Biography: Ghazal Mosadeq
Ghazal Mosadeq LLB. is a writer and a CBC journalist. Born in Tehran to a family of writers, she started writing fiction when she was sixteen and began her career as a journalist when she was eighteen. She has worked for a number of national independent newspapers in Iran such as Zan, Iranvij and Hayat-e Neo.
She graduated from Law School at the University of Tehran in 2002 and in the same year she immigrated to Canada. Her passion for literature led her to publishing a book of poetry in 2010. In addition, she is working on her first collection of short stories. Ghazal lives in downtown Toronto.
Fortuneteller
A sister in a faraway land is thinking of you
Ashes fall from her slender fingers during days of separation
She is sitting on a mat of clouds that rise high
and higher and roar and rain
upon a frowning ocean you will drift across
terrified and in tears you sail,
I see you sailing.
You had a beautiful gaze when you were young
your eyes enslaved rays of sunlight through the window of the back room
and time's hands moved slower then
you owned a wooden horse, or wanted one
with a few other promised gifts
and letters to be written with your name
between the lines,
your name painted on the colorful boats on the river,
and you would cry out, joyful (or did,
and do not remember;
the sunlight that covered half your face and shoulder knew)
there are roads in your palm's map you shouldn't have taken,
the lines are reminders
I see a young man next to a lamppost in twilight
younger than you were then
when he turns, you cannot place him,
he does not recognize you.
The yellow eyes of an owl blink,
a hundred years have passed.
Remember Me
How soon you are a stranger though I remember your mother
In her green dress, her middle-aged knees
That ran after you through grass and leaves
when you were playing and would not go home
How familiar your laugh as if forty years ago
When I looked through the window and could see her kitchen
And the lids on her pots
And you surrounded with the aroma of food
As you leaned over homework at the table
Remember me?
My pants with a hole in one knee? My black nails?
As if today were forty years ago
Spring and autumn the seasons for adults to find love
As our seasons were winter and summer
we made snowmen as soon as the school closed
or ran under summer sprinklers
our mothers said: “don’t forget: don’t splash water on yourself”
we did, but hadn’t forgotten
How strange you walk the other side of the street
I still have your grandfather’s bonbons in my fist
I’ve been squeezing them all summer and my sticky hand
Wants to keep these bonbons for itself
But I want to give one to you
No, not all of them, only one I’ll offer you
You who are standing there on the other side of the street
In your grey suit
A Little Week
Where did my little week go?
It had seven little days within it
seven sunny little days
It wasn't short
it didn't pass quickly
It was little
Its mornings would last all morning long
and its nights all night
It didn't snow that week
if it had, my week would have filled with snow
it would have fallen from the early morning
into the bottom of the night,
the drifts piling up on night and climbing right up to the top edge of morning
like the little blue cup you left outside – many years ago –
it vanished until spring
I am glad it didn't snow
But it is tough to find it now
how do I find something so little?
it is lost now
two weeks since it's been gone.
Silence
A gambler among us one day
Took the mask off his
Rose petal face and advised:
Life is a dream and not a gamble
One of us said
Your advise is a jewel my dear
But I’m afraid to say
There is a thieving crow sitting on a tree branch
Say nothing!
And saying nothing is easy
But to keep silence is hard
One of us said
Silence is a musical instrument
Learning it takes time
Perhaps
We should have started very young
You said:
Alas!
One day I broke a rare antique silence
So its precious pieces were never found after
It was missed
Like a gem of a lost ring
Inside a nest
On the top most branch of a tree