Helga > Recent Status Updates

"I'm nineteen, and shall never be twenty."

Though she had counted forty wounds, knife thrusts, bruises, contusions,
all over the body, though his back was broken, and his throat gaped with a
horrible slit in it, they had not touched his face... Not forty murderers had managed to efface his smile of delight that Dad should be lifting him in his arms again.

If I don't believe in evil, there isn't any evil in the world . . . there isn't any
death unless I believe in it. . . . Let them kill me, I shan't even notice it. . . .
Anyone who can get to that point reshapes the world out of his mind.

After mass the bells were to be taken out of the church tower, carried to the churchyard in solemn procession and buried. There the whole people should take leave of them, praying before the graves of its fathers...

Can God, among His angels, forget those screams?

I'm a woman, and I speak for all the women here. I'm not going to die like a cur on the highroad. I'm not going to lie out rotting in the fields. Nor do I mean to go on living in a concentration camp, among all those rascally murderers and the poor women they've befouled. And if you men are so cowardly that you'd rather stay on here and be slaughtered, we women alone will arm ourselves and go up on Musa Dagh...

...ո՞վ է մնում, որ մենք հայտնենք նրան մեր սրտի ցավը, մնում է միայն աստված, բայց աստված էլ մեր ձայնը չի լսում...

(...who is left to whom we can make known our sufferings? Only God is left, but even God does not hear our voice.)

"This book was conceived in March of 1929, in the course of a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight of some maimed and famished-looking refugee children, working in a carpet factory, gave me the final impulse to snatch from the Hades of all that was, this incomprehensible destiny of the Armenian nation."

From here could be seen the city, which presented a frightful spectacle. It looked as though it were illuminated also. The atrocious festival of man's inhumanity was being celebrated.

... You find some really bizarre things in books sometimes.

"I hope you never know the sheer desperation of a people praying to be bombed."

My very dear Iranian friends, I hope you and your loved ones are safe and will remain safe to the end. Take care. 💖🤞🙏✌

...
برخیز و بندها بگسل
برخیز و در هوای تازه نفس بکش
برخیز و قفلِ سکوتِ لبان را بشکن
که تو نیز در این جهان سهمی داری.
هرگز به وعده های شیرین دل مبند
هرگز به ظلم و ستم تن مده
بسان سیلی از خشم و نفرت و درد شو
و سنگِ سختِ بی رحمی را از ریشه برکن.

-فروغ فرخزاد

I barely exist and if I exist it's with delicate caution.

انتظاری نوسان داشت.

نگاهی در راه مانده بود

و صدایی در تنهایی می‌گریست.

― سهراب سپهری

“قدیما زور خدا بیشتر بود”

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented...When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment -become the center of the universe.
-Elie Wiesel

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,"

Iran is in blackout. No internet. No phones. I can't connect with my relatives. I have no news from them since January 7th. If there is any Iranian who by miracle can connect to internet, be so kind and let me know what's going on specially in Tehran. Thank you.

تو اگر در تپـش باغ خـدا را دیدی همـت کن
و بگو ماهـی ها حوضـشان بی آب است
― سهراب سپهری
✌

It was clear to me that I knew neither the secret of plot development nor the power of simply stated facts. Instead of searching for a correct fact, I reach for metaphors. An excess of metaphors produces an unpleasant mist and a false sense of the poetic. The right facts, one following the next, are the driving force, the engine that moves a story along. A story, like a river, cannot stand still in one place.

My mother tongue was German. My grandparents spoke Yiddish. We lived among Ruthenian peasants and so we spoke Ruthenian. The government was Romanian, so we spoke Romanian. The intelligentsia often spoke French, so we spoke French. After the war I was with the Russians and I learned to speak Russian.

Usually there's silence in a café, but sometimes a wave of speech will surge up, flooding the listener with painful things that have been mostly kept down, things buried deep in the soul for many years that have at last
found an opening and emerged in words.

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
-Romans 13:12

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.
And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.
And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.