Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
We Are Iran: The Persian BlogsBy Nasrin Alavi•April 2006
Over the Internet, voices are emerging from Iran. A woman writes about what types of clothing attract men. A mother debates whether to let her daughter get her nose pierced. A young man loses faith because the mosques are filled with “hypocrites, thugs, and oppressors.” This is not the Iran we read about in newspaper headlines, but the everyday Iran experienced by its citizens and chronicled in the new book We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs (Soft Skull Press), by Nasrin Alavi.
A blog (short for “weblog”) is someone’s online journal, a sort of public diary that can be read on the Internet. In Iran, where the ruling clerics have placed severe restrictions on freedom of speech and the press, blogs offer a way for people to circumvent the state-controlled media and communicate directly with one another about their lives. Since the first Iranian blog appeared in 2001, Farsi, the predominant language in Iran, has become the fourth-most-frequently-used tongue for online journals, more common than Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, or Russian.
An expatriate Iranian journalist, Alavi spent her formative years in Iran but attended college in Great Britain, where she lives today. Her English translations of Farsi blogs give Westerners unprecedented access to the people of Iran and provide an alternative recent history of the nation. “When so much of the attention directed at the Islamic world is focused on violence and terrorism,” Alavi writes, “blogs offer outsiders a fresh perspective on the lives of ordinary men and women, relaying their experiences — their fears, dreams, disappointments, and insecurities — and allowing us to eavesdrop on the clandestine conversations of a closed society.”
The following excerpts are taken from We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs. © 2005 by Nasrin Alavi. They are reproduced here by permission of Soft Skull Press, Inc. The e-mail addresses and websites given belong to actual Iranians. Some blogs are signed only with a pen name, because the author wishes to remain anonymous for his or her safety.
— Ed.
November 17, 2004
I keep a blog so that I can breathe in this suffocating air. In a society where one is taken to history’s abattoir for the mere crime of thinking, I write so as not to be lost in my despair, so that I feel that I am someplace where my calls for justice can be uttered. I write a blog so that I can shout, cry and laugh, and do the things that they have taken away from me in Iran today.
E-mail: lolivashe@yahoo.com
Website: lolivashaneh.blogspot.com
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, honest self-expression carries a heavy price. Over the last six years, as many as a hundred print publications, including forty-one daily newspapers, have been closed by Iran’s hard-line judiciary. In April 2003 the Islamic Republic became the first government to take direct action against bloggers. Many more bloggers and online journalists have been arrested or intimidated since.
October 30, 2003
Islam is compatible with democracy.*
*Subject to terms and conditions.
E-mail: weblog@ksajadi.com
Website: ksajadi.com/fblog
In recent years the Iranian people have demonstrated their desire for change by overwhelmingly voting for parliamentary candidates who promise democracy. In the 1997 presidential election, 70 percent of voters voted for the little-known cleric Mohammad Khatami, giving his reform agenda enormous backing. Khatami won the next election with a similar majority. He even carried Qom, the religious bastion of Iran.
But substantive change has been blocked by the hard-liners who hold the real power through the judiciary and the Guardian Council, a conservative supervisory body. They have abolished the reformist press, forbidden reform candidates from running, and arrested, tortured, or assassinated many liberals and student activists.
The unelected Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the conservative clerics and lawyers control the courts, the army, the media, the political councils, and the powerful Islamic foundations that very nearly run the economy. In February 2004 the conservatives banned more than two thousand candidates from running in parliamentary elections, dropping any pretense of democracy and reasserting full control over the state. In the 2005 presidential election, conservative candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner.
The Islamic hard-liners have a single mission: to uphold the principles of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which began as a pro-democracy movement to overthrow the shah, an absolute monarch. Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini spoke of freedom and democracy, and initially his government was dominated by liberal figures who promised an end to political repression. Only days after the fall of the shah, however, Iran’s new regime hurriedly established revolutionary tribunals, where many figures from the previous regime were sentenced to death after summary trials. Within two years, Iran was a theocracy governed by severe Islamic law, with Ayatollah Khomeini established as Supreme Leader. Iranians had traded one unaccountable regime for another.
August 9, 2003
As your average five-year-old boy, I was crazy about toy cars of all varieties and colors. During an ordinary outing to the shops, my father refused to buy me a toy car; I threw your run-of-the-mill temper tantrum and was carried kicking and screaming into a taxi.
I hated my father and wanted him hanged like all the people that they were executing on our television screens. There were no children’s programs on TV. Everything was suspended, and we would sit and watch as they hanged and hanged.
