Happy and healthy New Year to all!

And by all, I mean people of ALL skin colours, ALL genders, ALL religions, ALL nationalities, …

One of the most touching songs of 2022 for me – if not the most touching at all – is by Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour. 

Baraye

Even if you don’t know Persian, you still somehow understand the urgency and emotion of this song.

But the song becomes even more haunting if you also understand the words, hence the (hopefully correct) translation in the following:

For dancing in the streets

For the fear when kissing

For my sister, your sister, our sisters

For changing the rotten brains

For the shame of inability to provide, for being penniless

For yearning of just a normal life

For the dumpster diving boy and his dreams

For this planned economy

For this polluted air

For Valiasr street and it’s tired dying trees

For Piruz and his possible extinction

For the massacre of the innocent dogs

For these never ending tears

For the dream of a moment that will never happen again

For the smiling faces

For the students, for future

For this heaven being forced on you

For the imprisoned intellectual elite

For the discriminated Afghan children

For each and every one of all of these “for”s

For all these empty propaganda chants

For the houses in rubble, collapsing like a house of cards

For the feel of peace

For the sun after long nights

For all the pills for nerves and insomnia

For men, homeland and prosperity

For the girls wishing they were boys

For women, life, freedom

For freedom

For freedom

For freedom

I just want to add one more word for 2023: Baraye omid | For hope

---

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Martin Luther King, Jr.