly received by the regime. Mir Hazar's most recent book, Censorship in Afghanistan, has recently been published by Norway's IP Plans e-Books. It is the first book to explore the systematic suppression of free speech in Afghanistan, which has been a feature of its ruling authorities for hundreds of years.In 2004, Mir Hazar returned to Afghanistan, where he set up a critical literary magazine. A few weeks later the publication was banned. He then became news editor and reporter of two Kabul radio stations, Kelid (Key) and Salâm Watandâr (Greetings Fellow Countryman!) His continued fight against Hamid Karzai's increasingly repressive regime has been supported by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Reporters sans Frontières and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). His clashes with the authorities have deeply affected Mir Hazar; he has compared the appalling conditions in the local prisons with Guantanamo and later described them in a series of five poems entitled Viroes-e nevesjtan(Writing Virus). After his release, Mir Hazar feared for his own safety and his journalistic projects and decided to leave his country for good. After travelling to India, and with the UNHCR's intervention, he ended up in Norway.He has won various awards for his work and critical reporting, including a Hellman/ Hammett grant from American Human Rights Watch in 2008.
His poemm
A BRONZED FACE AND TINY PURPLE VEINSA bronzed face and tiny purple veins,A smooth face of Mayan mould,The colors of saffron and pasture,Hunched in a bright overcoatAnd woolen hat, The long coat’s tassels wary of the slashing winds of mountain land,On the invisible flag: whiteness and the antlers of a stagWith a heart dispersed and diffused;Ferried by a gramophone’s sound waves, Sensation is channelled in the air,The command, the book and the empire of catapults, and way beforeA sensation is in the air, expandingIn the arm, and the disintegrating arm,In the solitude of darknessAnd when someone’s death is announced in the hour of divination, Hiding from life,And escaping between the clear and the blurred faces,A desire for the pulse to drop,In the cleft of a ruby; the fruit of Badakhshan; and a crying face;In the birth of eyelashes and the soft fabric of shivering dew,To appear and to nestle between tresses,The burning of intense fever, lubricious more than ever, magnetic more than ever;Swinging in the direction of inopportunity, the wheel of fortune, turningAnd standing;In a curling clock destined to melt,Slippery on the cheeks, the annihilator of the restless cloak, endlessly turning;You stand,You watch,You drink tea;Like a rainbow, you slip on the chair;You pick up a cigarette,And light it;The flickering lantern awakens,Swirls around the cloak,Rising from the margins, coloured blue, And stands on your heart,Evaporates through your eyes;Creeping to a corner is an emerald ring stone,The slippery past of a faraway destiny,And you reach the curved line,Entering a geography of latitudes and longitudes,The composition quickens;In the middle of the open field, again and again,A church turns into ruins,Recomposing in the breaking of light and the unique path of your voice,And passes through latitudes and longitudes;The heat lifts the cloak,Settling on the crucifix of your ribcage,On the chair, shivering,With the fluttering fabric of dewYou drink tea,You light up the rainbow lamp,You drown,And the pen turns round and round,And you write your own death;It moves up your fingers,Pursuing the path to your mouth,You collapse within your pulse,You write this,And you disintegrate between the seconds;You go to the post office,You ask for a letter of the perished,Searching for an omen;You take the by-way,You look for an epiphany,In a rainbow shawl, And shake crimson-coloured medals,You say hello, peace be upon you,And then goodbye;You are dispersed between the sound waves of a gramophone,Your heart diffused and ferried by the sound waves of a gramophone,You stay at homeAnd seek prophecy,Searching for an omen in the hours;The bronzed face heats up,You wrap yourself around my body;Looking for where the breaths join up,You’re released in my throat;You move up,Become tearsAnd flow down my cheeks;You go to the post office,Seeking a letter from the dead; A longing to let go,A date with the unsung heroes of time,And empires beyond the age when writing was invented; The ones that were never put in ink,Embarking on the saddle, taming the lines,Abandoning time, leaving the five senses behind;That bronzed face, a prototype found when iron was discoveredA one that never, ever found reflection in ink.
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