Gulrukhsor.

Sobir, Bozor

Epitaph for One Assassinated

You They killed with treachery and bullets. Me They killed with long humiliation. You They buried in a public ceremony. Me They buried in the anger of the public.

Translated by John R. Perry

GULRUKHSOR SAFIYEVA (b. 1947), usually known simply as Gul-rukhsor, joined the party at the age of twenty-one, graduated from Tajikistan State University, and has worked as a journalist. In 1973 she published her first collection of verse, Father's House. Several others followed, with poems on conventional patriotic topics, the family, and nature, plus a children's play, Cave of the Jinn. She was awarded the All-Union Komsomol Prize in 1978. With perestroika she emerged as an outspoken Tajik nationalist and pan-Iranist. She heads the International Cultural Foundation of Tajikistan.