47th
Street was not as crowded as it used to be around this time of year. The
Iranian–Canadian Human Rights Defender and Ashraf Dehghani’s leftists had their
stage set at the entrance to the 2nd Ave. table. The HRD’s
dances and comic performances appeared even more avant-garde against the
Dehghani group’s outdated leftist flyers published in 1975, five years prior to
the Islamic revolution! All I could do was to say hello to my friend Shabnam
Assadolahi and run to “Ayatollah Khamenei” to fix his costume.
A
little further, in the middle of street towards First Avenue, the People’s Mojahedin had already started their act. John Bolton, speaking to the rally,
was projected on a large screen. There was enough room for us to set our stage
and wait for them to finish so we could start ours. Monarchists with pretty umbrellas decorated with Iranian flags and the Lion and the Sun emblem on them were
gathering little by little. Their rally was scheduled in the interval between
Mojahedin and us, the Special Committee to Protest Against Ahmadinejad’s
Presence in the UN.
I
started quickly to fix Ayatollah Khamenei’s outfit. It went quicker and better than
I expected. It turned out to be even more elegant than Khatami’s tailored
robes! But there was a little problem wrapping the turban around his head. The
fabric was slippery and resisted puncturing by safely pins. But it was done.
I was so proud of myself that I could make such an aba and ammameh and I
walked Mohammad, the first volunteer to pose as the Ayatollah, into the cage.
(Not to tire him, few friends each took turns posing as the
Ayatollah!) We were not sure which of his hands were crippled, but Mohammad
correctly used his right hand and placed it right over his chest exactly as the
Ayatollah himself poses. Perfect! All of a sudden, everybody rushed to take
photos of him and with him. Oddly enough no one abused him. There were no
insults, no beatings, no tortures, no interrogations, and no confessions. Only
one gentleman came and posed as if trying to strangle him very gently and
softly. We made sure he got plenty of sunshine and fresh air. We even helped
him dress and undress. And since it was too hot under all those garments, we
gave them cold water every so often. But very soon we noticed that Ayatollah
seemed to be enjoying himself behind the bars and was smiling! Oops!
Artoro, a musician from Spain, who plays flamingo guitar, started the program. One
of our friends, Fawzy, read Majid Tavakkoli’s letter of from prison addressed to Khamenei. Alan Koushan played the santur. Dr. Sedarat talked about the
political prisoners and I mentioned Bahareh Hedayat and Atefeh Nabavi, but
since there were not enough people to read the biography of each women
prisoner, most of them went unmentioned. The program ended with Sadra and Mary,
the masters of ceremony, singing the old fedai song, “Winter is over and tulips are
blooming all over the mountains.”
We
stayed until five and then packed to go for dinner and chat with our friends
Enayat and Marmar who took the trouble to come from California and from Atlanta,
Georgia. (No, she was not from Nicaragua (see previous post), she is pure Persian, from Luristan
no less!) We went to a Turkish restaurant owned and staffed entirely by
Kurds, including a young and handsome waiter serving at our table. Oddly
enough, as much as we insisted that they are Kurds with a Kurdish identity and
should be very proud of their ethnicity, they refused our generous offer. Our
handsome waiter, with a smile, insisted that he is a Turk and Turkey is his
country. Some of our leftist friends jokingly tried to provoke them by
saying they are brain-washed, but that did not work either. I bet later
on they would regret not accepting our offer. I do not think they would receive
such offers anymore. Well, at least, we did our best.
Back
at home checking the television and web site reports, I could not find anything about this action. It seems that the Mojahedin won the trophy of “the only
opposition with organization.” The HRD were criticized for being too much of a
carnival, too festive and celebratory. We were not mentioned at all, as if we
didn’t exist. The monarchists were mentioned only on the Islamic Republic’s
press the way they are always referred to. It seems that no one noticed that
they were the largest group, well assembled and quite orderly. However, there was
no conflict among the participating groups. A few Mojaheds and monarchists
stayed for our rally. We all smiled at each other warm-heartedly, and I
was introduced to one of the Mojahedin’s supporters, who immediately showed me
the picture of his young handsome brother who had been killed in the recent attack
at Camp Ashraf. She insisted that she was not a member of Mojahedin but only a
supporter. We shook hands, and Heaven knows nothing happened.
The
next day, while I was searching You Tube to see if I might have overlooked something, I stumbled on our 2009 rally, in which four thousand people from all over North
America and even from Europe gathered to create such a memorable event. Joined
in hope, cheerfulness, energy, passion and optimism, we marched while
chanting “freedom, independent, and Iranian government.” I watched the clips of
those films again and again, wondering if we had failed. Our humble, sober, and
calm crowd this year did not have the slightest resemblance to that monument of
desire for change of the post election year. But my dry eyes surprised me. Nostalgia?
Yes, indeed, but no tears. In fact, I felt I missed all those gatherings of the
past several years, the hunger strikes, the demonstrations, the marches and
all, but had no hard feelings or regret over failure. Yes, it is true that
those exuberant days are gone, but they left us something more valuable.
Indeed, those days were the turning point in our history. In those crowded
gathering, in the midst of the excitement we all found a magical sense of
belonging, something that was buried deep under the pain of being in the
Diaspora for long. We all came together knowing we belong together. We are
walking quickly from those days but holding fast to our sense of belonging to
our homeland and to each other through it.
This
year we gathered together in silence and not in a large crowd, but we were at
peace. We had come not united, and without any “organization”, or color-matched
apparel, for that matter. Indeed we were colorful and varied, but our sense of belonging, conducting so well,
made us act with rhyme and harmony. Walking the Ayatollah in and out of his
cage without any disagreement bears witness to our victory.
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