Elahe Najafi - Radio Zamaneh - November 18, 2021
The 23rd issue of the literary magazine Avaye Tabid (The Voice of Exile), curated by Asad Saif, was published by Payam Publishing in Germany. A significant portion of this issue is dedicated to the Turkish language and literature, edited by Shiva Farahmand Rad.
Even if we don't claim that Issue 23 of Avaye Tabid is the only Persian-language magazine to devote an entire issue to Turkish literature and language, we can at least say that it is one of the rare literary magazines published outside Iran with limited resources that still considers the importance of “mother tongues” in their diversity across the Iranian plateau.
Previously, in the special issue on Gilaki language and literature, Asad Saif, in an introduction, reminded us of the necessity of addressing local languages: “Existence is reiterated in language. The death of any language is the death of a culture. When a language dies, it means no reality will be expressed in that language anymore.”
Children of migrants and exiles of the second generation, for whom the host country’s language has become their emotional language, are well acquainted with this issue. Thus, apart from the issue of “centralism” in Iran—which, through an emphasis on Persian and linguistic purism, became a means of suppressing the ethnicities living on the Iranian plateau in the north, northwest, west, south, and southeast, both during the first and second Pahlavi eras and the Islamic Republic era—the issue of mother tongues is intrinsically inseparable from the problem of exile, especially with the experience of over four decades of displacement. For this reason, Issue 23 of Avaye Tabid addresses mother tongue, Turkish language, multilingualism, homeland, and exile—both “physical and linguistic”—and the challenges they entail, particularly within the essays section.
The Killing of “Ummiyat” to Obliterate the Mother’s Legacy
Reza Baraheni, a writer born in Tabriz who left a lasting legacy in Persian—his second language—and transformed contemporary Iranian poetry with To the Butterflies, wrote in his essay “Turkish Journey” about the oppression that “centralism” has inflicted on the ethnicities of the Iranian plateau, with a special focus on Jamalzadeh’s Persian is Sugar. He writes, “The essence of oppression is both literary and social. It is fascinating that a work which introduces the concept of polyphony in stories actually contradicts that polyphony by erasing the reality of those diverse voices. This conflict and contradiction stem from our incomplete encounter with modernity and our entry into an era of uneven historical development. We are uprooted in our quest to understand the full scope of the matter, yet due to our social, cultural, and historical backwardness—and the misunderstanding of modernity by even our intellectuals and writers at the time of its appearance in Iran—we are unable to settle our historical, local, social, and cultural issues in complete harmony.”
Thus, as Baraheni describes it, when “Ummiyat”—or, in a sense, the motherly essence of other ethnic languages—is consigned to oblivion, both the mother is slain and the language inherited by her child is lost.
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| Dr. Reza Baraheni |
1921: The Convergence Point of Historical Essence
Tolstoy believes that “some times are bound to the logic of historical events and the arguments of historical dialectics, and these times should be considered the convergence point of the essence of history.”
1921 in the Iranian calendar is one such convergence point. During this period, examples of the social novel, Nima Yooshij’s poem The Legend, and Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh’s Once Upon a Time emerge. Simultaneously, the languages of other ethnic groups, or in Baraheni’s words, their “Ummiyat” (mother essence), are marginalized. In this issue of Avaye Tabid, traces of this marginalization on both sides of the Aras River are explored.
Roghieh Kabiri, a novelist with several works published in Persian who has now returned to her mother tongue, says in an interview with Atiyeh Taheri: “The migration from a non-native language to one’s mother tongue is like returning to oneself. But it’s not an easy process. Breaking away from that alienation and shedding the lack of confidence subtly imposed on my subconscious, soul, and psyche over the years by the non-native language was not easy. And I still grapple with it. I grew up in a home where everyone spoke Turkish. My mother had studied in Turkish during Pishevari’s one-year government and could read Turkish and Persian fluently. My father wrote most of his religious poetry in Turkish, and I, too, could read Moshfegh Shabestari’s poetry, Hafez’s translation into Turkish, and Turkish poems by Master Shahriar. But none of this meant I had written mastery of my mother tongue. When I began writing in Turkish, my mind was constantly in conflict. On one hand, I was thrilled to discover the meaning of each word in my mother tongue, but on the other, I felt a strange discomfort in realizing that I didn’t know the grammar and structure of my native language. It was like being born, living, and loving in a city without knowing anything about it.”
