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To a Legless
Man
By Masoud Behnoud
Speech in the ceremony of freedom of expression awards 2003
Wednsday 26 march 2003 - Index in Censorship for free expression.
Two years ago, on one of these days when I was in prison on the
charge of writing and was spending a part of my nineteen months
of conviction in a solitary cell, Dr. Hashem Aghajari announced
his protest against the imprisonment of thinkers and writers,and
now I am here on behalf of who are in death rough only for a speech..
If he were not in prison in these days when the world are crying
against war, he would have definitely joined them. As he has done
all his life. Twenty years ago, he lost his leg in a war.
He aspires to a more humane world where people would not fight with
each other, would tolerate and love one another more and respect
the freedom of their opponents.
The Iranian student, three months ago in their protest against Aghajari
arrest carried a panel on which they had painted a beautiful flower
with the gallows' rope around its neck as a symbol of their teacher.
In the Iranian new year,s eve, one week ago , a young girl who missed
her father wrote a poem in which she says if her father returns
home from prison, she will bombard the whole world with red apples.
The name of her poem is "The story of a legless father"
and at the beginning of her poem, this sixteen years old girl writes:
My youth black hair turned grey
Under the ruins of needs
From whom shall I acquire my black hair?
Would shadows answer me?
And indeed you and all the humanitarians of the world who keep the
memory of Aghajari alive, will answer Maryam and say, 'Yes, our
hearts are with you and the shadows are awake.'
I had no ways to ask permission from Aghajari for what I am doing,
but I am sure that in that immense silence of the prison ,Dr Aghajari
knows that the world are not shadows and our hearts are with him.
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