My Mother Pictured Amongst Tobacco Leaves Poem by Nazand Begikhani

Your picture in the greenness of the tobacco leaves
reflecting the light of the Orient
you bend among the endless lines
of the staring tobacco plants
like doubt after conviction
you pick up the leaves
lay them in the Charoga
hanging at your neck
and carry them to the Ber Heywan

Piles of sad leaves
Piles of silence
hidden under the Nur of the Orient

Your wrinkled hands
talk to me
tell the story of a stolen childhood
the loneliness of women in my homeland

I look at your fingers
you place the leaves one by one on the tobacco shish
threading them like long beads into a necklace
then you kneel before the heap of tobacco necklaces
place them on your back,
climb the hill to reach the Chardagh
and hang them in precise lines
to dry

Infinite lines of tobacco necklaces
Infinite scars on your heart

I can feel your body drying up
like the tobacco plant in the midsummer heat
and your life
your life similar to the tobacco leaves
has been picked and burnt away
like a cigarette
between a man's fingers