Exiled writers are intimately familiar with this feeling, though they are not necessarily forced to write in the host country’s language. If they have had any experience in this area early on, it’s not unlike Roghieh Kabiri’s experience: “I would write without realizing my sentence structures came out as if they were in Persian. My Turkish vocabulary was very limited. To write a short story, I repeatedly flipped through Dr. Behzadi’s Persian-Turkish dictionary, looking for Turkish equivalents in the dictionary. It saddened me that after speaking my mother tongue for so many years, I didn’t know its grammar and sentence structure.”
In an interview, Hannah Arendt says there is no substitute for one’s mother tongue: “People may forget their mother tongue. The creativity and vitality that one possesses in their mother tongue vanish when it is forgotten.”
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| Roghieh Kabiri |
Marginalization on Both Sides of the Aras River
In A Brief History of Azerbaijani Turkish Education, Shiva Farahmand Rad traces the disconnection from the mother tongue, arriving at 1921 in the Iranian calendar, which, as Tolstoy described, is the convergence point of the “essence of history.” He writes, “If we don’t go too far back in history, after parts of northern Iran were occupied by the Russian army and the treaties of Golestan and Turkmenchay (1828) were signed, a rift as vast as the Aras River emerged. Despite this separation, and the fact that the path of language education diverged on either side of the Aras, cultural exchange between the two shores continued for nearly a century. Workers, artisans, merchants, intellectuals, thinkers, revolutionaries, pioneers of Iran’s enlightenment movement, and those who brought modern education to Iran—most of whom learned reading, writing, or higher education in the Caucasus—revolutionaries of the Constitutional Movement, the Jungle Movement, and the Iranian Communist Party—all endeavored over the span of a century to mend that wound of separation through their travels across the Aras. Cultural connections between both sides of the Aras have endured, even through the Soviet government on one side and the Pahlavi regime on the other, and despite all restrictions, continue in various forms to this day. Therefore, the evolution of Azerbaijani Turkish education in Iran cannot be fully separated from its development in the Caucasus.”
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| Shiva Farahmand Rad |
Another memorable article in this issue of Avaye Tabid is The Position of Ashiq Performance in Today’s Iran and the Disintegration of a Social Institution, written by Monireh Akbarpouran. Other articles in this issue are in Turkish, which are, naturally, not understandable for Persian-speaking readers.
This issue also includes poems in Azerbaijani Turkish, Turkmen Turkish, Khorasani Turkish, Khalaj Turkish, Qashqai Turkish, Turkish of Markazi Province, and Hamadan Turkish by Turkish poets, which alone reflect the broad reach of the Turkish language across the Iranian plateau.
How Can Avaye Tabid Be Obtained?
Those interested in reading Avaye Tabid in print can purchase it from the Amazon website.
To find it, go to the Amazon site and search for the address below.
Avaye Tabid: Das Magazin für Kultur und Literatur
Or you can order it directly from the publisher, Goethe-Hafis:
Email: goethehafis-verlag@t-online.de
Website: www.goethehafis-verlag.de
The first issue of Avaye Tabid was published in June 2017, spanning 350 pages. Each issue of Avaye Tabid is dedicated to a specific theme, which is led by a guest editor.
In its inaugural issue, Avaye Tabid announced its intention to be the voice of exiles in a sense that goes beyond geographical borders.
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Link to the original text in Farsi: https://www.radiozamaneh.com/693138