Even at the tender age of five I knew who the Savakis [the shah’s secret service] were. I believed every bad person was a Savaki, and at that moment in time, that included my father.
I started talking to the taxi driver, who acknowledged me with a smile.
“Hey, Mister.”
“What is it?”
“My dad is a Savaki!”
The driver abruptly placed his foot on the brake and started cursing my dad. Thank God my father could talk to people, and soon they were both laughing at me.
How many Savakis do you know? When will we stop hanging people who don’t give us the toy cars we want?
E-mail: daftaresepid@yahoo.com
Website: daftaresepid.blogspot.com
Under the Islamic regime, cultural and political restraints regarding speech, appearance, and relations between the sexes were strictly enforced in public. Meanwhile Iran was attacked by neighboring Iraq, setting off a war that would last eight years.
January 8, 2004
You have heard the story of my generation many times. A generation that grew up with bombs, rockets, war, and revolutionary slogans, a generation that had battle green, grenade-shaped piggy banks.
The girls of my generation will never forget their teachers tugging hard at tiny strands of hair that somehow fell out of their veils. The boys of my generation will never forget being slapped five times in the face for wearing shirts with Western labels on them.
My generation is the damaged generation. We were constantly chastised that we were duty-bound to safeguard and uphold the sacred blood that was shed for us during a revolution and a war. Any source of happiness was forbidden.
My generation would be beaten up outside cinemas or pizza restaurants; punished in the public parks; kicked and punched in the centers of town by the regime’s militia.
For my generation talking to a member of the opposite sex (something quite ordinary for today’s younger generation) was akin to adultery, and its punishments are better left unsaid.
But I also remember the start of the reform movement [in the late 1990s]. This same generation would distribute election pamphlets and posters for Khatami. And even for this we were reprimanded and beaten, but we stood up for him so that one day hope might come. It’s unfair to say he did nothing. We got concerts, poetry readings, carefree chats in coffee shops, and tight manteaus [women’s overcoats]. But is this all that my generation wanted?
It was also during this time that student activists were thrown in prison, newspapers were shut down — and yet Khatami was silent. It was at this time that the students of my generation were labeled hooligans and Western lackeys, and again Khatami appeared to agree through his silence.
Even the subsequent parliamentary elections of reformists did not bring any benefits for my generation. Sometimes hearing the words of the enemy from the mouths of those you considered friends is even harder to bear.
E-mail: arareza@gmail.com
Website: dentist.blogspot.com
Those who lived through the Islamic Revolution almost a quarter of a century ago are now a minority. More than 70 percent of the population of Iran is under thirty, and for this population, literacy rates are well over 90 percent, even in rural areas. More than half of those graduating from college in Iran today are women. Iran’s younger generation has been completely transformed through the Islamic Republic’s policies of free education and national literacy — and they are ready and willing to express their frustration.
August 8, 2002
What have the likes of me learned after twelve years of formal religious education? What is the outcome of being consistently bombarded with sacred information in this Islamic Republic of ours?When you talk about your religion for over twenty years, its problems will be highlighted.
Religious education is the best way to create agnostics in the modern world. Just look around at the people you know personally who went to the infamously strict Islamic schools.
Even those most addicted to religion will at some point overdose.
The problem is not with Islam but with a few of our radical fellow Muslims.
The other day I saw a construction worker fast asleep next to a cement mixer; he appeared to have developed a deaf ear to all that noise. We are like him: after so many years of being bombarded with religious facts, you just stop hearing them.
E-mail: lbahram@yahoo.com
Website: lbahram.blogspot.com
Young Iranians are caught in the conflict between globalization and tradition. The Internet and satellite television have opened the world to them. An assertive generation of educated women is entering previously forbidden domains. The strictly enforced rules of the regime — no alcohol, no dancing, and no pop music — were intended to create “soldiers for Islam,” but now many young people aspire to a more Western lifestyle.
October 29, 2003
My daughter wanted to get her nose pierced. I resisted and told her that she was bound to regret it and that she should wait until she was a bit older and then decide for herself. She looked at me then and said: “Piercing your nose is no big deal. Maybe I will in the end regret it, but that’s not the whole world. It is a small wish. By banning it, you’re turning a small wish into my ultimate dream. Why do you want me to have such insignificant dreams? If I can fulfill these small wishes and not grow up with such trivial dreams, don’t you think I will have a better life waiting for me?”
We too had such insignificant wishes, and even when we grew up they didn’t come true. There were so many times we wanted to go somewhere, and they wouldn’t let us, and it became a dream. So many times they even stopped us from running. It came to the point that we weren’t even allowed to take small steps.
