The Speech Squeeze

My most recent peace on Iran commissioned by Article 19:

Learning the language of self-censorship


Poker. Rumi. The US Postal Service motto: Neither snow nor rain nor heat…Serendipity. All have their roots in ancient Persia. No matter how much you think you know about Iran, there’s always more. It’s no surprise, then, that you know so little before boarding a plane to take you to Tehran.

Maybe you’re nervous. Pulling the unfamiliar scarf close around your head. Tucking in loose strands as the plane rattles over the Alborz mountains for its landing. You expect prying eyes, secrecy, and suspicion. What you don’t expect is the friendly welcome from strangers and family, the chaos at the airport, the sheer number of women in black hijab everywhere you look.

The first week you are in Iran is a revelation. Everyone you meet speaks to you. Strangers try out a few words of English, speak to you in simple Persian. They express opinions. Slam the government. Make jokes about clerics. Shout out: We love you miss, in heavily accented English.

There are people and cars everywhere. You see women in sheer headscarves braving the treacherous pavement in high heels and challenging the limits of acceptable hijab. You see daredevil teenagers roller blading in and out of traffic and up and down the cement steps in Tehran’s largest park.

Read more at Article 19.

Then They Came for Me

Lately all of my reading has been about Iran: afternoon sessions with the reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, Amnesty International, The Committee to Protect Journalists; evenings with journalist and documentary filmmaker Maziar Bahari’s oddly funny and tragic book, Then They Came for Me.

In his book, Maziar vividly captures the optimism of a particular moment in post-revolutionary Iran when it seemed that people would have a chance to open their country a bit and make the reforms so many of them desired. The 2009 presidential elections in Iran, with the energetic campaigning and televised debates felt to many like the beginning of democratic change. His friend tells him of participating in one of the pre-election demonstrations, which brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of Tehran wearing green and carrying signs of support for the candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, “It was like being in a World Cup final, Maziar, but more exciting.”

Stolen Elections

Soon after the elections, which were unashamedly stolen, Maziar Bahari was rousted from his bed in his 83 year old mother’s house by revolutionary guards who had come to arrest him. They tore apart his room looking for contraband, while his mother -- who had plenty of practice with the arrests and imprisonment of loved ones -- made tea. Her calm was powerful.

While writing this post, I was talking with a good friend who was arrested in Iran during the revolution. We were both crying as I described Maziar’s family -- the imprisonment of his sister who experienced torture and mock executions and died young of leukemia; his father’s advice about dealing with interrogators, “don’t give any names.” She told me of her own experiences being arrested shortly after the fall of the Shah and her interrogation by a well-educated man who used cogent arguments to try to dissuade her from her Marxist politics. Maziar’s interrogators, on the other hand, didn’t know who Chekhov was or that The Sopranos was not porn despite the letters p-o-r and n jumbled in the title. 

The story of his arrest and torture powerfully illustrates the tragedy of an entire nation. Maziar and others wanted so little: a small opening, a voice, a bit of freedom. In return they got imprisonment, torture, crackdowns, and a more divisive nation.