Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Right after the book Reading Lolita in Tehran was published, I read it eagerly with pride and prejudice. Proud of the fact that an Iranian had achieved such a well-received book, not on Iranian literature but on Western literature, and prejudiced for the author being an Iranian woman of my generation, if not of my socio-economic and cultural class.

We discussed the book in our book club, which consisted of seven women who all are ardent fiction readers, although only one of them has a literary career. There is one judge, one lawyer, one English teacher, three university professors (two sociologists, and one math teacher). I do recall we enjoyed the book tremendously. What my friends enjoyed most was Nafisi’s passion for fiction, her love of teaching, her teaching style, her interpretations of fiction, and the way she would relate various western stories to present life in a very different part of the world, Iran.

None of these women in our group is Iranian and I have not seen any of them interested in Iranian politics beyond being off and on worried about Israel getting hit by some sort of Iranian bomb or missile. Unfortunately, the energy spent on Iranian politics was wasted on our group.

The book did not fare any better for me, who is very concerned about Iranian politics. When my friends asked my opinion about the various situations described in the book, I humored them that I do not expect accuracy of any kind in a work of fiction. Indeed, I read the book as fiction. I found it a charming, intelligent, though depressing, blend of fact and fiction; a mixture of composite characters who could have existed among some of the then over fifty million people of Iran; and a creative drawing of past over the present or vice versa. I found the book written cleverly and imaginatively. However, I found it extremely bitter, sad, and pessimistic. I was surprised that none of the characters committed suicide; and there was no indication of any of them using Prozac (which is commonly used in Iran) even though they all were suffering. Had they been in the West, I’m sure some good percentage of them would have been on various anti-depressants.

I would have also congratulated the author for beautifully blending all these small anecdotes and stories and weaving them so vividly into the network of the works of fictions of four novelist, two of whom, Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald, I like very much. I was hopeful she would recreate her Lolita wherever she went. Alas, Tehran was her first and last destination.

After almost four years I’m still waiting. I thought it would be very interesting to read Lolita in Washington, DC. First one would have to find seven young students to come so devotedly to read Jane Austin and F. Scott Fitzgerald no matter how they would have to bend their schedules. Second, I would have loved to have seen who would have tried Nafisi’s friends, all Toms and Daisies in DC who make a mess and don’t even expect anyone to clean after them. As a matter of fact, when reading the book for the first time, there were a few places in which I played the game of changing the names and the locations to see what would happen. I changed Khomeini to George Bush and Iran to the United States and the Guardian Council to the Supreme Court and felt not the slightest difference except a certain degree of depression.

In my defense, I have to say I have learned to read memoirs of this nature as fiction. When memory is mixed and tinted with the narrator’s interests, motives, pains and pleasures, and life, it could hardly be considered as solely composed of ‘events’ to convey any non-personal message. When the narrator is a participant in the events that are narrated and is indeed the hero of the story, then obviously we are reading fiction. This is particularly so when the narrator is an imaginative and creative person. When the characters assume other names or professions, when two or three of them become amalgamated into one, when they are relocated from one episode to the other, and when the narrator has strong ideas about the course of events and a strong desire towards certain directions for the whole story, very likely we get a fiction, though it might reveals many valuable lessons or historical insights.

The Iranian community was divided over this book. The monarchists and some independent anti-Islamicists praised the book and acknowledged the author on various occasions, while others denounced it for equally political reasons. The fate of the young musicians who played the Gypsy Kings in Tehran (see below) was repeated here. Neither of these praises or denunciation did justice to the writer since neither one concerned the book for its values, but for its author’s the politics. Judging from the writer’s lack of response, I think it did not matter very much to her. The book sold by the million and who cares about the rest?

Among the book’s critics, two had a chance to stand up due to the positions they held, though they both failed. Hamid Dabashi’s article published in Al-Ahram was probably the first criticism of this book, viewing Nafisi as a tool to implement “the New Orientalism” which portrays the East and the Islamic world and the Moslems as villains and preparing the ground for the West to “defend” itself against these demons. Dabashi’s article was just a plain and pure polemic against Azar Nafisi. He simply stated his ideas about the villains in Johns Hopkins and Princeton, and Azar Nafisi as a “comprador intellectual” who played into their hands and worked for them in their interest. What was strange in this article was that there was not even a single reference to the book beside its cover. Dabashi thought that it was designed to be suggestive and bore stereotyped “Orientalist” images about under-aged sexuality in Moslem countries and among Moslem women, and that the blurbs on the back cover by Bernard Lewis, whom he called Humbert Lewis, enforces his claim. He wrote that “whatever is in the book is like the cover of the book!”

The other criticism appeared in Fatemeh Keshavarz’s Jasmines and Stars, More to Read than Lolita in Tehran. The author in this book echoes Dabashi without any reference to him, again criticizing Nafisi’s politics and the school of thought she adheres to. Keshavarz, while objecting to the intent of Nafisi to portray Iran as “Orientalists” do, goes further and objects to the writer for not introducing the better side of Iran reflected in the poetry of Saadi and Rumi; or why she did not teach Farrukhzad. One wonders if Keshavarz noticed that Nafisi was teaching in the English Department and not Persian literature. Unfortunately, she missed the unique opportunity to evaluate the book as it is, since she is a woman close to Nafisi’s generation and is academically on her level.

After reading the Keshavarz’s book, I doubted my own comprehension of the book and felt compelled to consider if I might have been among the group that our views was overshadowed by the sense of pride we felt as an Iranian woman. Reading the book as a harmless story, while I did not agree with the author’s view on many issues, I was far from considering it as the first step towards World War III.

Indeed, I thought I made a huge mistake in not taking it as seriously as Dabashi and Keshavarz suggested. Taking to heart Keshavarz’s remark that we need the light and a window to look and see things differently, I thought she might have a point that I had let my initial excitement and my sense of pride overshadow the danger hidden in this text. So I decided to reread it, not as fiction but as a memoir and a witness to life in a certain period. I had to read the book in a new light.

So I read the book for the second time, intending to check the quotations Keshavarz brought from the book and also read it as facts and not fiction.

What I found in the new RLT was astonishing. The book is indeed more fiction than the I remembered. The story took shape after Vladimir Nabakov’s “The Magician’s Room,” a gifted writer and critic whose love of life, literature and film is taken away from him, is driven underground. He selects his visitor friends and refuses to see many others who wished to be part of his hidden kingdom. This Magician is apparently a model for one of the character of the book, called “my magician,” who in turn is pushed underground by the Islamic Republic. Our narrator in RLT, who is one of the privileged few admitted into the “my magician’s” circle, later on is transformed into a magician herself with a little touch of Dorothy in Wizard of Oz and a little bit of Alice in Wonderland, mixed with the elitism of Shahrzad of the A Thousand and One Nights. She reinvents her own kingdom and selects her own circle of friends, though unlike the other two magicians she does not advise them, but leads them to find themselves and to invent or re-invent themselves through their imaginations, through reading and discussing the works of noted writers. Later on in the book, the reader and the narrator together learn that many were wishing to be part of her circle as well.

She has a room of her own with a window to the Alborz Mountain with a painting in it as well. This room is described the same way as the other two magicians’ rooms are described.