This is Iran.
E-mail: faeze_am@yahoo.com
Website: faeze.blogspot.com
Moral laws, dress codes, and rules governing contact between the sexes are enforced by the Morality Police, who roam the streets of Iran. In the summer of 2002 this force was strengthened with the creation of volunteer Special Units: armed men with smart black berets in shiny black four-wheel-drive vehicles. Their arrival was hailed in the local press as a means of combating “social corruption among the young.”
April 23, 2003
The patrol cars that put fear into the hearts of our youth are there to safeguard national morality, but the effect has been the total opposite, and today our youth hold nothing sacred.
For twenty-four years our youth have lived dual lives — the way they have to behave in schools and official places, and their home lives, which are the antithesis of the dictates of the ruling clergy.
In a system where the leaders do not have the people’s backing and keep power by force, the leaders are terrified of the smallest things.
We are all painfully aware of the manifestations of this totalitarian system, its absolute need to influence every aspect of the life of its individual subjects, to produce people of uniform thoughts.
Blogger Sina Motallebi was arrested and charged with jeopardizing national security. You have to pity a regime whose national security can be jeopardized by the writings of a blogger! Or perhaps laugh: jeopardizing national security by writing about art and literature!
E-mail: ranginkamaan2000@yahoo.com
Website: ranginkamaan.persianblog.com
The morality laws also permit judges to mete out discretionary punishments to those who hold hands or kiss publicly.
October 28, 2003
This game of theirs started when they were first married. Mum and Dad were making their way home one winter’s night. They didn’t have a car then and had to wait a long time by the roadside for a taxi. Apparently on impulse, Dad kissed Mum on the lips. Then a car stopped and picked them up. Once inside, they noticed that the driver was staring at them in his rearview mirror and laughing to himself. This really irritated my dad, so he asked the man what he found so amusing. Evidently he had seen them kissing and was full of admiration for them. According to Mum, the whole journey home the driver praised Dad, telling him, “You really have heart.”
Now, whenever Mum is in a playful mood, sometimes in the oddest of places, she fixes her eyes on Dad and asks, “Do you have the heart?” They giggle, look around, weigh the situation. Then they kiss and have a good laugh. My dad always seems to have “the heart.”
E-mail: z8unak@z8un.com
Website: z8un.com
Although the Morality Police are still very much out in force, there has been a dramatic relaxation of the official codes of dress and conduct. The morality laws have come a long way since the early days when women’s lips were cut with razors in public to deter others from wearing lipstick.
October 18, 2003
I don’t like to think back to my childhood days. There are some things that happened back then that I am still dodging. Between the ages of four and eleven I had a favorite tree. Its sturdy trunk and powerful branches were my place for solace. It was from the top of this tree that I first set eyes on the girl next door, in her summer outfit and short skirt.
At the age of six I started school. My mother would always clean all the makeup from her face, pull on thick black tights, and cover herself completely from head to toe in black before leaving the house. I would ask, “Why are you doing this to yourself? It’s embarrassing. Why can’t you go out as you are at home?”
She would always laugh and say, “They will arrest us.”
I understood better when a woman jumped out of a muddy-colored car and, with a razor, took the lipstick from the lips of a girl, a girl who looked a lot like the girl next door.
Underground
Iran is perhaps one of the few countries in the Middle East where people don’t blame their hardships on U.S.–backed rulers. To Iran’s hard-line leaders, the United States is the “great Satan,” and the news routinely shows archive footage of “Death to America!” chants during Friday prayers. Yet, according to surveys by Iran’s own Ministry of Culture and Guidance, less than 1.4 percent of the population actually bothers to attend Friday prayers.
July 19, 2002
Death to America! Death to Bush! Death to Colin Powell! Death to Elizabeth Taylor! But I want to go and live in America.
E-mail: arareza@gmail.com
Website: dentist.blogspot.com
After visiting Iran in May 2004, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof declared: “Finally, I’ve found a pro-American country.” He writes that for Iranians, “being pro-American is a way to take a swipe at the Iranian regime,” and that, left alone, the Islamic Republic is heading for collapse, with a better “chance of a strongly pro-American democratic government in Tehran in a decade than in Baghdad.”
An American blogger living with her Iranian partner in Iran writes:
August 21, 2003
I like being an American here. Everyone is so nice to me. Everyone seems to think that Americans are wonderful. One restaurant owner had to restrain himself from hugging me when he discovered that I was American. People shake my hand. Sometimes they tell me that they don’t like Bush, but they always tell me how much they like Americans. This is so refreshing after a couple of years of living in Europe, where all I heard was how evil Americans are.
