Music, Silence, and Iranian Resistance: A Conversation with Farah Ahamed
Last month, I was in conversation with author Farah Ahamed. We talked about female poets like Parwana Fayyaz and Forough Farrokhzad alongside the imagery of “dolls” in literature as a tool of oppression. We continued our discussion about voices in Iranian resistance which culminated in this second part of the interview.
Today, Farah tells us more about what inspires her, the role of music in resistance movements, recommends her favorite cultural elements, and rituals that help her in writing. She is the editor of Period Matters: Menstruation in South Asia, Pan Macmillan India, (2022).
1. Pass It On
Name one book by a woman or marginalized writer that more readers should discover.
Instead of a book, I’d like to suggest music which makes references to dolls. The Iranian pop singer Shahrzad Sepanlou referenced doll imagery in her 1999 song, Ghalbe Man, ‘My Heart’. She said, ‘In my life I have not been a doll trapped behind a glass’, emphasizing her humanity and emotions. She insists she is the opposite of Farrokhzad’s ‘wind-up doll,’ because she has feelings and thoughts. Sepanlou wrote:
In my life I have not been a doll trapped behind a glass
At times I am filled with purity
Other times defeated by sin
Whatever I am and have been
You should want me for who I am.
She demands to be accepted for what she is, irrespective of her past.
Another example of an Iranian artist who demanded the same is Googoosh (Faegheh Atashin). She is an inspirational Iranian singer and actress, known as the ‘Voice of Iran.’ Her life is marked by both stardom and the consequences of resistance. In 1980, she was imprisoned and forced into a basement with other women after the government deemed her music sinful and spent 21 years living in silence and exile. She is celebrated for her emotional ballads and support for Iranian freedoms. Some of the most popular soundtracks associated with her resistance include:
“Talagh” (Divorce) - 1970s: This track, with its rock-solid, funky sound, is often cited as a “monster of rock solid hip” and sometimes referred to as a defiant piece of Persian psych disco funk. It was a departure from traditional love songs and showcased a rebellious, modern image.
“Behesht” (Paradise) - 2014: A powerful song and video released to support the LGBTQ+ community in Iran, highlighting her role as a voice for marginalized communities.
“40 Saal” (40 Years) - 2018: A collaborative political song with Siavash Ghomayshi that directly criticized the Islamic Republic’s 40-year rule.
“Dobareh” (Again) - 2022: A collaborative song with other Iranian artists, including Leila Forouhar and Shahrzad Sepanlou, that serves as a protest song in support of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement.
“Khabam Ya Bidaram” (Am I Asleep or Awake): This song is part of the “Rebel Rebel” soundscape exhibition by Soheila Sokhanvari, which features female voices of resistance in Iran.
“Hejrat” (Departure/Exodus), written by Shahyar Ghanbari, is a melancholic pop song about love, separation, and loss. The lyrics incorporate Persian cultural tropes of nature and a heavenly garden, transforming the tale of lovers into a metaphor for the changing seasons to describe the pain of a lover leaving, suggesting both romantic heartbreak and a profound sense of “flying” or moving away. “Hejrat” stands as one of Googoosh’s final mega-hits in Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to the prohibition of female solo singing in the country.
Googoosh Love song
2. Connections
Why do you think music and literature are so intertwined?
Music and literature often operate as parallel languages of expression, each translating emotion, memory, and political reality. Both rely on interpretation and imagination. Where speech or writing are constrained as in Afghanistan, they become powerful as forms of cultural memory and resistance. Prohibitions on music not only limit artistic expression but also affect community, since music is embedded in rituals, storytelling, and identity. The absence of music represents more than censorship of sound; it reflects an attempt to regulate and control voices and police collective imagination.
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women in Iran have been prohibited from singing in public. This means that songs by women are often not licensed for official release, female vocal performances are censored, removed, or restricted online and women are allowed legally to sing in female-only spaces or choirs. So, singing becomes an act of rebellion, just as writing poetry, dancing and doll making or any artistic endeavour.
In one of her poems, Only Voice Remains, Farrokhzad asks why she should stop writing, and she answers it is because even though:
…The path meanders among life’s tiny veins
and the climate of the moon’s womb will annihilate
the cancerous cells, and in the chemical aura of after-dawn
there will remain only voice—
voice seeping into time.
I take her reference to ‘voice’ to include writing, singing, dancing- any form of creative endeavour where an individual, out of their free will, chooses to offer something to the world that no one else can do- in spite of and despite their circumstances. At a time when there is erasure and silencing, and people have no reason to sing or dance for joyful reasons, it feels all the more important that we should write, sing, dance, draw, paint, embroider, and make dolls or any form of art- whatever our motivations- even if they be from grief and rage.
It makes me think of the resistance writer El Saadawi, who was imprisoned and put in solitary confinement by the Egyptian state. Despite her difficult conditions, sitting on an overturned jerry can in the middle of the night, she wrote on toilet rolls and cigarette papers. She hid her papers inside her rollers, packed them in her suitcase, and smuggled them out when she was released. The years of solitude only served to amplify her voice.
Voice is about participation with life. Life and art are a continual searching, nurturing and fine-tuning of voice. Learning when to raise or lower it. To elevate one’s voice is a central responsibility of being human. Ultimately, isn’t the only thing that is unique and eternal one’s voice?
3. Craft Rituals
Do you have any routines or rituals you follow before or during your writing sessions? Is it music or anything else?
Yes, complete silence.
In Arts of The Possible (2002), Adrienne Rich described how ‘the impulse to create begins — often terribly and fearfully- in a tunnel of silence,’ while Susan Sontag in The Aesthetics of Silence (1969) wrote that silence was ‘a zone of meditation, preparation for spiritual ripening, an ordeal that ends in gaining the right to speak.’ In contrast, Henry David Thoreau (1893) wrote: in his Journal ‘…silence is something positive and to be heard.’
Over the years I’ve come to understand that silence is not just the absence of sound, or something to be heard, but a space where one searches for one’s own voice.
Farah Ahamed’s writing has been published in Ploughshares, Wasafiri, White Review, LA Review of Books, Massachusetts Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote, and Markaz Review, amongst others. She is the editor of Period Matters: Menstruation in South Asia, Pan Macmillan India, (2022) described as ‘an essential book about the female body that dispels misconceptions’ by Book Riot. You can read more of her work at: www.farahahamed.com.
From forbidden songs to private rituals of writing, Farah Ahamed reminds us that art persists where speech is threatened. Workshops by Usawa will continue bringing readers conversations with writers, artists, and thinkers for more dialogues on literature, creativity, and the many lives of art.
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Thank you very much Sayani and Usawa, for the opportunity to explore and share some of my ideas with you.