As the narrator’s life resembles the stories she reads, her girls’ lives run parallel to the respective novels they study. I was not surprised to find the seven girls each fits to themes and motifs of the novels. Defiance, inventing and re-inventing their own image through the use of imagination, dreaming for the future, independence, audacious use of the imagination, hating and resenting men, being abused and molested, being under the thumbs of some father, brother or uncle, being control by family and being bounded by social and traditional customs, and above all the perception of one’s life through the eyes of others (something unique to Iranian women!) vs. independent-minded European heroines all respectively are sampled in each anecdote narrated.

There is an undeniable miniature quality in the book which is more suitable to fiction than memoir. Almost all the characters in it have some definite function and are portrayed only in order to display it. We see only that aspect of the character that is needed for Nafisi’s story come to life. Azin arrives when her sarcasm is needed. Nassrin comes with her hatred and resentfulness, and Mahshid with her meekness arrives on cue. The Magician arrives when Nafisi is short of breath for more sarcasm and needs help to finish her sentence. It is interesting that even the family members all arrive just in time to throw a resentful fist to the well-choreographed show of the hideous life in Islamic Republic of Iran as depicted by Nafisi. These seven girls seem touched up by our imaginative narrator. Each one of them is abused either by father, brother, uncle, boss, teacher and all together by Humbert-Khomeini so conveniently, something possible only in fiction. In reality, one would have to place advertisements in quite a numbers of newspapers to gather such a group, but of course if one has a good imagination it wouldn’t be that difficult.

“My magician” not only remains unknown to the end but also non-existing to the end. He remains a fiction in his fictitious room throughout the book and then vanishes into another fictitious world. I say so since in the Tehran University of those times, no one with his features could have remained unrecognized. I can summon any Tehran University graduate of that period for testimony.

The work of imagination is extended to the events as well. Though many events described in the narrative are real, such as the bus trip to Armenia or the serial killings, there are events that, if they happened at all, did not occur as narrated. A Bahai friend who knows the Bahai community very well, including how it operates, denied the Bahai’s story as it was described. After reading the book, she asked Nafisi who this Bahai was. Oddly enough, she did not remember the name and had lost contact with him! Some of the events in the University, beyond the general strikes, could raise some questions if they are taken as facts. It is not difficult to check and verify the events in Iran, no matter how insignificant they might be.

The narrator seems the most unreal person to me. The lack of kindness, compassion and love; the coldness and detachment; snobbishness and arrogance manifested all through the book are way beyond the image I have of Iranian women, particularly if she is a mother. I am sure there is wisdom hidden in the creation of such a character, although I do not see it. All the events appear as a backdrop for the narrator to pour out her rage, anger and frustration. There is not a single narrative which is not combined with the narrator’s harsh opinion and judgments. The reader is bombarded with her opinions and beliefs on every issue. In short, our vast country is becoming populated by abusive men who tyrannically rule over their wives and daughters, women who are subordinate to their men even if they have American educations, brothers who have nothing else to do but watch dog their sisters, and those who make a joke when someone sets himself on fire. In this nasty world, our narrator's criteria are not only the norm but the rule.

I cannot imagine that the principal of love, compassion and generosity is valued in any field more than literature. In writing a memoir, as in history, one must look at the events and persons involved with kindness and give them the benefit of the doubt since they are not present at the pages of our writings to defend themselves even if they are alive, and if they are not alive so much more power to that principle. The author is in great violation of this principle in her book if it is a memoir at all.

Nafisi has no mercy on anybody, dead or alive, in the book. Mrs. Rezvan is not spared the author’s nastiness even though in essence she is more on Nafisi’s side and identifies with her. Her only problem is that she adopts a different approach to live and survive in the Islamic Republic. Nafisi does not hesitate to show her contempt for her even though while writing the book she knew she had died of cancer. Her contempt for whatever is not Nafisi overrides even her commitment to the moral lessons she values in the novels she is teaching. I think when reading The Great Gatsby she turned the very first page quickly or choose not to quote the magnificent opening line by Nick, the narrator, which says:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

Nafisi either forgets or does not know that Mrs. Rezvan is not the daughter of the mayor of Tehran and one of the six women representatives in the parliament. She had not been sent to England or Switzerland for school. She did not study in the United State and probably never had the kind of luxury Ms. Nafisi has. Still, she loves the kind of literature that Nafisi does and sees the good of it as well as she does. However, being in a lower station that Nafisi, she not only does not despise her, but idealizes her, helps her, fixes the pin in her scarves and checks on her not to get into trouble with authorities. Nafisi admits all this very openly, but we see her as one of the outcasts from Nafisi’s closed circle, coolly called by her family name and the title of Mrs. There is not a single positive word about her in spite of their family friendship. All this rage, anger, and criticism remains without any explanation. On pages 293-295 Nafisi does not miss the last chances to make clear how much she dislikes and resent this woman. She describes her last few years of her life with the same contempt she holds the previous years in, up to the last conversation when she is finally in dead bed

She was optimistic about the latest treatment, although her cancer had spread far. She asked me about my work, I did not tell her that I was healthy and writing a book and on the whole, enjoying myself.

The lack of compassion manifests itself not only in Mrs. Rezvan’s case. Those “her girls” took their share of it as well. And, gee, I hope they learned something. On pages 258-259 the girls are talking about love and marriage, Azin says

Nowadays, girls marry either because their families forces them, or to get green card, or to secure financial stability, or for sex—they marry for all kinds of reasons, but rarely for love.” Mahshid says: “Not all of them. Many women are independent. Look at how many businesswomen we have, and there are women who have chosen to live alone.” “Yes you are one of them, I thought, a studious working girl still living with her parents at thirty two.”

Needless to say, Nafisi herself lived with her mother though she was married and had kids. We Iranian readers understand this; sometimes the necessities of life make us do things which may not be our exact choice. Besides, not all of us prefer living alone. Many Iranians prefer living with their family, particularly their parents, even though it means sacrificing a bit of their privacy.

What amazes me the most is the silence of Iranian women scholars abroad regarding the various claims in this book. The image of Iranian women according to Nafisi is far from flattering. One wonders then who are those thousands women who have formed the most united organized oppositional body of politics in Iran. Who are those thousands physicians, lawyers, engineers, university professors, environmentalists, teachers, actresses, and journalists, accountant, etc.? One wonders if those millions of women who stick to their jobs and did not give up, those who went to the universities and courageously resisted the Islamic rules calculated to marginalize them, those who did not abandon their position, were not brave enough. Then how one defines courage? I’m sure if Henry James, with all his war record, would have been present in our time, he would have written a different version of Daisy Miller. He would have defined courage differently to give Iranian women pride of place.

Nafisi’s Iran is the most perfect imperfect world that could be created: a world of total malfunction. The men are all cruel and abusive, the women all crippled, the government is brutal, the dead remains on the ground without proper burial, the music is played out of tune, the clerics lie and cheat, the universities breed stupidity, people are all mean and bigoted, and mothers are all meek lambs lead by their husbands and sons, and, above all, no one is aware of all these maladies which surround them. The only thorn in this perfect imperfection is her few compliments to the giants of Iranian literature which seem to be there simply to save her from total embarrassment. Otherwise how could someone so committed to the magic of fiction give that power up and turn into reality?