I like the fact that I can get a really good challah [braided bread] at a bakery in Tehran. It’s almost as good as my grandmother’s, but not quite.
I like the fact that everyone has an opinion, and that they tell me what they think. I like all the complaining and grousing. I like all of the discussions. I like that people are unafraid to voice their opinions.
I like the way that Iranians are dissatisfied with their society and their government. I like that they are working to change it (slowly). One thing I always complained about in the Netherlands is that Dutch people are too satisfied. Everything seems finished there. Everything bad that happens in the Netherlands is the fault of their immigrants. In Iran (like America, I think) there is a sense that society is an ongoing project. Things are most definitely unfinished and moving forward.
I like how K.’s sisters care for his mother, who is ill. I like that his older brother taught his daughter to wrestle and calls her “my lion.”
I like the way his family helps each other. I like taking the bus between cities. I like the fact that Iranians have managed to hold on to their cultural identity despite efforts to squelch it. I love pistachios.
E-mail: responses@gmail.com
Website: viewfromiran.blogspot.com
©Ramin Talaie
In the February 18, 2002, issue of the New Yorker, Joe Klein writes, “On the evening of September 11, 2001, young people gathered in Madar Square, on the north side of Tehran, in a spontaneous candlelight vigil to express sympathy and support for the United States. A second vigil, the next night, was attacked by the basij, a volunteer force of religious vigilantes, and then dispersed by the police. The vigils may have been the only pro-American demonstrations in the Islamic world after the terrorist attacks on the United States.”
Despite a genuine sympathy for the plight of Americans on 9/11, there are also many online commentaries critical of U.S. foreign policy.
September 6, 2003
After 9/11, one of the most shameful pages of human history, we are witnessing a joint operation of the “sons of Allah” and America’s neoconservatives, who march hand in hand, killing innocent humans, taking our world to the edge of an abyss. But world opinion can see what the leaders of this new world are up to. People are tired of war and those who seek it.
Never in the history of mankind has there been such an acute need for peace. For me personally, 9/11 provided an awareness of the infinite extent of human cruelty.
Yet it has also affected our country. People are more aware of our suffering and the Islamic terrorism that has slaughtered countless numbers of our countrymen.
If the U.S. doesn’t bring stability and democracy to Iraq, the greatest beneficiaries will be the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
E-mail: siprisk@gmail.com
Website: siprisk.blogspot.com
September 11, 2003
Although I have no doubt about the evil nature of our rulers and their ability to perpetrate acts of pure wickedness, I knew with total certainty on 9/11 that no Iranians were involved. And no, I’m not talking about the joke that has been going round: “You can never find four Iranians who can agree on something, let alone plan ahead and get it done.” It basically comes down to my difficulty imagining anyone from Iran, or even the rest of the Middle East, who could be capable of such acts.
I understand that we have psychotics in this world, and despotic rulers who systematically terrorize, but for me the most shocking aspect of 9/11 was that this was not some lone gunman but a group of people who voluntarily colluded in this evil act. Didn’t any of those involved have moments of sanity and say to themselves: “What we are doing is pure evil”? I just don’t get it. I always thought we were more humane than Westerners. We care about our families and could not hurt others so callously and indiscriminately.
But it’s no longer just 9/11. We are seeing so many acts of pure evil around the world committed by Muslims. Until now, the West was more capable of such crimes. They were the ones who carried out indiscriminate killings like the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Bosnia. I always felt that we were better than the callous men who rule Western countries. I just cannot understand how someone who calls himself a Muslim could be capable of such acts.
It’s not that I believe the conspiracy theories that are fed to us by the media, blaming Israel and the United States. It’s just that I still can’t get over the fact that we can be so evil too. And although, thank God, no Iranians were involved, I cannot stop feeling an enormous sense of shame, guilt, and helplessness.
Spirit
Religious leaders complain that the mosques were full before the revolution, but now are often empty. Dissident clerics argue that the Islamic Republic’s failings have brought about a loss of Islamic values, because people associate the system with the religion.
November 5, 2003
It’s hell itself, this Ramadan. Let’s ignore not being able to eat or drink, as even those sons of bitches fasting must feel tempted. But what is it to those pimps that I want to have a cigarette? Are cigarettes food?
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Today I was putting my asthma inhaler to my mouth when one of these pimps suddenly materialized in front of me and said: “Sir, it’s the month of Ramadan.”
