Whats the historical background to “MSA”?
It’s set partly in 1987 (the left-hand justified bits) and partly in flashback to the early 70s. In 1987, the male narrator, who’s pushing 40, is watching footage of the then-ongoing Iran-Iraq war on TV and recalling a time, about 18 years earlier, when he was a young man studying in Berlin (which was then still divided into East and West, hence “Ulbricht’s fortress”). He knew a lot of young Iranians who were studying in the West. At the time the Shah ruled in Iran and many young people wanted him overthrown, as do the boys in the poem. (SAVAK was the Shah’s feared secret police). He was overthrown, but what replaced him was not democracy but a theocracy of ayatollahs who were more intolerant, especially towards women, than the previous bunch. The narrator looks at the soldiers dying in the war, wondering if the boys he knew are among them, and wondering even more what has become of the girl (MSA) with whom he was briefly in love. It’s about growing older and the loss of innocence, als