Oddly enough in the book as a memoir we do not see anything of the real author’s experiences. We do not know how a wonderful French-educated father whose command of the French classics won him the Legion d’Honneur award marries her daughter at a very young age to someone whom she “despises.” We do not know how he did not insist that she have a profession prior to her marriage, as was very common even prior to her generation. We do not know what effect a mother who is one of the first six women representatives in the parliament had on her growing up. Was it half as effective as reading Jane Austin? If not, why bother with all this fuss. Let us get some books and read them and be done with all this nonsense. And finally, did Ms. Nafisi find a chance to ask her mother what they were doing in the parliament? How did she campaign? What was it like to be a woman and campaign to a seat in the parliament? What was the men’s reaction to that? Whom did she represent? How many people voted for her? What was her constituency? How did it feel to convince people, if she did at all, to trust her to advocate their cause and what were the important causes she advocated? What was her voting record? Did she ever vote against any bill? In favor of any? Etc.

If Ms. Nafisi would have answered a few the questions of this sort in her memoir and would have connected them to the readings she had done, it would have made a good memoir. Otherwise the book would remain as a solicitated fiction.

To read the rest, click here.

Zaidabadi's Shariati

With the anniversary of Dr. Ali Shariati’s death, many articles have appeared on various newspapers and sites. Since I never developed any feeling for him, I turned the page to the more interesting subjects. However, there were a few articles I couldn’t resist reading. Among them was Ahmad Zaidabadi’s Why I Praise Shariati. The fact that it had been recommended by Massoud Behnoud on strengthened my urge to read it.

While I generally agree with Zaidabadi, I could not disagree more on what he said about Shariati. Since he has decided not to answer those who make unfavorable comments about Shariati, I feel comfortable to pour my heart out on what I have been keeping pent up there for some thirty years.

I was in university when I become familiar with Shariati along with a few others who had lectures in the Hoseiniyeh Ershad about social and political Islam. I recall one by Hasheminejad titled Revolution and Counterrevolution in Imam Hosein’s Time. One can imagine what sort of crowd a lecture like this would gather. I did not go to any of them simply because I lacked belief not in the religion, but in political religion. Even if I accept that the original intent of most religions was political, still I refuse to give in to the idea that the institution of religion falls into such a depth.

Thought I participated in the demonstrations, and whatever else the intellectual atmosphere of Tehran would consider as oppositional at the time, I avoided certain activities which I simply could in no way bring myself to do, like listening to Soussan or Aghassi, who were very popular among everybody because they were “khalqi” (roughly, “populist”). Their music lacked whatever I needed music to stir in my soul, a sense of harmony and rhythm to balance me in the world I lived in. But with Shariati it was a different story. Not only did he make us more unbalance, as much as I gathered from his incomprehensible ideas, but I was always wary of those who form their deconstructionizing views of Islam in the Sorbonne, while Al-Azhar or Feiziyeh would have been a much suitable place for that kind of inspiration.

In his article, Zaidabadi tries to explain why he admires Shariati. After giving a general background on the Iran of his childhood, by which I think he means the seventies, how rough and corrupt society was in the poor neighborhoods in particular, he says there were two alternatives: one was Marxist materialism which would encourage class hatred. The other was Shariatism. Naturally he chose the latter. Then he argues that what Shariati advocated was the right cause or better, the right issue. He says, “Given the atmosphere of that time, if he would talk of liberalism, whom would he have attracted?” And I agree. This was one of the Shariati’s main problems: to attract. Mr. Zaidabadi probably won’t like to know that thinkers do not say something to attract. Thinkers talk out of conviction; they talk about liberalism because they believe in liberalism and not because there is a good market for liberalism. I agree with Zaidabadi, Shariati’s main attraction to Islam, very likely, was to have a unique commodity; first to write his dissertation on, second to bring back home as a new marketable hybrid.

And what was this hybrid? Bringing the much-delayed reform to the religion, just as was done in Christianity, just as the Calvinists did, for example. With a very good intention, however, he rushed into action. He returned to Iran and started preaching what he was not so sure of, and what he had not studied well. He found some “Abuzarr, who had a sword with which he could meet out love with one its side and death with the other.” He was right of course, he found the right commodity for the market. Kind, gentle, loving Iranians who were frustrated by what was going on would buy his product and many of them would pay dearly for such a weapon.

Somewhere else he says: “Shariati taught me to ask, to search and to have a critical view of life.” Does he mean that Saadi did not? Hafeza and Molavi did not? Kalileh va Demneh did not? Moosh o Gorbeh did not? Even the articles in the news paper and magazines of the time did not? Saedi did not? Mirzadeh Eshghi did not? Iraj Mirza did not? I do not mention the other poets and playwrights or all those foreign writers who were translated.

But above all did not Zaidabadi study physics and biology at school? And maybe a little calculus? Plato and Aristotle? What we know of social and political, psychological and other social and human science are all modeled after scientific laws and are just footnotes to those great old thinkers. That is where we all started to learn how to think, even if we were dismissed for being privileged with having a culture and a way of living which required thinking and encouraged thinking simply to manage our daily lives.

He claims, “Were it not for Shariati’s, I would have turned to violence rather than what I’m now: a liberal, and human right activists.” Mr. Zaidabadi falls into several fallacies in the way he portray his life. The either-or, reductionism, appealing to fear, and hasty generalization embedded in this statement is more akin to George Bush’s arguments before marching to Iraq than what I know of Zaidabadi’s. Many of us are quite decent and care for other human being and did grow up in the same Iran and went to same schools there, and did grow up well without owing any of it to Shariati. Moreover, Shariati’s writings fitted very well into the seventies’ appetite for violence and bloodshed. (See for example, the reference to Abuzarr’s sword.) Let's remember that Shariati's main political interest in France was Franz Fanon, whose chief message was the efficacy of revolutionary violence not so much for smashing an oppressive political system, but to validate the manhood of the oppressed.

Zaidabadi admits that “although Shariati had an exaggerated language and sometimes could lead his audience to idealism…, he makes the Iranian atmosphere gentler and more humane.” Exaggeration, bitterness, anger, sarcasm and worse of all depression, these were all Shariati’s trademarks. None of these traits would produce a healthy atmosphere, but a suffocating one, in which no one would survive. He himself, rest in peace, was its first casualty.

Finally, Zaidabadi writes, “Shariati was the best humanistic and spiritual alternative to the materialism advocated by left and others.” He holds that whatever was not Shariati was materialistic and therefore devoid of spirituality and humanity. I wish to know where he got this ridiculous idea. At best we may say that materialism contradicts idealism (with lots of compromise, of course), but materialism does not necessarily contradict spiritualism or humanism. Materialism advocated by many leftists in no way is a hindrance to the humanism or spirituality. The fact that some people consider poverty as an Omm ol-Khabaes (roughly, "root of evil"), is nothing unique to the leftist or the materialist. The first person who wisely saw the evil in poverty and encouraged his followers to avoid it was our good prophet Zaratoshtra who was the champion of humanity and spirituality. And if it is too ancient for Zaidabadi, I summon Voltaire and the dahri school as witnesses.