E-mail: wastedige@yahoo.co.uk
Website: fkngwstd.blogspot.com
May 23, 2003
I grew up with the spiritual sound of the call to prayer. The “Allah Akbar” [“God is great”] used to make me feel that there was a loving, kind, benevolent God out there, greater than all my silly problems. I would run to the mosque and stand there before my God and leave a stronger person. All I had to do during difficult times was remind myself “Allah Akbar”: when sitting my first exam (age seven), or approaching the girl I had fallen in love with (age fourteen), or being taken to task by my father for driving his car and abandoning it after an accident (age seventeen), or when my grandmother died (age nineteen). But now “Allah Akbar” is the chant of the thugs in the basij and fat, corrupt mullahs.
The “Allah Akbar” still makes me feel like a stronger person, but I rarely enter a mosque. All that awaits you there are the hypocrites, thugs, and oppressors.
We were already Muslims and did not need a revolution to become Muslims. Our dreams were of equality, independence, and justice. I hope that when they leave, we will still be Muslims, and my God can be great again.
School Friend
On March 7, 1979, Khomeini decreed that women were required to wear the veil. Ironically, the ruling came a day before the scheduled celebrations throughout Iran to mark International Women’s Day. The gatherings soon turned into mass protests against Khomeini’s decree.
January 18, 2004
Some of you may remember the beginning of the revolution, but for those who aren’t old enough: Until 1979 women did not have to wear the veil, but soon after, there were cries of “Veil or be beaten!” And in next to no time an evil institution for the enforcement of rules called the Revolutionary Komiteh raised its head. So in 1979 women put on head scarves, but they were still free to go out with a shirt and skirt or a dress.
Do you remember the first manteaus? Big, shapeless, floor-length coats that women wore on top of their ordinary clothes. As time passed, different versions of the manteau came out. I remember during those early years manteaus made in a jean fabric suddenly became fashionable, but before long the “brothers” from the Komiteh would roam the streets and bazaars with carpet cutters, slashing through these manteaus (and tearing through the flesh of the poor unfortunate women who had taken up this trend). The jean fabric was a symbol of the “great Satan,” America.
Soon fitted manteaus became fashionable. Fitted around the waist and revealing the shape of the women’s breasts, these naturally “demeaned” women. In next to no time they went out of fashion. And then it was the manteaus with slits. But, oh, these slits were just too much for the brothers of the Komiteh, who were aroused at the spectacle. So people gave in by sewing buttons on the slits.
The point is, unless you wear a proper manteau, you are “endangering Islam.”
Shima
Dress-code guidelines instituted in 1997 call for prison terms from three months to a year — or up to seventy-four lashes with a whip — for women wearing “stylish outfits, such as suits or a skirt.” The regulations ban the wearing of any “depraved, ostentatious, or sparkly object on hats, necklaces, earrings, belts, bracelets, glasses, headbands, rings, neck scarves, and ties.”
Iranians are fully aware of these laws, but look around any city center in Iran and you will see that many disregard them and use their appearance to make a protest, despite the potential consequences. Girls wear their compulsory head scarves way back on their head to reveal as much hair as possible; meanwhile the obligatory manteaus are getting shorter and tighter.
October 16, 2003
I was about to be picked up by the basij today: a couple of puny guys, couldn’t have been older than seventeen. One flashed his basij card and told me that I was a shameful spectacle, that I either take off my makeup and tighten my head scarf, or he was taking me in.
I? A spectacle? A vision of loveliness, perhaps. But you know what the basij are like. They see beauty in other bearded men.
Fine, I’ll admit it: I was a bit scared. But I remembered what a friend of mine had done a few weeks ago: she had started protesting, and people had come to her rescue. And I also thought there was no way I would take notice of two smelly rats, especially as I was meeting some friends later on and my makeup was just too perfect for words today. (I’m not being bigheaded or anything. It’s just that I can never spend longer than five minutes putting on my makeup, and I usually get it wrong, but today I looked good.)
Mirdamad Street was pretty busy. I wasn’t the odd person out; these two rats were. So I just started screaming. Within seconds, a crowd had gathered. The great thing is that no one looked scared, and everyone was poking fun at them. A middle-aged couple that I had never met even claimed I was their daughter and started telling them off. The man kept saying, “How dare you even address my daughter, you dishonorable rogues?” At first the basij threatened to call for backup and have the whole crowd taken away, but the crowd just got bigger and bigger, and they told my lovely new mum and dad to take their daughter and go home. So it ended well, but I wish some gorgeous man would have claimed me as his wife for the day.
