Mariam Saidan

Mariam Saidan is a Specialist Advocate for Women’s Rights and has worked as a Children’s Rights Advocate, studied Human Rights Law at Nottingham University (LLM) and Creative Writing at Kent University. She is Iranian, based in London and has lived in Iran, France, and the UK. She wrote her first journal at 8 years old during the Iran-Iraq war.

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مهرشهر (Mehrshahr)

City of Kindness

So far, unaffected by war

located in Alborz province,

we took refuge.

On our way, sitting in the back

of the car, I remember empty

streets and taped windows.

I was seven, my sister nine.

We shepherded the sheep

in the ruins around the place

in which our parents’ friends

had built a menagerie to escape

the chaos of Tehran before the

war. Then the bombs came too.

Slender blossoms, smell of wet

trees. Sound of wind and lonely

crows in the evenings. Dreams

of sirens, fresh excitement in the

mornings. At nights, clinks of

glasses and cheers filled the sky.

I wet the bed once.

We didn’t miss home, our street or

school. There was a dog, rabbits,

even a deer to play with. I held the

lovebirds’ babies gently, in my palm,

their little bodies pounding.

Don’t touch them, said my father.

Their mother won’t feed them if they smell like us.

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