Jeremy Lester’s Requiem for a little Palestinian girl and her 160 Iranian sisters
It’s that time of the year. Two years ago, on the 8th of March, 2024, early in the morning I found an email in my inbox from Jeremy Lester. The subject matter was “A short poem for 8 March”. One could rightfully expect many things from Jeremy. On 20 September 2025, I characterised him on this website as “a son of working-class Glasgow, turned philosopher, poet, and revolutionary Marxist militant of all just causes under the sun”. So, this time it was on the plight of and the struggle for liberation of women, one would have thought. But no. It turned out that Jeremy had written a beautiful poem (“a gem” I then wrote back to him) not on women but little girls.
He had recently stayed, for a period of several months, in a camp in the Occupied West Bank and worked with little Palestinian children, girls and boys, resorting to the practice of art as a liberating activity, having them paint pictures that represented how they envisioned Palestine then, at the present moment (2023) and what they aspired for dreaming of a quarter of a century later (2048). This wonderful activity brought forth appallingly meaningful paintings from the children, which then became the material for many an exhibition, in his adopted abode of Bologna, Italy and its vicinity, as well as in Athens, Greece and Istanbul, Turkey. Unfortunately, he would not be able to see the latter exhibitions for he died a sudden death in September 2024 in his native Glascow, Scotland, as he was preparing for the exhibition there.
This is the background of his dedication of his 8 March poem to a little Palestinian girl.
The poem you will read below is self-explanatory. This was the high-tide of the genocide in Gaza and, being the intense human being filled with overflowing emotions that he was, Jeremy shares his revolt and anger, along with his immense sadness, in the face of the murdering of Zahra, by the Zionist behemoth, of a young Palestinian girl with “a smile that was so fertile as to beguile any tears that sadness had made…”
History seems intent on endlessly reproducing oppression and tragedy. I had already decided, since several months ago, to publish this poem on our web site, RedMed, this 8 March. And lo and behold, the joint war of the forces of US imperialism and of Zonist Israel on Iran produced 160 new Zahras on its second day!
The day the girls of the Iranian elementary school in Minab in Southern Iran were massacred, I said to myself, “Jeremy would immediately hasten to Iran for solidarity work”. Unfortunately, he is no more. Yet his poem “A Smile Bereaved, A Smile Redeemed” will forever honour, on every occasion such monstrosities reoccur, the little girls who fall at the hands of our wonderful advanced civilisation.
Sungur Savran
NB. The pictures and the layout you will find in this piece had all been assiduously conceived and applied by Jeremy himself when he sent the poem to me. The only addition is obviously the photo that records the massacre of the 160 little angels in Iran.
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A Smile Bereaved, A Smile Redeemed
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The tank is next to me... it’s coming towards me... it's very, very close... Come take me. Will come and take me?... I’m afraid of the dark ... Fm so scared, please come quick...
— Hind Rajab
Undying Eye of God! You will not relent, we know it, from compassion from us. Relent then for your own sake; for that bulging eye of madness that may be blinded by soaring motes of an incinerated world. Single Eye of God, will you put yourself out merely that men may stumble in your darkness. Remember: Single Eye, one-wall-neighbour-to-Blindness, remember! What has [this] man become to you, Eye of God, that you should hurt yourself on his account? Has he grown to such god-like stature in your sight?
— Chinua Achebe
My heart is worn out
by its constant screams and shouts
How much more pain can it take
before it completely breaks?
My eyes, they do sympathise
They would like to look away and other
perspectives familiarise
But they are drawn to these suffering images on the screen
so mean and obscene
I look at others going about their daily business
How can they be so oblivious to such levels of misery?
Why are the paths they tread not flowing with tears?
While I walk on rivers of sharpened spears
Can they really be so indifferent as they appear?
If so, such weight of indifference, Oh how it scares
Is this how our civilisation gets away with its
hypocrisy and lies?
And why more don’t despise?
Have they become so habituated to savagery
without it disturbing their sanity?
As they dine and toast watching genocide
do they revel in pride?
Could they at least not hear the pleading words of Hind?
When they saw her six-year old body were they even
then so blind?
Were they not moved by her sweet smile and voice?
Did their own throats not become blood moist?
For twelve days I had hoped and prayed
that she might be saved
But it was not to be
With sniper precision was she targeted with triumphant
cries of shameful glee
In those last minutes of her existence
did she know paramedics were coming to her assistance?
But they too were targeted from on high
with aerial bombing from the sky
The starry lights of her eyes are now closed, while mine
are in my hands
They reach out and touch all those condemned and damned
My mind is like a sun imprisoned
No rays can make it glisten
I picture her mother finding her
The dreadful sights she had to incur
What nightmares must she now suffer
that nothing will ever buffer
Do the angels of death never get exhausted?
Can’t their work ever be thwarted?
Day in day out they humbly carry out their Lord’s commands
With seemingly all too willing hands
“Orders are orders” they plead
“We have no choice but to proceed”
But I beg them, even there surely there are limits
and with such crimes how can you bear to be complicit?
It seems that fire always goeth before Him
One that never dims
He surrounds himself with ministers of divine vengeance
who bear no real feelings of repentance
Over twelve thousand now and still counting
rubbled graveyards of children ever mounting
While on the other side of the wall
Israeli children righteously sing “we will eliminate them all”
Isolated and alone, is it any wonder I start to doubt
my rationality
I feel I am witnessing the death of humanity
Is this what we have truly become?
How quickly in the end did we succumb
Do we now so readily accept infanticide
and out of “necessary security” stand so glibly aside?
True, it would not be the first nor last time
for the committing of such barbaric and heinous crimes
It is all about the “value of a statistical life”, we are told
commodification of human life extolled
Profit and loss calculations must be made
to determine whether certain lives are worthy
of being saved
But just when I thought I had reached the point of no return
Whence to that undiscovered country I now did yearn
Like a little angel did she suddenly appear
begging me to resist my worst fears
So on this eighth day of March
let us be not like Plutarch
and speak only of those well famed
but instead commemorate young heroines who
deserve great acclaim
Who is she, only later did I track down
But already her look had won my heart round
There amidst such suffering and distress
all in gay bright pink was she dressed
With cheeks flowering like a rose
and that lovely rounded nose
her dark moonstone eyes seemed miraculously aglow
with such strange gem-like wonder on full show
In her arms she clutches her ever-faithful friend
as if both of their lives blend and depend
From the rubble of their neighbourhood’s demolition
each one saved the other from attrition
But more than anything it is her smile which attracts
upon which not even acts of genocide can have a
destructive impact
Smile of innocence preserved
for all of us to be mesmerised as we observe
Life, they say, is made of tears and smiles
but here was a smile that was so fertile as to beguile
any tears that sadness had made
and at least for a while keep even a broken heart
in the shade
Of hidden treasures and life’s secrets it betoke
that no words could ever evoke
It is these smiles that make fertile the earth
and give to life its true worth
Only later did I know her name
Zahra - radiance and roses fame
So come, my flower, rest your incandescent eyes
and scatter the silky dew of your smile on darkness’ sighs
∞ ∞ ∞
I know [Zahra] you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’...
it will not be long, because truth crushed to the earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
— Martin Luther King
When this country wants us dead,
every breath we take is a tiny revolution.
— Alicia Elliott