Moral of the story: Next time you get stopped, do as I did today. The less we give in, the more likely they are to leave us alone. (But don’t be stupid either. Make sure they are not armed or the Special Units. It’s just not worth it.)
Arched Brows
For the revolutionaries — including many women who identified themselves as “Muslim feminists” — wearing the veil was a sign of resistance to Western values. The Muslim feminists believed that by veiling they would cease to be sex objects and would be treated as equals. Donning the veil was the equivalent of the Western feminists of the 1960s and 1970s burning their bras.
But that was a quarter century ago — and what young woman wants to dress like her mother? Judging by most public images of young women in Iran, many no longer have any faith in the ideals of the Muslim feminists. Few wear the chador — the traditional, full-length, armless black outer garment.
December 10, 2002
From my personal street research:
If you wear a short jacket, lots of makeup, and a shawl hanging loosely over your head, all the men in Tehran will come on to you.
If you wear a short, tight jean manteau, lots of makeup, and have strands of hair strategically showing, 80 percent of men in Tehran will come on to you.
If you wear a tight black manteau above the knee, dark glasses, and a thin black scarf, 70 percent of men in Tehran will come on to you.
If you wear a long, baggy cream-colored robe, lots of makeup, and have a few strands of hair showing, 60 percent of men in Tehran will come on to you.
If you wear long black robes and no makeup, with no hair showing, 30 percent of men in Tehran will come on to you.
A chador and no makeup will not get you a man.
E-mail: khanoomigoli@yahoo.com
Website: khanoomgol.blogspot.com
May 29, 2002
What would happen if women were no longer legally required to wear the veil? Just imagine if our women were free to wear whatever they wanted; if even mixed bathing on the beach were allowed. Would this be culturally tolerable to Iranians?
Would you men have no objections to your wife or your girlfriend being in public dressed in a miniskirt and T-shirt with her nipples showing through?
Or you women who live in Iran: Are you prepared to go public in full view of our men, who get so worked up over just an inch of ankle underneath your robes that they need to wank? Would you honestly feel secure walking past a man who for twenty years has seen only your eyes, and his fantasy is just to see the rest of your face?
People have to change gradually, as our culture cannot change overnight.
E-mail: baakereh@yahoo.com
Website: baakereh.blogspot.com
May 30, 2002
[Written in direct response to the previous post.]
Dear Mr. Baakereh,
The day we don’t have to wear the veil, Iranian women will shed five kilos of excess gear. The Korean factories that annually produce millions of meters of black fabric for export to Iran (they sell nowhere else in the world) will go bankrupt.
We will live in a more colorful land. Women will pay more attention to their figures. If we get hot, we’ll wear short sleeves. We’ll go out as we dress at home. If a person cannot trust his wife or girlfriend to go out without the veil, freedom is not the problem; they have serious trust issues.
We are no different from the free men and women of the world. If we were free, we would not be so culturally obsessed with the lower parts of our bodies.
E-mail: golku81@yahoo.com
Website: golku.blogspot.com
February 28, 2003
I’ve recently joined a step-aerobics class. Our studio’s huge glass windows look onto a private garden, and we get a nice, peaceful view when it snows or rains.
We were in the middle of our session yesterday when we heard a loud, sharp bang accompanied by smoke. (We found out later that some idiot had thrown a firecracker over the garden wall!)
I’m used to sudden noises due to the silly pranks of my brother, so I wasn’t scared. But a few of the women started screaming, and Narges, our instructor, went deathly pale and shrieked: “What’ll we do if it’s a bomb or a fire? Should we run out with what we have on?” Most of us had on skimpy shorts and tops and leotards; we leave our robes in our lockers in the basement.
There are a couple of older women in our group who wear chadors and actually believe in veiling. They looked seriously distressed. But I said: “I’d run out as I am! If I stay and die, my dad would be really annoyed with me. He’s always told me to put my safety above everything else.”
Narges replied: “If I go out like this, my husband would kill me!”
And I said, “Well, either way you’re dead.”
By then we knew it wasn’t anything sinister, and we were all laughing. Then one of the young girls said: “Don’t worry. If we stay put, we’ll be rescued, as all the men in the neighborhood would risk their lives just to get a glimpse of us!”
E-mail: z8unak@z8un.com
Website: z8un.com
Reading the intimate, online commentaries of Iranians, we are granted a rare glimpse beyond the crude stereotypes of Muslim men as brutal oppressors of women. The first of the posts below is written by a young man; the other is by a husband on his sixteenth wedding anniversary.
