There are images that are immediately political without being loud. In Insorge l’Iran - Iran rises by Gino Pacifico, such an image appears at the beginning: a girl who stops at precisely the point where one would have turned back before. This moment is small, almost silent, and precisely because of that, so powerful. For here, resistance begins not with a slogan, but with a posture.
A girl who does not back down
The opening poem of Iran rises condenses the women's protests in Iran into a few clear images. Iran is not described as an abstract state, not as a news topic, not as a geopolitical problem. It becomes a girl, a boy, a crowd. A country becomes a human movement. History becomes bodies, glances, steps.
Especially the girl carries the emotional core of this poem. She stands where fear used to be. She stays where retreat used to be. She embodies not only courage, but a shift in reality. What seemed impossible yesterday is suddenly being done. The public space, which the theocracy wants to control, is re-entered. The body, which is supposed to be regulated, becomes visible. The woman, who was supposed to be a symbol, becomes a person.
The women are no longer metaphors
One of the poem's strongest lines states, in essence: The women are no longer metaphors. They are presence. In this lies the true power of this volume. Women do not appear here as a decorative image for freedom, not as a literary figure that is supposed to mean something else. They mean themselves. Their steps, their hair, their silence, their contradiction: all of this is not symbolic replacement, but reality.
This decision is important. Because especially with a topic like Mahsa Amini and the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, there is always the danger that literature will turn women into signs again. Pacifico tries the opposite. He shows that political resistance in Iran takes place not only in grand historical terms, but in simple, vulnerable, bodily actions: standing still, moving on, not lowering one's gaze, asserting one's dignity.
In an interview with the publisher, Gino Pacifico says: "La gente protesta per un cambiamento umano." This is exactly what one feels in this poem. It's not just about a change of government, not just about a political demand, but about a human change. People no longer want to live in fear. And when fear loses its self-evidence, something begins that cannot be easily pushed back.
Resistance begins in public space
The poem takes the reader to the street. There, where walls listen, the people again tread on the asphalt. This line has a special tension: the world is dangerous, monitored, controlled – and yet something is moving. The dust is stirred up, not heroically, but almost everyday. Resistance appears as movement in space.
Precisely therein lies the poetic strength of the opening poem. It does not seek the grand monument, but the moment in which a person no longer allows themselves to be belittled. The women in public space become the visible counter-image to an order that wants to push them back. Every step, every presence, every unlowered gaze tears a crack in the architecture of control.
Those who wish to understand the broader context of these political poems will also find it in our article on Mahsa Amini, Cutro and the reality behind the poems. There it becomes clear how much the volume is written out of concrete events and yet points beyond them.
Why this poem sets the tone for the entire book
The opening poem is more than an introduction. It is the poetic threshold of the entire book. Here it becomes clear what Insorge l’Iran - Iran rises is about: political poems about Iran, but also about human dignity, freedom, the loss of fear, and the question of how a society changes when its people no longer remain silent.
The figure of the girl remains so impressive because she doesn't have to explain anything. She simply stands there. But this standing is already a statement. It says: I'm not going back. I'm not disappearing. I belong in this space. Thus, a single image becomes an entire political state. And perhaps that is precisely the task of this poetry: not to analyze everything, but to show the moment when dignity becomes visible. With this image, Gino Pacifico opens his book – and with it, the view of a movement that concerns not only Iran, but our understanding of freedom itself.
The book is available in Italian and German bilingual edition as a printed, paperback edition (ISBN 978-3-910347-89-2) and as an EPUB (ISBN 978-3-910347-90-8) in bookstores or here in the publisher's shop.
