Prison Poems by Mahvash Sabet | Baha'i Blog

Prison Poems by Mahvash Sabet | Baha'i Blog

"I recently finished reading Prison Poems, a collection of poetry written by Mahvash Sabet on the fifth anniversary of her incarceration.She is a prisoner of conscience. She was arrested simply for being a Baha’i, along with six other members of the Yaran (the national level group that guided the affairs of the Baha’i community of Iran of which Mahvash served as secretary)."
Mahvash Sabet is a 60-year-old former teacher and school principal and a mother of two. After being dismissed from her work during the Revolution, she began informally teaching Baha’i youth who were denied the right to higher education. She was arrested in 2008 and after three years of show trials on trumped up charges, she was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. She is being held in Evin prison, Iran’s infamous and brutal detention block.

Many of the poems are composed prayers and written acts of supplication. She writes:

 Remember me, for I am naught without you,

a beggar at your feet, dependent on you,

whose very life relies entirely on you.

You are the spirit and I, the body only:

and yet we are united and intact, in a single rhyme.

by Sonjel