By a member of the Yaran, these poems testify to the courage and the despair, the misery and the hopes of thousands of Iranians struggling to survive conditions of extreme oppression.

The authors poems have allowed her to speak when words were denied, to talk when no one was listening to her. But unlike many prison poems, hers are not merely a catalogue of hopes and fears. Sometimes a means of historical documentation, a chronicle of what the Bahá’ís have been subjected to since their incarceration; sometimes a series of portraits of other women trapped in prison with her; sometimes meditations on powerlessness, on loneliness; her poems are plangent with appeal, ardent with hope – for whatever the accusations against her, she is a prisoner of faith.

Adapted from the Persian by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani based on translations by Violette and Ali Nakhjavani, these poems testify to the courage and the despair, the misery and the hopes of thousands of Iranians struggling to survive conditions of extreme oppression.