Dear Mahvash Sabet,
It’s almost an impertinence, I feel, to write to a poet who is being kept behind bars for her words and beliefs. King Lear, imprisoned at the end of the play with his daughter Cordelia, tells her that they will become “God’s spies”. That is what you as well have become, bearing witness to society’s injustices, prejudices and inability to understand that no matter what society might do to a poet, the poet’s words will still be free in the minds of the readers, and continue to conjure up ideas, engage the mind in conversation. Perhaps there’s consolation in this.
You end one of your poems saying that “You can’t see the sorrow after lights out,” and that you therefore “long for the dark, total black-out.” I hope, for your dear sake, that the end of your sorrow is near but not as that “total black-out” you speak of: instead, as a resolution of freedom, as the free sunlight that is every person’s natural right, a right no one is entitled to take away.
I don’t know if you can find comfort in realising that you have now been welcomed into a vast and honoured company of imprisoned writers, from all centuries and all tongues, from Boethius to Abu Nuwas, Cervantes, Yevgenia Ginzburg, Nazim Hikmet and hundreds of others, and that generations of readers to come will remember your name as they remember theirs, long after the names of your jailers have been swept off the memory of the earth.
I can’t offer you anything in your cell except my devotion as your reader, my trust in better times, and my distant but sincere friendship. I hope that in the very near future we will meet in person, not only on the page.
With very best wishes of hope and courage,
Alberto Manguel
On 15 November, PEN International, the worldwide association of writers, will mark the 33rd anniversary of the annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer. This is a day dedicated to writers who have suffered persecution as a result of exercising their right to freedom of expression. In order to demonstrate how freedom of expression is being curtailed, PEN highlights the cases of writers from around the world currently in prison or being persecuted in ways that are emblematic of the type of threats and attacks faced by writers and journalists.
This year PEN is highlighting the cases of five writers. As well as calling on the Iranian government to release Mahvash Sabet, they are also calling for the release of Dieudonné Enoh Meyomesse a poet, currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Cameroon. Gao Yu, a journalist and member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, arrested on 23 April 2014. Azimjon Askarov, a journalist and member of Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbek minority who has spent his career exposing corruption, and Nelson Aguilera, writer, teacher and member of PEN Paraguay. and calls for their immediate and unconditional release and for the charges against them to be dropped, along with all other writers similarly threatened. On 15 November, and the days surrounding, PEN Members will be sending appeal letters, raising publicity and staging events in support of their colleagues under attacks around the globe.
You can take action and call for the release of Mahvash Sabet and other writers imprisoned solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression by visiting PEN International
You can also learn more about this case and the campaign by visiting here and here
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Teacher and poet Mahvash Sabet is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Evin prison, Tehran. She is one of a group of seven Baha’i leaders known as the “Yaran-i-Iran” – “Friends of Iran” – who have been detained since 2008 for their faith and activities related to running the affairs of the Bahá’í community in Iran. Mahvash Sabet began writing poetry in prison, and a collection of her poetry entitled Prison Poems was published in English translation on 1 April 2013.
PEN International is calling on the Iranian authorities to release Mahvash Sabet and all other writers imprisoned in Iran solely for exercising their right to legitimate freedom of expression.