The Hairfall

For Zhina (Mahsa) Amini

Words by Ebrahim Ghadirfar, Artwork by Shakhawan.



Sometimes the gap between realities and dreams is so small and narrow such as a hair. I saw something that resembled a dream and was so real at once. I dreamed about a hair falling innocently. The fall was so alive that blossomed into a rising or maybe risings. This fall of hair had all senses that a truthfully alive human owns. In addition, the hair had two extra interwoven senses called innocence and the revenge. The hair bore an innocent roar in its own soul to polish eyes as well as hearts so that these two could paint a portrait of a dream spreading worldwide.

The portrait needed ink so then the hair’s relentless blood played the ink’s role to paint a dream wherein life was gifted to everyone who loved it and a just end was granted to those who impose death on innocents. Once the portrait was accomplished, there was still extra ink left. So living was the blood that its smell and voice surrounded the streets, houses, and all areas in its motherland and nearby.

Although the hair fell and separated from its root, it sewed the roots of many humans together to be one hair that brought unity to one nation even after it faded unjustly. The innocent hair was supposed to hug newborn lives motherly, instead, it was accompanied by its mother into a grave. It wasn’t given time to give birth to physical humans, but so many human acts were born of it. 

Also, I saw in my dream that the hair crossed borders and it wasn’t rejected or criminalized surprisingly. And humans from different locations hosted the hair in their hearts and gatherings, some did so to practice humanity dearly and few strived to bend the hair distortedly to change its route. Yet, so resistant was the hair that it even dominated gravity and traveled towards the sky. Its harmless complaint was heard by the sky to become clouds in which thunders, bolts of lightning, and even rains landed on our streets in the shape of noisy hairs falling to play the notes of resisting for humans’ ears as well as to pierce the tyranny’s body resembling a guillotine kissing the neck of the apartheid and its damn tails. The hair’s thunder and lightning summoned me to appear with my pen and we were taken to a gravestone on which written in a universal font "dear Zhina you cannot die, you are already a symbol."