But if I may ask our friend Zaidabadi to do us all a favor, since he understood what Shariati said, please, in a language of his own which we all understand well, tell us what Shariati is saying which is so compelling. Here in New York University’s library we have twenty six volumes of Ali Shariati’s collected works. I have read only twelve of them but have looked through all of them. Aside from their being overwhelmingly repetitive, they all have the scattered quality of free association preaching. They do not read well and do not make sense. He bases his arguments on his own newly-minted concepts. And instead of reasoning he makes one assertion after another. Those of us who studied here have learned to read differently and as a result his writings sound either ambiguous or worse, meaningless. But if those who like him and understand him, instead of praising him, try to tell us what he said, they will have done a favor to him and to us as well. His turbulent soul would rest much peacefully.

To read the rest, click here.

Journey from the Land of No

A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran

By Roya Hakakian

I had just finished reading Najib Mahfooz’s The Children of Jebelaawi and then spent an hour with Krzysztof Kislovski’s Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness upon Your Neighbor when that I started a much delayed reading of Journey from the Land of No. By page twenty two I had already wiped my eyes at least three times and by page of one hundred I had a hard time keeping them open since sleep had overcome me, but I did not want to quit. A delightful book that mercifully was not called a memoir to mark it as real, but was written with such fluency of feeling and emotion and was spoke with so much love and sweetness that I had no doubt that every breath of it was true even if it might have had some touches of fantasy.

Hakakian disarms the reader when she disqualifies herself right in the beginning by writing to her editor, David, that, “When it comes to Iran, I’m anything but objective. The past and the events of the years that followed the revolution had biased me forever.” Indeed, a full awareness of bias is highest form of objectivity. Luckily, her editor thought that way when he wrote to her, “Tell me about them.”(p. 13)

Turning to the next page, my fears were completely gone when she wrote, “As a refugee …, when you have nothing left to guard, you guard your memories. You guard them with silence. You do not draw your treasures into the light, lest exposure soften their sharp … sad or gay …details.” And when I came to, “When you belong to a breed on the verge of extinction, a Jewish women from the Islamic Republic of Iran living in the Unite States, one small slip can turn you into a poster child for someone else’s crusade,” I felt our memories are in safe hands and the author will do her best not to violate the trust invested in her guardianship. I also felt reassured that there would be something promising from a girl who simply says, “It was nothing spectacular that made our bliss spectacularly complete:” (p. 25) I knew that I that I would certainly have something spectacular.

Hakakian takes us with her on a grand tour of her girlhood in the Tehran early in the revolution. In fact, it was a coincidence that I read her book following that of Najib Mahfooz’s. Where Mahfooz infuses the layers of human cultural growth from the creation of Adam and Eve to the modern time of industrial revolutions, eliminating the overlaps or the exceptions and leaving us with an idealized drawing of spiral repetition of historical development, Hakakian, through her magnifying glass, takes us into the real-life scenes of one of the latest layers of this historical monument: the early Islamic Revolution in Iran. In addition to her poetic style coupled with her literary facility manifested all through the book, her journalistic discipline seems to be firmly in charge of the narrative. There is not even a single place where the author is excessively emotional, manipulative, or even judgmental in her narratives to convey her opinions and her beliefs. What is even more impressive is that there is not even a temptation for it. She seems to be well aware of the value of her memories. Didn’t she tell us before?

Her story goes parallel to the Samad Behrangi’s The Little Black Fish. She sees herself as one of the small black fishes who want to reach the sea, to grow and learn. She sees herself in that very small sheltered pool of the family life which is just perfectly spectacular where she is loved and cared for, where her father stands as the embodiment of humanity and culture to the family and the community, and where there is a life in the words, poetry and literature, but she still feels the need to move into a bigger sea.

As she grows, the walls of this sanctuary extend to the extended family and that is where she recognizes that there are some not so spectacular barriers which could hinder her dreams to reach a bigger sea. The wedding of her cousin Farah, a marriage which is decided by wealth, parental standard of happiness, Hafez’s poetry, and a forensic doctor, in which neither love nor wisdom has any place, teaches her that a pure set of conventions governs life. Through various family anecdotes, she vividly paints the limited walls of this sanctuary. However, she never over extends them to a generalization or norm. I find it very daring on her part to criticize her own community, and her own religion, admitting that discriminatory laws and regulations are not limited to particular religions or cultures.

She goes beyond the border of her family walls. While she finds the bliss of friendship, she also meets the bigger world which is governed by other sets of conventions, and that is where she also learns about subversion. She learns about the life beyond the family in school, synagogue, student organization. Each opens some doors to her just to show another obstacle behind them. However, all through the narrative, she remains humbly as one of the small black fishes without promoting herself to the Little Black Fish.

Even though she comes from a younger generation than mine, Hakakian brings back, along with the part of Tehran and her life in it, some of the memories which were about to fade away from my mind: the memory of the wonderful friendships which I think is the dearest memory to any Iranian. Her friendship with Z; examining the life and exploring it together; watching Bibi, Z’s sister, taking her bath; following Z’s uncle’s solitary life; finding the exceptional in what is ordinary; taking pleasure in solitary contemplation; and above all finding a life beyond words: metaphor, though these are uniquely Hakakian’s treasures, still, like a museum object, a viewer has a share of them when they are on display.

Dismayed and disillusioned from what she is confronted by outside, expelled from her afternoon English class, and not “clean” enough to lead the hymns in her house of worship, she runs to the desolate streets of Tehran, just a few months before the revolution, barefoot, with her sneakers hung on her shoulders, straying in front of Tehran University, apparently after a demonstration had been scattered by police and the army, she watches the confused street and half closed shops where the people are wondering whether to continue the rest of the day or not, while delayed tears are forced out of her eyes by the residues of the tear gas, she hears a boy hiding behind a tree calling her, asking for assistance, to tell him if there is any soldiers are around. She shook her head for an answer. He asked her what she is doing there and where she lives, to which she signals him with her arm pointing to the right. “You’ve got to talk, I can’t read an arm yet. I’m only a sophomore.” With all the clips of film we watched on TV before and after the revolution, of all the demonstration, tear gas, burning tyres, flags and banners, students, soldiers and police, none so vividly brought the soul of Tehran to me, Tehran full of fear, full of chaos, full of youthful energy, full of tear gas and still full of humor and humanity. Where was she those times to make a report for Sixty Minutes [pdf]? (p.95)

What makes her narrative even more compelling is its simplicity. There is nothing grandiose or extraordinary to bewilder the reader, nothing calls for magic or superwomen to come to the rescue; it is all a simple affair of life in a very turbulent time. No heroism and no heart bleeding victimization, it is just a meaningful tale of a young women growing to maturity along with many others. In the very last few pages of her book, she meets her friend Z. She recounts that visit simply as:

In four years, Z had lost an uncle to grief, a brother to war, a sister to prison, and a mother to insanity. And there I was, a helpless pet, cooing to her to explain the inexplicable. Once her weaknesses mirroring my own had bonded us. Now her great share of despair was driving us apart. It made a giant of her while I was still a girl and frail. (p. 220)

I wish Hakakian perceived herself as we perceive her in the last chapter of her book. I wish she knew how I envy her for her realization of truth at that young age. If we would have realized what she learned at the age of eighteen, things would have been very different now. What if we would have felt responsible enough not sacrifice the truth for the sake of strategy and wise enough not to tint it by exaggeration and lying just to expedite the course of events? It is so heartwarming to read Hakakian’s account of life in those times. It is reassuring that her generation has grown wiser than ours and has come to such an awareness at that very young age. In her conversation with Z she writes:

… It is what she learned in prison that upsets her even more.

