LILA KASRA
Lila Kasra, Poet and lyricist of unforgettable love songs, of a family descending directly from Mohammad Shah Ghajar, was born on March 27th, 1939, in Tehran. Her father, Mahmood Mirza Kasra, a great grandson of Mohammad Shah Ghajar, was a highly educated officer of the Iranian Army who worked in the Prime Minister’s office and was a long-time professor at the Officers’ College in Tehran. Many of the future generals of the Iranian Army were his students.
Mahmood Mirza, like many descendants of the Ghajar dynasty, had a knack for poetry. A close look at the children and also the family’s history, reveals a continuous poetic insight in their feelings and mind, and even in their way of life. The great poet, Iraj Mirza, a great-grandson of his uncle, who became the thunderous mouthpiece of the National Constitutional Movement of Iran, was one of the most famous of them whose explicit and eloquent language, especially in his campaign against superstition and institutionalized backwardness in the Iranian society has placed him among the high ranks of the Iranian literary pantheon.
Lila Kasra was the first child of Mahmood Mirza Kasra and Ghamar-ol-molook Bani-Sadr. Next came Jila, Massood, Anooshirvan and Amir-Hossien.
Amir-Hossien and Anooshirvan, the only surviving brothers currently live in the United States.
Lila’s mother, Ghamar-ol-molook Bani-Sadr, belonged to one of the intellectual families of Hamadan, who had literary and artistic aspirations along with Nationalistic and civic tendencies. She was a cousin of Abolhasan Bani-Sadr, the economist who became the first President in the history of Iran who was ousted by the Islamic` Regime due to his objections to the despotic rule of law being wielded by the Clergy in the early 1980s, and consequently had to flee the country.
Lila got her poetic talents from her father and her passionate love of poetry from her mother. Ghamar-ol-molook was able to cultivate the deepest love of culture in her daughter’s receptive and turbulent character.
Lila’s first poetic talents showed up when she wrote a poem with a piece of charcoal on their big yard’s white walls, which her mother took a notice of it. Later she used white papers instead of white walls, and a pen instead of a piece of charcoal, and thus began Lila’s short life in health and in her long years of sickness till death took her away from us. She left a legacy of love and honesty in whatever she wrote and left for us.
Lila started her schooling in an elementary school near their residence in Amiriye Street, and graduated from High School majoring in Literature from Anooshirvan Dadgar High School. She was a prominent athlete. She was a voracious reader and had a passion to play the violin which she never accomplished. She then left for England to continue her studies. After graduating from the Kings College in London as a librarian she returned to Iran and was employed in the National Petrochemical Company in Tehran.
She became a disciple of Hafez in her early teens and thus began her journey into the world of poetry. First she started composing quatrains, later to delve into sonnets (Ghazals). However she soon discovered The New Poetry which had taken roots in Iran after Nima Yooshij started the movement. Later she would mix Hafez with Nima and started writing under the pen name “Hedyeh”.
Before starting to write lyrics, she tried her talent in composing magnificent and coherent sonnets, and tried other forms such as CHAHAR-PAREH, GHASIDEH, MASNAVI and blank poems. Her poems are full of love, passion, grievous sparks of heartfelt emotions.
My heart is as big as the World,
The World’s Sorrow in my Heart,
Sorrow of yesterday, today
and tomorrow in my heart.
When the night falls
and sets up its tent all over,
A sorrow as big as the night’s
darkness in my heart,
My shell is empty, with no pearl,
Saw the emptiness, and a sorrow
as wide as the sea in my heart.
Lila started submitting her work to the literary magazines in Tehran in the late 1950s, including some short stories and radio plays, later to become a staff member of editorial boards of magazines like “Etela’ate Banovan” and “Roshan’fekr”, while working with “Omid-e Iran” as well.
Her first collection of poetry, An Autumn and Two Springs, was published in the early 1960s, which she considered her youthful experiments in literature.
Oh, Dawn, I am as heavy as the clouds
When it’s time for prayer.
Speaking to God as lighthearted as the wind,
With the God whose waves of lights enter my moments,
The God that the entire world is from him
Seating on top of clouds,
I know he can hear my sobs,
I know he can see my tears.
Lila, however, sprang into prominence with her second collection of poetry, The Season is not the Issue. This book was selected by the National Radio and TV Organization, as the Best Book of New Poetry in 1968, which was suggested by Iraj Gorgin. She was reportedly awarded a prize and a letter of Recommendation by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, while others have mentioned Farah Pahlavi as the one who handed her the prize.
