by Mehran Hashemi
Please welcome Mehran Hashemi to the Writers Journey Blog this week with a feature that will make you appreciate what you daily take for granted.
Light Needs Darkness to Shine
Bio: Mehran Hashemi AKA Hush M E (born 11 December 1993) is a Persian poet, animation director, activist and author. Born in Tehran, Iran, Hashemi began his English poetry writing journey in 2019. He published his debut poetry book in 2023. The title is "Light Needs Darkness To Shine." The broken pieces of his soul and the pieces of his poetry are intertwined.
And this feature is going to tell you why he started writing!
He got stuck in a dark cave,
so he wrote for the birds.
They cried when reading this message,
Let the man not forget the rainbow.
In this piece,he left a message for his readers. The dark cave is a metaphor that stands for the situation he has been through in Iran. The birds stand for his followers on social media platforms. And the rainbow is the happiness that has been taken away from him.
Light needs darkness to shine. Here is the story of the darkness he has been through.
The darkness was the anxiety living in his mind.
Since he could know himself and the environment around him, He has always struggled financially as the country he lives in has a corrupted economic system. He has always been worried about his parents and how they are going to afford the things they need to live.
He has always been sick and weak physically. This condition made him feel that he is different from all the boys his age. These struggles made him grow up sooner. He lost his father at a very young age. He was only 11 years old when his father had his third heart attack and he could never see him again.
Ever since, he has been living with the phobia of losing his mother
My lonely night
is void of stars.
And I’m worried.
About tomorrow
what if I lose the sun too.
The total darkness of his life began when the darkest days came. He went into a very deep depression in 2013. He was scared of everything. He didn't want to face the future. He couldn’t see it because he was struggling with his phobia plus the financial situation that made him unable to stand on his own two feet.
Yes! The future used to be his phobia! Ten years of severe depression, stress and anxiety made him an isolated person. He never had best friends to be in touch with and hang out with on any day. He wholeheartedly wanted a friend, no matter a girl or a boy. A friend to whom he could talk and share his pain.
When nobody was there
to listen to me.
I noticed the ears of a paper
silently wanted to hear.
So, I talked and
then the world listened.
Being lonely made him dig deep into himself. And what he found was poetry. Was it he, himself, that could save his life?
If one day all my scars
faded away,
I would lose my path.
Because those marks
have made a map,
with which I can find my home.
In 2022, He faced the most tragic experience of his life. It was a very horrible panic attack.
For a whole month, he was struggling with the feeling of dying. Every second was like torture.
Life is too short,
but not for everyone.
For a soul who is in pain,
every second is a lifetime.
The article below can show you how freedom feels in his country!
Due to the sanctions imposed on Iran's economy, Iranians haven't been able to use services from Amazon. For the past years, if an Iranian needed a product that wasn't available in the country, they had to ask someone in neighboring countries to buy it for them and post it to Iran.
This is not the whole story!
Several popular social media platforms and instant messaging applications are blocked by the Iranian government, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, Snapchat, Medium, and Instagram.
His people are banned from doing such normal things just because the governments of this beautiful planet have set some boundaries to separate them! And this is only one of the thousand problems they face in Iran.
I’ve heard freedom is beautiful.
Yet, I’ve never tasted it.
I don't know how it feels.
It's hard for me to understand,
like a child,
who was born blind,
is taught that
beautiful colors exist.
This was only a very short brief of some dark shades of his life. That inspired him the most to write!
Light needs darkness to shine
Here is the story of the light. Himself!
In the darkest time
of her life
the stars taught her,
if she wants to shine
she has to embrace
the darkness
After the revolution of Mahsa Amini, something awakened his soul. He had a revolution in himself. He wrote some pieces about the oppression in his country but he didn’t publish those pieces in his book as it would cause him to be sentenced to the death penalty by his government!
The children of Iran are made to play an unfair game called rock, paper, scissors.
The opponents force the children to choose.
One chose the scissors to cut her hair.
One chose the rock to throw against them.
One chose the paper to write about her anger,
and what the opponents chose was always a gun.
He doesn’t see himself as a man or a woman, he sees himself as light. And he believes that without those breaks he could never shine.
A sun was beating in her chest
and when people broke her heart
she started bleeding the lights
through the cracks of her soul.
Light Needs Darkness To Shine
A poetry collection in 4 chapters
1. Sunrise
The green breath ( Love poems )
2. Sunshine
The hungry flames ( Sensual poems )
3. Sunset
The crying shadows ( Sad poems )
4. Moonlight
The uprising lights ( Healing poems )
He published his book via a friend's Amazon account in a country abroad. And until this day he has not been able to hold his own book! His book is available on Amazon and Goodreads
He needs to be heard!
Click the cover to browse and buy on amazon!
Light Needs Darkness to Shine is a poetry collection, or better said, it's the seasons, motions, and emotions of living. It's a journey of love, passion, depression, and healing.
The author lives in Iran and hasn’t been able to visit any other country despite how much he would love to travel around the world, but poetry made his wish come true!
With words, he was able to visit his inner world and, in the darkness, find the light. It made him realize how bright his inner light shines, and now, at this very moment, when you are holding his book in your hands, he hopes to lighten your heart, he hopes you believe that your inner light shines brightly too!
Click for Goodreads