February 22, 2003
To our leaders:
You promise us maidens in heaven with everlasting happiness there. Well, we don’t want to sleep next to the virtuous maidens in heaven that we don’t personally know. It just doesn’t seem right to lie down with an angel you’re not properly acquainted with. You want to incarcerate us inside these gardens with rivers of flowing honey. But we don’t care much for honey — we prefer pizza.
You say Father can get a second wife, but we don’t ever want the familiar scent of our mum’s bed to change. You say Father is allowed to give Mum a beating once in a while; when we grow up, we’ll show you who needs a beating.
When you say I am valued twice as much as my sister, you’re essentially asking all of us men to be unchivalrous, and we don’t like it. You say that my cousin — whom I grew up with and who used to lie beside me while we listened to bedtime stories together — should suddenly hide her hair from me.
You ask us to bow down to you, and you want to rule us. I have a lot to say to you, and I will tell you sooner or later. You will have no choice but to listen when the time is right.
Antidepressant
January 1, 2003
To my wife on our sixteenth wedding anniversary:
Do you remember when we were first married? We rented a room in south Tehran and had to share a toilet with the landlord and use the public baths.
Do you remember the time when we took all the money we had and went to a posh restaurant uptown? We had a wonderful meal and gave the rest of the money as a tip to the waiter. We had no money left for a taxi, so we walked all the way home across the whole town. We had a lot of energy then.
Do you remember when our son was born? Through all that bombing and war, in that climate of death, we created a new life. And the evening our daughter was born — with two kids and work, you still went to college, and you were at the top of your class.
Do you remember getting war rations for dried milk? To prove that you had no milk, you had to show your breasts to the “sister” at the Komiteh every week. But we would not have that. We’d work overtime and buy dried milk on the open market and not show your breasts to anyone.
I say all this so you’ll know that I haven’t forgotten. Our mutual troubles, growth, and love can never be destroyed. We are just starting, with more energy than ever before.
E-mail: shabah@shabah.org
Website: shabah.org
Nobody denies that the regime has some diehard supporters: the 10 to 15 percent of the electorate who religiously turn out to rallies to denounce Israel and the United States.
Perhaps because the state media cater to their opinions, staunch supporters of the regime rarely start blogs. The following Iranian blogger, a young photojournalist, works for a number of hard-line publications. He echoes the concerns of many hard-liners that Western influences are eroding Islamic principles. From his perspective, a great injustice is taking place within Iranian society: the righteous are being marginalized and mocked by a majority that has been corrupted by the West.
August 21, 2003
I am tired of being force-fed their pseudo-intellectual ideals. We are getting to a point where if we say anything contrary to their beliefs, these so-called libertarians shout us down. All you have to do is disagree with them and you’re the “oppressor” or an ally of the Taliban or al-Qaeda.
Throughout history the righteous have always been in the minority.
Website: vizor.persianblog.com
Mojtabah Mir’ehsan is a clergyman and blogger based in the holy city of Qom. His blog usually contains sermons on the significance of Islamic edicts, but on rare occasions he discusses his day-to-day life. In the following post, he is annoyed by the appearance of a friend’s son, one of the children of the revolution.
January 31, 2003
Instead of “Salaam” he said, “S’aam.” Six feet tall, he stood by the doorway, yet he bore no resemblance to the Maysam I once knew. His hair was covered in goo. No matter how hard I tried to see in his eyes the likeness of someone I knew, all I could find was my own reflection in his dark glasses. He wore a tight black shirt with an upturned collar, a discolored pair of trousers eight sizes too big, and shoes that looked like powerboats.
I asked him to sit down and offered him some tea.
“Tea is too high-voltage,” he said, “and it gives me no satisfaction.”
Perhaps some fruit?
“No, I have excess vitamin C in my blood. If you don’t mind, I’d rather smoke.”
He took out a cigarette and lit it with a Zippo lighter. The first puff made him cough. It was obvious he was a novice smoker. The thing that upset me most about Maysam, though, was his pretentious beard: a very thin line around his jaw.
The way he looked really made me angry. I quickly gave him the book he had come to borrow for his father and sent him on his way.
I had grown up with Maysam’s father and his uncle Davoud. The three of us used to look up to a man in our neighborhood called Mr. Naderi. We wanted to dress and even walk and talk like him. The fashion in those days was called “hippy,” and our idols were the stars of the cinema. We were what my father used to call “misguided youth.”
