Kamran Mir Hazar

Kamran Mir Hazar Poems

Kamran Mir Hazar Biography

Kamran Mir Hazar (Dari/ Hazaragi : کامران میرهزار) (born 1976) is a Hazara Norwegian poet, journalist and human rights activist. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Kabul Press and Refugee Face. He has won various awards for his work and critical reporting, including a Hellman/ Hammett grant from American Human Rights Watch in 2008 and Freedom award from Afghanistan Civil Society Forum in 2007. Kamran Mir Hazar is a member of the Norwegian PEN and The Norwegian Writers' Center. Kamran Mir Hazar has worked over 10 years as a journalist, news editor and editor-in-chief. In 2004 he has launched Kabul Press which is the most read news website of Afghanistan. In 2005 he has started publishing Hot Tea in Kabul. In 2006 he has worked as news editor for a national radio called Killid. A year after he has worked for Salam Watandar radio, a radio which is supported by Internews. Refugee Face is another website that he has launched in 2011. As a journalist he is also one of The Guardian contributors. One of Kamran Mir Hazar's books, Censorship in Afghanistan is published by Norway’s IP Plans e-Books. This book was written in the Dari language, it is the first book to explore the systematic suppression of free speech in Afghanistan that has been a feature of its ruling authorities for hundreds of years. Kamran Mir Hazar himself was detained twice, threatened by security agents in Afghanistan. The Kabul Press website is also blocked and banned in Afghanistan and Iran. Kabul Press is accessible only via non-governmental ISPs in Afghanistan. It can be reached indirectly from Iran and Afghanistan for those who use government internet service.)

The Best Poem Of Kamran Mir Hazar

Virus Writing

1.
Writing viruses
And electronic labyrinths
With a blackout and no computer
In a rented house, at seven thousand a month;
Kabul, the Afghan capital!
What silly poem is this?

You ask yourself, is poetry the same lonely words that wander in electronic corridors,
Cut off from their existence,
Thrown away, with no choice but to become a poem?
You watch imagination wandering through paths, over the paths,
You throw the leash at yet another word,
Trying to subdue this wild one,
And if you fail,
You stop functioning,
Like a computer crashed.

2.
There was someone, someone who wrote viruses
Behind a diesel-powered laptop
Looking for URLs and
An anonymous mail would be sent
Connecting you to a site, infected;
"I am from Florida, the USA, and 23 years of age,
Looking for someone to follow the link, and make happy";
To open the mail and to make someone happy?
First, stop the programs;
Passing through security, typing 97, 98, 99,
Approaching the death of romance between zero and one.

A virus-writer drank half a beer bottle at once;
Then, computer deaths;
First to the east of Paris, a house,
Australia, three minutes more,
A man is waiting out the last minutes of an office shift
Needs to get home;
A party is starting in half an hour;
The Philippines, minutes later,
A 19-year-old girl
In a chat room,
Showing off a used body;
In Egypt, more or less the same time,
And the next morning, Kabul.

3.
You, and you, also you,
Yes, you and also you,
You are all arrested!

4.
They tell me, stop writing!
You write and we'll show you Guantanamo at home,
You write, we'll kill you.
Kabul, summer of '07
Hands in handcuffs, feet tied up;
This is Afghanistan, and this here where it is going,
Dead bodies over dead bodies.
The poem has no choice but to stop writing itself.
This is prison.

5.
They asked a Kabul sparrow
Just what is mankind up to?
The sparrow considered this and died!

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