What did she learn in prison?

Samad had not been drowned… A poor swimmer, he had drowned on his own. … The anti-shah intellectuals of the time saw it as opportunity to pin it on the shah to fuel the public’s resentment of him. One of the pivotal legends … had been nothing but a hoax … A little lie between revolutionary friends. (p. 220)

I wished she would have looked at the final stage of her life in Iran with a celebratory regard. I wished she would not remember it with bleakness. If I would have found out about the lies we were told, I sure would have celebrated it, though the last scene in the balcony of her house with all the burnt books would excuse that little blemish of the book.

The book is truly a bundle of delight and pride, a book I heavily recommend to everyone to read, particularly to the second generation. There is a lot in it to be learned and to delight in. And even more, that Hakakian faithfully observed the ninth commandment, if not out of the religious zeal, surely for journalistic professionalism: She did not bear false witness upon neighbors. For that, history will be grateful.

To read the rest, click here.

AliReza Darvish: Three Animations

The first animation of Alireza Darvish, three minutes in length, titled Life Is Short, reminded me of my childhood thirst for whatever was written. It was about a very simple matter of fact issue: creation. In less than two minutes, he blended the biblical story of Adam and Eve and their offspring with the Darwinian evolutionary version of creation. Oddly enough neither Adam nor Eve had a problem with this union, nor did God. Those of us with religious feelings who saw the film were particularly delighted at the blend. However Alireza himself was not content with the merging of the two. He believed that the creation in either sense or even together is incomplete. Adam and Eve, biblical or Darwinian, go through a cultural evolution. It is this third stage which highlights his animation. Adam and Eve sail through the river and walk out from the Garden of Eden with the most delightful gift for their future offspring, their books.



In the Foot step of Water, the children of Adam and Eve are freed from their two conflicting heritages and they define themselves only with their third essence: culture. As they pass through life, they create, they form, they record, and they liberate . They pass through fire, fly over the sky, swim through rivers day and night, war and peace; All the way, they live by their pen.  Their pen is taken away from them, is broken, is thrown out, their texts are crumbled and discarded, but they do not give up. This is a tale of perseverance, exertion and force, it is striving and succeeding, it is victory and freedom. It is the story of all the little drops which make the ocean, all the little words which make the sea of letters. A magnificent sea of knowledge is painted masterfully by the hands of this talented artist into a six minute animation. Darvish paints our lives, our generation, probably the last generation, which appreciates the written text, and books as the building blocks of life. The children of Adam and Eve have “seen the garden and have picked the apples from that untouchable branch.” They pick up their pen, gather the words, and blend them together; the words evolve into fish which carry the letters of the discarded written words and print them on the water of the ocean, to be carried all over. This film won the Jury Prize in Milan.

Alireza Darvish’s third animation, What If Spring Does Not Come,

is another tale of struggles in life, of the struggle for liberation and freedom. It is a woman’s tale of struggle and perseverance. It is a tale of life, presumably a real life, probably a sweet memoir of Alireza’s mother. Its subject is a woman for whom the very same sea in which men could swim turns into hot desert sand when she approaches it innocently with a flower of hope. She bumps into desert sand where she hopes to swim in water. But she does not give up, but goes with the hope, and seeks and finds fulfillment in culture, in books, in the written word, where there is salvation and freedom, and where she finds the way to the water, over which she sails on a book.

In all his paintings and animations, Alireza enshrines the book as no one else has done before. His passion for the keeping this dying and fading artifact of human life is worth at least three cheers, three bravos, and millions of thanks.
This animation very timely, as the campaign for a million signatures has terrified the Islamic Republic of Iran and caused it to curb women’s activity in the harshest degree. It was shown at the Brooklyn Film Festival as one of the two Iranian movies participants. Like his previous animations and his paintings, it is deeply occupied with the subject of culture and life, with women as the carrier of culture. This eight minute animation was presented in one of the most popular times of the festival and was received very well by the audience, even though the genre of symbolism has never been a popular form of artistic expression in the United States. Alireza’s animation particularly stands out for its technical mastery.

To read the rest, click here.

Persian Garden Party for John Edwards

As a registered member of the Democratic Party, I feel it my duty and responsibility to participate fully in all elections, down to those for school board (even though we do not have any children). I very strongly believe that participation is an answer to all our problems, from health insurance to torture and war. If I understand the word democracy correctly, participation is its essence.

I decided to answer the call for throwing a fund raising party for John Edwards due to my sheer belief that he is the most eligible candidate and the one with the most potential to be elected president. My husband, Evan, with unusual patience designed the flyer. With the help of our good friend, the artist Alireza Darvish, he gave the Persian prince a transplant of John Edwards’ head and had him hunting a Republican elephant. I received plenty of comments regarding the party, flyer, Edwards, and so on. They were all very well taken, particularly those who complimented us and those who graciously accepted the invitation, although many of them could not attend due to long distance we were from France, Germany, California, Texas, and Canada, and many were deterred by an unusual rain storm and the resulting disastrous traffic.

Among these comments was one concerning Edwards’ position on Iran. Apparently in an speech at the Herzliya, in Israel, Edwards said regarding Iran “all the options remain on the table,” meaning the possibility of attack on Iran is still an option. Well, I also heard the news; however it neither excites me nor surprises me. I have lived through the presidencies of six presidents to know that American foreign policy won’t alter very much by the president or even the party which takes over the White House or even the Senate or the House of Representatives. The policy of having hegemony on global oil supplies has never changed with a change of presidents. This is all the more true at this stage of the game, when the candidates are trying to get themselves nominated for the election and their attentions is entirely directed towards the American electorate. And we all know America’s friendship with any country won’t override their interest. We all have seen what happened to the so-call friends when they are no longer useful.

Our dear friend wrote:

Forgive me, but were Ms. Siegel strolling out in the 'Persian Garden' when Mr. Edwards (see http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Edwards_Iran_must_know_world_wont_0123.html) delivered his speech via satellite at a Jan '07 security conference in Herzliya, Israel?

He said that "Iran threatens the security of Israel and the entire world" strongly hinting at the need for possible US military action by repeating the familiar line "To ensure Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table", and in case the audience were not paying attention he went on to emphasize his point "Let me reiterate" ALL options must remain on the table."

Unfortunately that is the same kind of 'reckless' war-mongering rhetoric and threatening posture we've seen too much from every other Israel-first, Zionist supported American politician in the last 6 years.

Yes, Mr. Edwards is an intelligent politician with some good plans to face the health care, poverty, and global warming issues. Perhaps even a defender women's rights, but make no mistake friends; he is no friend of Iran or Iranians.

