Lyrics: Shahin Najafi
Music: Majid Kazemi
Video: Shahin Najafi
Special Thanks to: Shahryar Ahadi, Ali Maleki, Shahram Azimi, Mehran Jangali Moghadam, Ali Baghban, Michael Krol, Johan, Herand, Sole Mio, Ariana, Zari and Gita

 

Salam (Hello)

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Say hello for me to my mother’s grave
I had promised to buy her a house, alack…
My hello

Say hello for me to her like a prayer
tell her life is hell, you’re good in paradise

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Tell her to sometimes ask about the state of us the living
tell her to inform our situation if she sees God

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Tell her our Azan is timed to people’s loneliness
 we are always in Muharram and our celebration is mourning (1)

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Tell her how tired we are from all these oblations
so much we called the sky; where is the answer?

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Tell her day and night we’re high filled with emptiness
tell her that for the hunger we’re eating hope

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Tell her we’ve let go; we have no spirit for breath
tell her we’re alive and don’t have rights as much as the dead

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Tell her we’re still running like a dog for a morsel of bread
lumpishly we’re in to each other’s honor and

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Drug is light for us, we do crack now
we fuck up all our being and nonbeing

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Kind of a state that we get happy with each other’s grief
we fall in love; if she rejects we spray acid

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Tell her Ali got life sentence and became permanent
he pays for his wife and kids from inside the cell

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Tell her Mami died while knife wielding in the line
not even a year passed the ’Haji Bazaari’ took his wife (2)

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Tell her the cheap eulogist is gun wielder
is a friend of Supreme Leader’s household, and the light of his eyes

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It’s a bit tough to take in when no one is in the right place
your life is the stew and misery is the condiment

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The elites are on the run and our good ones are in the jail
we’re in grief and they smirk at us

 

Their hands in people’s pocket and their oath to Quran
there is the oil money, but it gets spent in Lebanon

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I’m the sound of Farhad’s axe (3)
when throat is slit I’m the outcry

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I am the fire under the ashes
the storm's embryo in my head

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Say hello for me to 67 and Khavaran (4)
say hello for me to Tehran’s smoke and smog

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Say hello for me to the girls in the park; the runaways
to thrash and wound and wail; the acacias

to those without birth certificates; Afghan children
My hello

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Say hello for me to the child labourers; stealthy
in Darvazeh Ghar’s dusty fields; stealthy (5)

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Say hello for me to eyelid wrinkles and work’s dirt and dad’s hand
formed calluses now

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Say hello for me to … and don’t doubt that through beating under slap, the champion will not give in
Say hello for me to Karun which’s not dried out yet unlike Zayanderood, Urmia (6)
it’s a grim era; suffocation is communal

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I’m not saying these so that you say you’re hopeless
even if you haven’t seen one joyous day

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It’s only you; you are the one who builds your tomorrow
you’re your own boss, you’re a soldier for yourself

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1) Muharram: Mourning month in Shia calendar
2) Haji Bazaari: Title for religious rich businessman
3) Farhad: Iranian mythical character who dug a mountain
4) Khavaran: The 1988 (1367  Solar Hijri) mass executions of political prisoners and their grave site Khavaran.
5) Darvazeh Ghar: A poor neighborhood in Tehran
6) Karun: Iran's most affluent river – Zayanderood & Urmia: Drying river and lake in Iran