Yalda: The longest night of the year! Yalda is the last night of the fall season.
(the night of 20/to/21December)
In the Persian(Iranian) culture Yalda is celebrated as
the night that the Sun is reborn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalda

Yalda:
For freedom-lovers that have been executed
and for whom that will be executed!
Yalda !
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Tonight is Yalda,
All nights are Yalda,
Why such red Yalda?
Why bleeding you Yalda?
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Rajab-1981 Evin Prison-Tehran-Iran

My crime: Writing a theater-play (Not published!)
Conviction: 3 years in jail (1981-1984)

Every afternoon the Islamic Regime in Iran, taking out
numbers of prisoners from the cells and at the night
they were executed by firing squad.
Some night tens of people, some nights hundred or more, some nights more
and more were shot-executed.
We, in our cells, could hear the barrage of gunfire.
The sound of gunfire and shots was our night-music!
While we were waiting for our turn to be executed in the coming nights!
Every day, the new arrested people were brought in the cells.
At the night of Yalda 1981 (the longest night of the year) we heard the gunshots.
The first group of people were executed!
About an hour later, again a longtime gunfire!
The second group!
After another hour, another longtime gunfire!
The third group!
How many people were executed only that night?
One hundred? Two hundreds? Three hundreds?
Who could count the shots?
And I murmured with myself the lines of Yalda!
(We had no paper and pen in the prison.
By Islamic Regime, writing and reading was the worst crime.
Because writing and reading causes the awareness of people.
And it is the greatest danger for dictatorships.
So I wrote my poems, my theater-plays and my film-scripts in my mind,
hopping that one day, if I would be alive and could get pen and paper!)
Still after years at every Yalda, even in the happiest feasts, I hear gunshots.
The shots that just at that moment hit the heart of humans around the world!
Do you hear them?!
www.starfilm.org
rajabdin@gmail.com