I say to him, no, I was not strolling in a Persian garden when Edwards gave his speech. I simply paid it no mind. It is not Edwards’ position, but America’s position towards Iran, and not only do I not like it, but I abhor it. However, if the course of politics needs to be changed it has to be through grass roots activity and awareness, and that won’t be possible without getting involved. Is John Edwards perfect? Not at all. It is not just his position on Iran I disagree with, but I even have severe misgivings about many of his domestic policies. Do any of us like this shamble of health insurances? Does anybody in his right mind possibly think that he will do any thing about health insurance as long as “health” is a giant business in the United States? However, do any of us expect any candidate at this stage candidly to declare this? Do you think he will fight to free people’s health from the dominance and control of greedy entrepreneurs?

Well, I do not expect the impossible from any of them regarding Iran or any other country. I’m afraid it won’t be my generation to see any substantial change in American foreign policy. My only hope is by having a Democrat as a president who sticks strongly to the essential core of the Democratic Party, we will have a better ground for the growth of awareness and better education for the mass of Americans, with the hope that they will someday come to understand that the worlds need to be changed.

I know I sound very naïve, but it is no more naïve that my strong belief that one day Good will overcomes Evil.

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Ahmadinezad: Our Man in Saadabad

On the day of the 2005 elections, worried, angry and disappointed, my sister-in-law and I walked down one of the narrow winding streets of northern Tehran towards Ghaytariyya Park to distract ourselves. We knew that we did not have much of a chance of winning. Since early in the morning, we, along with my brother and brother-in-law, had checked almost all the more than fifty polling places in northern Tehran. They all were embarrassingly empty.

Just few yards passed our house we ran into Haj Shahrokh, our neighborhood’s sweet old grocery and bakery owner. I asked if he had voted.

“Yes of course.”

“For whom, if I may ask?”

Very shyly he said, “Ahmadinejad.”

My brother had been campaigning for Rafsanjani, though he could not convince his own family to vote for him in the first run. I laughed and told him not worry, I won’t tell my brother. My sister-in-law asked him, “Why Ahmadinejad?”

“Rafsanjani has been president and had been in the Parliament and has been the head of the Expediency Council. In short, he has had enough chance to do whatever he wanted to and now is time for younger people to be given a chance. Furthermore, I felt bad for him since no one was supporting him and I thought it is good to vote for him.”

I think it was this second reason which softened my heart. I got the feeling that he went to the voting booth with a fatherly attitude with his late son, who had died the previous year of stroke, in mind. I could forgive him for betraying my brother, I could understand him very well; we all are entitled to listen to our hearts and even value it more than our minds even in political matters. This is one aspect of Iranian life which we cannot ignore. If King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom abdicated because he cannot take his heart with him to the palace, we can surely accept the grocer’s heart in the voting booth. The night when Ayatollah Khamenei appeared to vote and the cameraman moved close enough to show his hand moving so that it was clear that he was voting for Hojjatoleslam Rafsanjani, I was even more certain that Ahmadinejad will be our ninth president. ( Aristotelian syllogism does not permit it but the Iranian politics does.)

Our ninth president happens to be the most controversial man in Iranian politics. Though Ahmadinejad has a doctorate, he does not speak any foreign languages, his Persian is only suitable for talking to peasants. His statements on various subjects, from soccer to nuclear energy, from economics to religion, are so naïve and ignorant that it is surprising that he has a driving license.

I met Ahmadinejad just few months after he had been elected, in the New York Hilton Hotel. His speech was as shallow as any of the other speeches he would later give, and devoid of any content. Basically, he said how good and kind Iranians are. I’m sure he was very sincere about this. Indeed, we all know how good and kind we are. However, his premise for that conclusion was not valid: His declaration, “What nation do you know which has Naser Khosrow or Baba Taher Oryan,” even when coupled with his statement that Iranian mothers are the best in the world could hardly lead to it. And his piety? I shook hands with him without any gloves on, nor was my head covered either. And believe it or not his head, was not covered either by a light nimbus.

Then all the gaffs began, one after the other. From wanting to wipe the Israel off the map to his latest, that America was looking to find the home of our Imam of the Age (عج) to attack him directly; they were all met with uproars, cheers and jeers, many being shocked and embarrassed.

Though he has been under attack from various sides, including the members of his own government, and was criticized harshly for his mismanagement and ignorance and inexperience, his incompetent ministers, his hasty decisions which, after some waste of money, are either abandoned or are undone cost overruns, and for his various orders and plans which are either done on a whim or without sufficient preparation and consideration, he still goes forward and keeps doing whatever he was doing. He arrests the British Navy crew and releases them with newly tailored suits, reduces the interest rate without considering the consequences, says women can go to the stadium to watch soccer and then says not yet. He says women’s hair is not our concern and then he says it is our concern indeed. He is against wasting money, yet he has wasted more money than any other government. The economy is sinking and inflation is soaring. His friends and cliques applaud and regard him with awe, while the opposition criticizes him and some pretend that they are surprised.

I’m neither his fan nor his enemy. Indeed I’m not even surprised that he is the way he is. He is simply campaigning! Odd? Yes. Everywhere else one campaigns and then gets elected. But in his case he got elected first and then he was smart enough to figure out he needed an agenda to gather a constituency. The front pages of newspapers and few staged trips to the universities and, probably, all the jokes and cartoons gave him the message: “Sir you don’t have any base in today’s Iran. You had better move and reach out.” That he did. Well he knew very well that his constituency, the basijis and the Haj Shahrokhs, wouldn’t last till the end of his presidency and that he had better build a more reliable one.

Ahmadinejad’s election was a coup, a coup de chance! (No wonder he claimed the Imam of the Age was behind it all! It was truly miraculous!). In the absence of credible statistics, it is legitimate to assume that Ahmadinejad was elected simply with the votes of the basijis and a few Haj Shahrokhs, the party of pure fleeting luck, and he knew that he could not rely on it. He was smart enough to know that he could not rely on the basijis; in a couple of years their kids would enter political life and would not be like their fathers, they would not be basijis or Revolutionary Guards, but would go through a rapid political development. And the Haj Shahrokhs? They don’t grow, they just shrink even faster. Ahmadinejad knows how fast Behesht Zahra Cemetery is growing. He knows that in the next elections he won’t have the benefit of a boycott either. He also knows that in the next election, the women’s vote alone will make it impossible for any conservative or fundamentalist to get elected to any office. The last City Councils elections and the election of Mohsen Rezai Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf as the mayor of Tehran by the City Council just to spite him confirm how politically shrewd the people have become. It also confirms that the generation that helped him before, the generation who believes in predestined politics, is not there any more. Within a mere two years that little constituency of Ahmadinejad and the fundamentalists has already been reduced to a very dangerous low. He realized soon after the election that he had to do something.

Ahmadinejad started by defining himself as a protégé of the Imam of the Age. He is not shy when it comes to his relationship with the Twelve Imam. Right before his election, he allegedly invited a group of clerics from the holy city of Qom to determine from what direction the Imam of the Age will enter Tehran so he could make an appropriate highway to welcome him. (Does not his virtue lie in his absence?) His halo in the UN was another example of his relationship with the higher worlds. He has used such hidden links to the Twelve Imam in most of speeches, particularly in the countryside.

Moreover, when the basijis recently gathered in Isfahan, he compared himself to Ayatollah Modarres who single-handedly faced down the hoodlums (arazel and obashes) just as he wanted to face down the current hoodlums who oppose him. (Incidentally, all are his own people are criticizing him now.) I do not know Modarres well enough to be of any judge in this regard, but I do know Iranian well enough to wonder whom he meant by hoodlums.

