The Air Report Is Hereby Presented.

Tehran – Winter 1392 It is a firing squad day and night a hail of bullets, from the ground and the air: visible bullets, invisible bullets. The bullets pass through the wall, through the curtain, through the clothes on our bodies. The bullets pass through the bars of the cage of our chest. through the walls of our thin skull. Lead bullets, wave bullets. Poisoned visible, invisible. The small heart, gone fast, gone slow, beats unevenly against the chest. The small heart, the naked heart, the newborn heart wounded by the wound of the bullet in me, in you, in our chests. I pass from a street of smoke to a street of smoke in the city of smoke. I pass by the trees stripped of leaves, all the days. Where is this place? What is this mountain of pain on my chest? I pass with broken, broken breaths, heavy as lead. You pass, beside me. You pass with tangled hair, a deeply furrowed face. I see the pain in your chest in your eye in your lightless gaze toward the far side of the mountain of garbage in the gutter. In your tearful gaze at the hot chest of the wild rue, at the bruised trembling hand, at the yellow face of the narcissus behind the red light. You see the pain in my despairing gaze at the filthy curtain of dust, at the red light, at the dam against the free breeze. You see the pain in my tear-stained gaze at the far horizons, behind the black cloud with the hope of another air, with the hope of fresh air, another sky. I see the lead bullets - shot from the black gasoline pipe - into the spine of my city, into the defenseless skeleton of man, into my heart. Where is this place? Where is this place? with the notice: Breathing Forbidden! hanging, hanged by the throat from every wall? Where is this place? This ruin! The ruin left behind by the night raid of cunning oil. They have set fire to the wheat field, to the stream, to the rose garden. Breathing Suspended! With broken, broken breaths – furtively - I walk through the city: I see the pain on the breast of every dry branch, in the age-old plane tree, in the withered jasmine, in the wrinkles of the colorless unripe quince. I see the pain! With the trembling of the distant wind, my heart pounds against my chest: was this the promised paradise? this suffocation? this suffocation? My heart pounds against my chest: I see death in this city, in a great Auschwitz by the name of Tehran ...