Publication of Calling the Mermaid (Pari-Khani): Yashar’s Dream, Athena’s Melody


Poet: Musa Akrami


Illustrator: Saeideh Ahmadi


Publisher: Hamrang – Hamrokh Children and Young Adults Unit

A poetic tale that took root in the poet’s open soul forty-two years ago, grew, and became a tree of blossoms and fruit.

Today, after nearly forty-two years of moments of devotion to words – chosen with special care to build, refine, and adorn a long narrative poem – with a sense of deep fortune, I offer to the world of literature a Persian poetic tale, in the hope of finding readers in other languages. It is a tale that, while earthly, speaks of the sky; while rooted in one land, belongs to every human being on this earth; and while faithful to the ancient tradition of Persian Masnavi‑writing, sings a new song: the song of a child who, carrying the memory of his father’s whistle, the feather of a legendary bird, and a prism‑like hymn inscribed upon a crystalline star, goes to war against the demon of violence and brings back the lost mermaid of the sea to the wounded, earthly world.

I have always considered myself a student in the spiritual presence of the great poets of Iran and the world – from Ferdowsi, Nezami, Attar, Mowlana (of Balkh), and Hafez to Ahmad Shamlu on the one hand, and from Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe to T. S. Eliot on the other. Moreover, in the vast landscape of world literature, beyond the great classics, I have admired contemporary works such as Antoine de Saint‑Exupéry’s The Little Prince, Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Samad Behrangi’s The Little Black Fish, and I have learned lessons from each. This lifelong apprenticeship granted me the good fortune that, in an age captive to many forms of violence, I could link ancient paths of mystical and epic journeying with the pressing concerns of today – among them war, bombing, the loneliness of a sensitive child, the absence of a father on a journey full of mystery, and the manifold struggles of a mother who, far from her husband, is at once anxious for her child’s healthy growth and proper blossoming and actively present in the spheres of work, society, and politics.

Thus, in the solitary vigils of days and nights full of fear and hope, a poetic tale emerged. After several joyful revisions, it finally became a poem of 4,242 lines that speaks simultaneously of aerial bombardment and the demon of drought, of workers’ protests and the union with the mermaid, of letters from a travelling father and the breaking of a spell by an eternal hymn – the expression of the inner child within all human beings, in search of beauty and love.

As I humbly see it, this poem is among the very few long Masnavis of spiritual and imaginative journeying in Persian literature whose hero is a child, and whose journey unfolds not only in inner, imaginary, and mythical valleys, but also amid scenes of bombing, the violence of war, and the struggle of men and women for freedom, justice, peace, and beauty in actual society. My poem, against the backdrop of lived experiences richly inspired – consciously and unconsciously – by Iranian and Greek mythologies and by mystical stories (from the Amesha Spenta Anahita and the wise, peace‑bringing Greek goddess Athena, to the truth‑seeking birds of Attar’s Conference of the Birds (or The Speech of the Birds), reveals a child’s personal quest to restore beauty, goodness, and love to the earth through union with a bird that embodies wisdom and peace for the collective life of humanity in the contemporary world.

This work – a gift from a soul filled with longing and passion to society – is also a share of fortune from having lived an adventurous life, from a spouse and children who embody beautiful dreams and unwavering hope for a radiant future, and a harvest of long seeking for the poet himself. It is a harvest that connects him to moments of joy: the process of creation, feeling like a special responsibility, made difficulties bearable through a small window opened to the light of hope and longing. For he knew that the fortune – whether sought or unsought – of living in an age of fragmented narratives, together with his resolute will for endurance and his courage to interweave narratives that create beauty, had granted him the opportunity to discover this tale within himself during a spiritual journey in times of hardship, fear, and hope, or to create it from reflection upon his lived experiences.

Now I offer this poetic tale – which, after years of waiting, steps into the community – to all the children who, with beautiful dreams, grew older than their years in war; to the pure souls of adults who stood for peace in war; to all the fathers who, travelling for an ideal, were absent from their children’s blossoming yet left their song in the beautiful whistle of the wind; and to all the mothers who, every night, laid the “Haft‑Sin” table of hope and celebration for their waiting, hopeful children with one empty place beside it.

If one day this work travels into other languages, I hope it carries with it the message of this hope of Yashar – grown with Iranian culture, literature, and art – that always, with the memory of a beautiful whistle from a father who journeyed, the cooperation of a little sister or brother like a goddess of wisdom and peace, under the responsible gaze of a mother worried for home, factory, and battlefield, one can break the spell of violence and attain the experience of beauty, goodness, and love. It is enough for me that somewhere on this soil, a child, an adolescent, a young person, a middle‑aged reader, or an elder reads this poetic tale, looks up to the sky, and believes: “The mermaid exists. The mermaid is not far.”

Saturday, the 23rd of Khordad, 1405 (June 13, 2026)