It was so interesting that when he gave his famous anti-Israel and Holocaust denial speeches, it was Kofi Annan who advised the international community not to get excited since they were are all for domestic use. The outrageous messages and letters he sends to various heads of state are all sent with the same intention. He is reaching to some twenty million Iranians who had never bothered about politics before.

Unfortunately there are people in many remote parts of the country who have never entered into the political life in Iran, either due to their isolated existence, the brutal and hard condition of their lives, or their lack of education, and politics has no place in their lives. Ahmadinejad is giving them a very new concept of politics, though it is a little closer to witchcraft. Just as Imam Khomeini managed to engage many people whom the leftists and the nationalists could not, Ahmadinejad is reaching out to those who have not yet been engaged, people who understand better messages from the Imam of the Age, those who are wise enough to believe in His protection and blessing, rather than United Nations and other Human Rights organizations. The cult of the Twelve Imam is a safe and assured party to be established, and sure enough there are many people who are truly awaiting his physical appearance and see only the practical value in his advent. And Ahmadinejad is taking a lead on that front. I doubt that he can gather as many to help him in any coming election, but he might be saved from deadly embarrassments. Let’s see whose list for the next parliamentary election would be signed by the Imam. Let’s see what else would appear in Ahmadinejad’s speeches. Let’s see if he will act as a president after all. Let’s see if he finally agrees that the best way to draw the people to his side is to help to improve their lives. Let’s see if he finally, as a man of science, recognizes that the age of taking advantage of people’s religious beliefs is over and that one cannot substitute a program which can satisfy the people’s basic necessities with demagoguery.

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Shirin Ebadi, Human Rights, Women, and Islam

On May 16, a fundraising event was held in honor of Shirin Ebadi and Her Excellency Sheikha Haya Rashed al-Khalifa in Rutgers University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Shirin Ebadi, the famous lawyer, Nobel laureate, and human rights activist, spoke after dinner. There was nothing new in what she said, nor was anything new needed. However it is time to draw up a balance sheet of Ebadi’s ideas and philosophy just to make sure that every bit of the fruits of her efforts is preserved.

In the aftermath of the announcement of the Nobel Committee that Shirin Ebadi had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I lost a good night’s sleep over it. No, not because of the excitement due to the honor which as an Iranian woman I felt, and not because I was thinking about how many qualified Iranian women were in fact honored along with her, but because of the difficult situation she was in. Following the announcement, the news broadcasters qualified the decision by singling out her claim that Islam is perfectly compatible with human rights and as a result with equal rights for women. I rolled over all night thinking where she came up with this idea and how this important thought had been overlooked by the keen eyes of many zealous Muslims who cared to portray Islam as such and many other human right activists who did not want to alienate Muslims. I tried to foresee the arguments she would come up with. The day after and the day after, all the way up to the day of the ceremony and her acceptance speech and her book’s publication and beyond, she presented no argument beyond appealing to a moderate interpretation of Islam. The compatibility of human rights and Islam has remained nothing more than a bare claim.

While I respect Shirin’s religious faith and applaud her effort to democratize it, I’m still hesitant to be too optimistic about the fulfillment of all her claims. In her speech at Rutgers, which was in fact a summary of her book, she revisited the issues of women, gender, politics, democracy, Islam, religion, culture, etc. All were backed up with not more than a very few cherry-picked examples. No arguments were given which would stand up to the present audience’s questions, let alone the ruling conservatives of Iran, the zealous clerics in the seminaries in Qom, or, on the other hand, any feminist movement.

Ebadi claimed that the problem of gender discrimination in the Middle East is not Islam’s problem. How? Very simple. One reason she gave was that the non-Islamic countries still have gender discrimination: The United States does not have enough women in its Senate and Congress or as cabinet minister and so on. The second reason was that the discrimination against women is not the same in all Islamic countries. Neither of these arguments was carefully enough examined to be of any use in bolstering her claim. The Islamic countries she mentioned, where the women enjoy some sort of equality, are multi-cultural and multi-religion nations. Of the countries identified as Muslim nations which are not being regressive towards women, Bangladesh and Pakistan still inherited the multi-cultural essence of their original motherland India. Similarly Malaysia and Morocco are all very much affected by the non-Islamic cultures that they were in close contact with.

On the other hand, Ebadi’s examples of non-Islamic nations with gender problems turn the table around. So if it is not Islam, then it should be the culture! Well, is she ready to accept the challenge? Does she mean a women-loving culture which produces Nizami’s Haft Paykar, Saadi’s ghazals, or Hafez’s Shakheyeh Nabat, or, for that matter, Ferdowsi’s women, has produced all these discriminatory laws towards women? I simply suggest that she read Vis o Ramin, a celebrated medieval love narrative unique in the literature of the world, and judge it for herself. And if medieval Iran is too unrealistic, I refer her to the resumé of thousands of Iranian women from her own generation and even older who have emerged from a wide range of backgrounds and were nurtured by the same culture which she tries to blame.

She then made an analogy between gender discrimination and hemophilia, arguing that women are only the carrier of disease, which is passed on to her son without ever being affected by the disease herself. This analogy was well-received with laughter and applause; however, it remains an analogy and should not lead us to any conclusions. But even if we do draw conclusions from it, does she mean that we, the women, are responsible for the maladies we are facing? I hope not!

Then what? Well, there are still problems. She mentions some: stoning law, divorce law, child custody law, polygamy law, travel permit law, honor killing law, blood money law, and etc. Where are these laws from? Of course these are all shariat, but the conservative version of the shariat. Ebadi believes that there is a milder version of Islam which does not advocate any of this, though she is not very clear on its operative system and how or by whom these mild interpretations should be implemented. Ordinary people? The elite clerics? Those who have a hold on jurisprudence?

There is no use for interpretations if they are not done systematically and are not institutionalized. This includes the permissibility of interpretation by non-authorized clerics or laymen. Any new version of reading and interpreting religious texts needs to be brought under an umbrella of what in other religions is called a reformed version of that religion; and still we should remember that the reform movements won’t eliminate religious orthodoxy, i.e. if the modern version of Islam does not permit certain kinds of punitive acts it does not mean that act would be abolished. Still, a fully-established and well-recognized reformed branch of a religion needs to go through the processes of empowering, legitimization, and entrenchment in order to be of any use; and the political power structure, the majority of legislative and judiciary bodies, should adhere to that branch of religion to make it effective.

A reformed Islam is passed overdue. Like any other religion, Islam has to face such an unavoidable destiny. However, like all its predecessors, the movement needs to come from and within the faith. Post-Vatican II Catholicism and Reform Judaism both developed from within their respective original faiths and texts. The reform within these religions were not just a mere interpretation of texts or the insertion of reformed ideas into these religions, but a close examination of the texts and reading, teaching, and advocating this close examination and, more importantly, challenging dogmas and being prepared to be challenged. It is the third factor which we need to emphasize, though we cannot ignore the importance of the first two, which requires a huge amount of courage and dedication. We, as a Muslim nation ruled by Islamic laws, need to go a few extra miles. Except for one short aborted and native movement, Babism-Bahiism, and an even more fleeting one launched by Kasravi, there has not been any serious major or minor attempt in any established way towards reform in Islam in recent centuries. We all are familiar with their bloody fate which was no better than that of the medieval Sufis or those very few other medieval movements, all labeled as heretics. Conservatives have had quite a tight control over the laws and the parameters of religion, and any digression is suppressed with great severity. The definitions of ertad, blasphemy or heresy, are so broad that they could bring down just about any reformist claim very easily. I’m surprised how Ayatollah Sane’i or President Khatami or Ayatollah Montazeri and the late Hojatoleslam Salehi Najafabadi were not formally charged with this, though each one of them has been pushed into the same dead end corner.