She then published her next collection, The Festival on this Side of the Bridge.
After the publication of The Season is not the Issue, something happened that changed the course of Lila’s life. One day a gentleman walked into her office and introduced himself as Fereydoon Khoshnood, who had come to her to say that he has already composed a tune for one her poems, The World’s Sorrow. He had come over to ask for her permission so that the song could be performed by Mahasti. Lila listened to the melody, liked it and issued her permission right away.
Over the years Lila Kasra wrote many poems and songs, and especially in the years she lived out of her homeland, and were performed by famous singers like Ebi, Elahe, Andy, Homeyra, Dariush, Sattar, Siavash, Shahram Solati, Shohreh, Aref, Farzin, Golpayegani, Moein, Mahasti, Vigen, Nasrin, NooshAfarin, Hayedeh and many more . Songs that will remain the History of Iranian Music. Most of these songs were performed by her close and dear friend Hayedeh who had become – in Lila’s words – the herald of her heart’s murmurs. No wonder the Book of Life for both of them ended within a few months of each other.
Lila Kasra wrote a poem in the last days of her life, called My Story, which is a personal narrative of her long battle with death, a grievous piece of despair and yearning which became her testament.
Farid Zoland composed the music for this song and Hayedeh’s voice gave it the immortality that it deserved. It became a sad game of life that Hayedeh sang her first recorded song ever, “Azadeh” written by Rahi Moayeri whom subsequently passed away himself when she had just started her career. Coincidentally, Hayedeh sang her last recorded song, “Ghesseyeh Man” at a concert in San Francisco which was written by Lila Kasra’s who herself subsequently had just passed away. An unbelievable turn of events took, Hayedeh lost her own life a few hours after that concert.
Pasha Afshar says this was the last song that Hayedeh sang in the last night of her life and her last concert in San Francisco, and it was not even supposed to be performed that night:
The damned grief hit me like the cold wind of the autumn
Not even the gardener knew
what had hit me
My veins and roots became black
Sprouts went dead in my body
While my long-suffering heart laughed at the grief of life
The sky who’s drunk with madness
The sky who’s thirsty for blood
The sky who’s drunk with sin
The sky who’s so shameful
If the life is so much pain
A bubble over the water
I am laughing at my tears
I say it’s all a dream.
Oh, Sky, you wrote the death of love in my cells
It’s a painful sad song that you wrote all over me
If I am near the breaking point, or if I am far,
I detest your compassion
I am a patience stone myself.
Oh, Sky, your ax is broken
I am going to stay on my feet
I will stay in my songs
Even if you take me away from my body
If the life is so full of pain
If it’s a buble over the water
I will laugh at my tears
I say it’s all a dream…
Immigration, and social and political events of the time had their reflection in Lila’s poetry as well, similar to all poets who have lived in times of turmoil, a road full of insecure pavements, contrasts of love and pain, happiness and sorrow, calm and mutiny, hope and despair, and victory and defeat, and are reflections of all of these experiences. And on top of this, Religion, especially during her illness, became more prominent in her poetry, mixed with the sorrow of being far from her homeland, her home which was taken away from her by the heavy hands of the executioner.
There’s a message of love in my cries
For the lovers of Iran’s soil
I wrote oh Executioner, oh executioner,
Don’t scare me of death and of dying.
If the enemy is in control
Death and dying is for me a glory
Let thousands like me to be sacrificed for Iran
My Iran should not be devastated like this
Oh, friends of my empty dinner tables
I’m not afraid of this prison-like world
I saw the death that day right in front of me
I wrote oh executioner, oh executioner
Don’t scare me of death and dying.
Lila Kasra married Eskandar Afshar and had an eventful love life with him. Eskandar returned to Iran after Lila’s death and now lives in Tehran. They had three sons: Pasha, Jahanshah and Alidad.
After the birth of her third child, Alidad, in 1978, Lila was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her first surgery was in England which was unsuccessful, and then she headed for the United States, and had a long battle with cancer for eleven years, using different methods, and finally on May 16th, 1989, she passed away in her home in California, surrounded by friends and family.
Life
Kasra was married to Eskandar Afshar and had three sons Amir Pasha, Jahanshah, and Alidad.