Hamid’s Impact

by Majid Naficy

On June 2nd and 3rd 2022 there was a two-day event celebrating Hamid Naficy's work and life at Northwestern University, Chicago. This piece which I wrote eight years ago for my brother, Hamid was included  at this event as described in Norma's comment below.

        Since Hamid moved out of our house in 60s, I have lived with him more than any other siblings. When he returned to Iran from America in 70s we lived together in our house in Tehran for three years, and when I fled Iran and arrived in LA on May 17, 1984 I lived in the same building that he had an apartment for six years. But here, I don’t want to write about these years, because I think he had his most profound impact on me when I was becoming a teenage poet in Isfahan and he was going to university in London and later Los Angeles and most summers came to Iran to visit his family.

       For me Hamid was a window to the West and Western free ideas. I still remember his letter from London in which he wrote about his visit to a mine in Lancaster. Also, when he came to Iran in summer he brought a gramophone disk of the Beatles. When he left Isfahan, this time for going to the US, He left his Beatle’s disk for us. I usually took it to our patio and turned it up so much that people could hear it from the alley. It infuriated our younger brother Said, who came home one time and asked me to turn it down.

       When Hamid came back from the US a summer later he brought with him a collection of poem of Allen Ginsberg, the American Beatnik poet and he left it in his bookshelf in his room upstairs. He told me: “You can listen to music and write your poems as a free flow of thoughts.”

       That’s how I wrote my poem “Fifth Symphony” based on Beethoven’s music and it was published in “Jozveh-ye She’r” and was ridiculed by Khosrow Shahani the writer of a satire section “kargah-e namadmali” in Khandaniha, my Dad’s favorite magazine. Hamid also translated “The Bald Soprano” an “anti-play” play by Romanian-French Eugene Ionesco and sent it to me so I can publish it in “Jong-e Isfahan” magazine. He also sent me a long essay about Marshall McLuhan the writer of the phrase “The Medium Is Massage”, with a provoking title “How I Killed My Wife?” . Both of these writings had a profound influence on my poetry and literary thought. That’s how I wrote my little poetry manifesto entitled “Anti-Poetry Within Poetry” which was published in Ayandegan newspaper.

        Hamid and Kelly lived in a hippie commune in Los Angeles in late 60s. That’s how Hamid brought the life-style of Hippies to me. One summer he appeared in our house with relatively long hair with bushy sideburns. I too began to wear long hair with bushy sideburn, something that was revolutionary in that era in Isfahan. Even my intellectual friends especially my poetry mentor late Mohammad Hoghughi were not able to accept it. Hamid also gave me a Mao’s leather shirt which I wore with one of his jeans and took a cane in my hand and went to Iran-Britain Asociation with my sister Nasrin for English classes.

        Hamid and I also were very close. One time when I had fallen in love with a girl and she had broken my heart Hamid and I had a long walk around Zayendeh River and I wept a lot and he tried to console me. Hamid’s free-spirit had a profound impact on me, something that I am still inspired by it today. Long live my brother Hamid! Long last his free spirit!

November 20, 2014