Once a friend of mine, an Iranian physician who had come back from a conference in Beijing, told me that in the conference, a Vietnamese surgeon asked him about the current state of health and medicine in Iran. My friend, caught by surprise, told him that the state of our medicine is like our traveling—we travel by airbus and jumbo jet as well as by donkey. What do you do in Vietnam? The colleague answered that there they only travel by bus. I thought about this anecdote as Ebadi was talking in Rutgers. Women rights, human rights, etc., in Iran move from one extreme to the other. While one woman in one part of the country gets stoned for adultery, the government allegedly provides another place with an official house of prostitution. While one woman is battling in court to divorce or for child custody, another gets millions of votes and becomes the head of city council. While one hundred sixty thousand women are getting arrested in just two days for bad hejabi, our activists in the UN are fighting against the stoning law which had been applied in the rarest of cases. And while clerical reformists are advocating and arguing over the legitimacy of the enforcement of hejab as unsubstantiated law, our feminist activists boycott the election which would have placed them in power. We are truly the land of “broken mirrors” and it is not easy to see our true faces and I have no idea with what certainty Shirin Ebdi points to the sources of our problems in our culture; it is a gross oversimplification indeed.

Ebadi equates human rights with woman rights and considers this equation as the key to the process of democracy in the region. Of course the fate of many issues, at least, in Iran, is tied directly to women: democracy, human rights, reformism, and peace. However, reducing human rights and democracy to women’s rights is another oversimplification; and looking for a shortcut is even more of an underestimation. We have the examples of Communist [pdf] China or Soviet Russia which were far from democratic; and human rights violations were not less than in many other places. Still formal gender equality was maintained, although there is still a wide range of domestic abuses in both countries. To focus on “women rights” in accordance with the UN Declaration of Human Rights not only won’t help the women’s movement in Iran, but is a severe distraction, while emphasizing justice as a major tenet of Islam will lead us to unavoidable means of equality to maintain that principal. Why not ask for the given? Women have enough in their power to ask for the justice which includes equality. Twenty-five million voting ballots are nothing to be ignored; let us use them for a possible change!

So much emphasis, no matter how well-meaning, on the heartbreaking, suppressive, and misogynistic sharia laws not only won’t do any good, but is counterproductive. For those of us living in the US or Europe, it is a constant battle and a waste of energy just to wipe out the stereotypical image of “the battered, abused and backward Iranian women” which is bestowed upon us by well-meaning activists. Recently, a young Iranian writer told us that a publisher would reject her novel unless she revised it. The problem was with the male character in the book, who was a loving, caring father and did not abuse the heroine of the novel. The publisher bluntly told her she could not sell a book in which the Middle Eastern female character is not abused by a father or brother or husband in the States. A female friend from Pakistan, a very accomplished journalist, was asked to write her memoirs. She finished, but it was rejected. Why? She was too strong, too professional, not abused, and was too successful prior coming to the US. These are just a very few example of what this negative portrayal could do to us.

We as Middle Easterners expected to be particularly grateful for any show of favor from our “betters.” An Iranian women friend in France who received the honorary Légion d'honneur award from the European Parliament in Strasbourg for her services to refugee women in France refused to have any public celebrations, and was harshly criticized for this. The female French activists expected her to be especially grateful for receiving such an honor since she herself is a foreigner, indeed the first foreigner to receive this award. One of the services she had performed was creating a very simple language teaching method suitable for illiterate women who need to speak French to make living in their host country. Ironically enough, Shirin Ebadi’s book fall as a victim in this way as well. Her book was the only book written by a Nobel Laureate which did not received the publicity which it deserved. It never got in the display windows and the desks of the bookstores, Why? It should be clear by now...

Our activists, such as Ebadi and Mehrangiz Kar, could be more valuable to the human rights, women rights, and democratic movements if they could separate the domain of their activities. Lectures in American and European universities and campaigning in the UN against some isolated cases of stoning which is an extremely unusual and rare practice which the Islamic Republic has executed only few times and in remote and backward regions of the country which are largely out of the central government’s control, a practice which the ruling clerics are either against or embarrassed by, is a waste of time and energy. This could very easily be solved within the Iranian judiciary system and by some local advocacy. The conditions set to make the claim, to prove the case, to testify to it, to judge it and to implement it are so difficult, bordering on the impossible, that not even one case of stoning should ever happen. When we get access to a platform in the UN, why waste it on such an isolated case rather than campaigning for something which affects us all in a more vital way, such as the freedom of press, or the condition of prisons, the hejab, or unwarranted searches. In all these cases not only do we have the international community on our side but the people, many progressive clerics, and above all our kind and generous culture. The international community will not and can not help us to defeat the suppressive sharia laws, but our tradition and culture does.

Campaigning on the employment of women, encouraging their activities in various NGO’s, training young Iranian lawyers to work as volunteers in various parts of the country, for example, would be a more positive move and would be welcomed by Iranian women. With some forty million women in Iran, of course there are hundreds of horrifying stories which could be found (as everywhere else in the world). Taking them as a norm or representative and posing them as typical not only won’t eliminate those individual problems, but in many cases hinders our progress.

What worries me the most is the impact such advocacies will have on the Iranian women’s situation. I’m also worried about wasting the limited energy we have and losing momentum. I’m worried about exhausting ourselves by going on wild goose chases. I’m worried about missing opportunities. It had happened to us several times and it might happen again. What I’m worried most about is losing our morale. The outcome of constant confrontations and constant failure is nothing but demoralization; and when it is coupled with the unfair image of “battered Iranian women,” exaggerating the strength of our adversaries and underestimating our own, nothing good will come of it. And above all, making a vicious circle out of our problems and turning them into a cluster of pain is just a prescription for suicide rather than a way out. Instead, a little encouragement and a positive self-image will do wonders. Harping so much upon laws which none of us are likely to confront in our life, such as how if a woman is run over she receives less compensation than a man, or how two women count for one man as witnesses, are good for putting our law books in order but do not meet our immediate and everyday needs.

Being able to have a relationship characterized by mutual respect without being threatened by assault is more our concern. Having self-confidence and self-respect is more essential for obtaining and demanding our rights, and millions of wonderful laws in the court’s library cannot take the place of such things. The young women who run and got elected in even religious cities like Arak or Ardebil as the head of the city council were not worried about how much blood money they might receive if they were run over. What they needed was the vote of the majority of people who would trust them and respect them and believe in them. Fortunately, they received even more than they had asked for. The culture which Ebadi blames as the source of our problems is fortunately on our side and loves us and adores us. Let us hold on to it and be good to it. It has been very good to us.

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