But we started changing; we read and grew up. We exchanged our jeans for combat gear, and our idol became Khomeini. We were prepared to die for him. We no longer had any time for the likes of Mr. Naderi. We used terms and had an outlook that my father couldn’t even understand. He still called us “misguided youth.” Not long after that, Davoud was martyred in the war, and three years later Maysam’s father lost his leg to a land mine.
When we were young, we used to dress and speak in a way that made our elders cross with us, but enlightenment came to us through Imam Khomeini. I am trying to practice patience, so that the appearance of the likes of Maysam doesn’t make me angry, as it has been proven to me many a time that appearance has no correlation with the way someone really is. The youth will always do their own thing.
I think the time has come that you and I should stop getting mad at these new thin beards, the gelled hair, and the faded trousers.
E-mail: mojtaba110@noavar.com
Website: mojtaba11.persianblog.com
Mir’ehsan would like the devout to be more indulgent and understanding of young people who no longer resemble their revolutionary parents. It is a view that appears to be shared even by the ruling clerics. Not that they haven’t tried to crack down, but with a young population on the increase, it has not been easy.
October 1, 2003
As a nation, we all have dual personalities. At home we are as free as can be. We have fun, drink, throw parties, and pay no attention to the religious dictates of the Supreme Leader. But in public we are forced to act devout and show support for the regime.
This has destroyed our culture and has turned us into the worst kind of hypocrites. As a society we are rotting from the inside.
E-mail: fozoolak@hotmail.com
Website: fozool.blogspot.com
January 30, 2005
Have you noticed that everything that Iranians do is banned by the regime? Everything is outlawed: Listening to music or watching a film. The clothes you wear. What you drink. The games you play. The conversations you have and what you discuss. What you read and write. What you do on the Internet.
The way people live their lives is illegal. Perhaps there is no other country in the world where there is such a cultural gulf between the people and their rulers.
I think this is the biggest mistake of the Islamic Republic. If they tried to reduce this gulf, it would make people less and less interested in politics. But by widening the gulf, they can only increase the tension.
E-mail: youness@gmail.com
Website: younessa.com
Through the relative anonymity that blogs provide, those who once lacked voices are at last speaking up and discussing issues that have never been aired in any other media in the Islamic world. Although tame by Western standards, the off-the-cuff remarks of Iranian bloggers concerning the Supreme Leader are denounced as blasphemous. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, blasphemy carries the death penalty.
January 14, 2004
Dear Leader of the Revolution,
Your Holiness,
Have you ever fallen in love? Have you ever gazed into the crimson of the wine, when you can still feel the spot where she kissed you on your eyelids? Have you ever danced? Have you ever had maz maz [Iranian crisps] dipped in mastmoseer [a dip]? Have you ever worn jeans? Do you know what roll-on deodorant is? Have you ever cried at night? How many years did you go to school? Have you ever made abghosht [an Iranian stew]? Have you ever gotten a barbecue going? Tell me, what is Newton’s Third Law? How many times has the scent of springtime in Shiraz [a southern Iranian city] driven you wild? Have you ever kissed a dog? Have you ever listened to Persian classical music? Or what about rap? Do you ever whistle?
Have you ever kissed her neck? What about behind her ears?
Have you ever downloaded an MP3 from the Internet? Do you ever ask the guy at the kiosk selling cigarettes how he’s doing? Ever walked through town at midnight? Have they ever raided your home and confiscated your books?
Have you ever been forced into exile? Has it ever happened that you just can’t get the pattern of those tiles in your mother’s kitchen out of your head (for three nights in a row), but you can’t remember the color? Have you ever called your mother up from far away and asked her to describe the color of those tiles — at the mention of which you both uncontrollably sob?
Have you ever longed for the windows of your apartment in Tehran?
E-mail: roozgar@hotmail.com
Website: hylit.net/nightly
IRAN TIMELINE
1953: To protect Western oil interests, U.S. and British intelligence agencies orchestrate a coup, overthrowing the Iranian prime minister and reinstating the traditional monarch, the shah, a pro-American dictator.
1979: The shah is deposed during the Iranian Revolution, and Iran becomes an Islamic republic. A president and parliament are elected, but true power is held by a council of clerics headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
1980: Iraq invades Iran, starting the Iran-Iraq War.
1988: A cease-fire is declared, and the war ends in a stalemate.
1997: Iranian voters reject the state-approved presidential candidate and elect reformist Mohammad Khatami by a wide margin.
2001: Khatami is reelected, but meaningful reforms are blocked by the conservative clerics who control the government.
2005: Hard-line conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected president.
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