(48/54) “I didn’t raise them to be Iranian first. Above all I wanted them to be good people. I wanted the same things for them that I want for all people: to do the next right thing, to say the next true thing. But they were growing up in tough times. So many bad things were bein … | Continue reading
(47/54) “When our grandchildren were born we moved to America to help raise them. First came Ahang’s son Sepanta. Then when I turned sixty we moved into Maziar’s house to help raise his newborn twin boys. And that’s where we’ve been for the last thirty years. The year that we mov … | Continue reading
(46/54) “There was nothing I could do. It was like watching a child fall from the roof of a building. I could only look on in agony. When I arrived in Germany there were two million unemployed. It was years before I could find a job. Resistance takes resources: you must travel, y … | Continue reading
(45/54) A jar of soil. That’s all I have left of my home. It’s good soil. A guidebook once called Nahavand ‘a piece of heaven, fallen to earth.’ But there’s blood in the soil too. There have been more wars on Iran’s soil than any other country. We’ve had more battles, more bloods … | Continue reading
(44/54) “On my final morning in Iran I woke with the sun. I knelt to the ground and prayed. It was a six mile walk to the border. The road climbed through the mountains, the same mountains that ran through Nahavand. But in Nahavand the trees were green. Here there was no life. Fe … | Continue reading
(43/54) “Thirty years earlier we’d sworn an oath, to give our lives for Iran. I considered it. There was one parliamentarian who fled to the mountains and died fighting. Even with one eye, I was still a good shot. I could have made a stand. But if I gave my life, it would have to … | Continue reading
(42/54) “At dawn we woke to the sound of shots. First the machine gun fire, then the single shots. That morning I counted more than ever before: twenty-one. When the newspaper arrived that morning, I ran my finger down the list until I found his name. It has always been my belief … | Continue reading
(41/54) “Mitra couldn’t sleep without me. On the nights when I came home late, I’d always find her awake listening to tapes. We still read poetry together. Even in the midst of the chaos, even on the darkest nights, even if only for twenty minutes. It was my greatest comfort. The … | Continue reading
(40/54) “Every morning we awoke to the sound of shots. The executions would begin with a volley of machine gun fire. Then there’d be a round of single shots, to make sure the prisoners were dead. I’d lay in bed and count them. When the newspaper arrived later that morning, I’d se … | Continue reading
(39/54) “It would have been suicide to fight. There were no courts to petition. No laws to challenge. The only weapon that we had left were our words. I joined together with five colleagues from the Pan-Iranist party, and we formed an underground journal. We met daily in an aband … | Continue reading
(38/54) “I could not find it anywhere. The Iran of Shahnameh. The Iran of Cyrus The Great. The Iran of Rumi, Hafez, Saadi, Khayyam. The Iran of our mothers and fathers. The Iran that I had loved since I was a little boy, it was no use to them. They didn’t care about our culture, … | Continue reading
(37/54) “The meeting was held in the office of the former speaker of parliament. He’d been executed four weeks earlier. It was an office I’d been to many times before. But everything beautiful had been removed: the paintings, the carpets, the furniture. In the center of the room … | Continue reading
(36/54) “The religious fanatics were less than ten percent, but you couldn’t tell them apart. They looked like us. They spoke the same language. They did what no invader had been able to do for three thousand years, erase our nation, our culture, our connection to the past. But t … | Continue reading
(35/54) “Every morning we woke to the sound of shots coming from the prison near our house. The executions were always held at dawn. When the newspaper arrived later that morning, it would show the names and photographs of the dead. An atmosphere of fear began to spread across th … | Continue reading
(34/54) “The revolution officially ended on February 11th, 1979. The military announced that they would no longer resist, and Khomeini’s forces took control of the weapons. That morning a bullet came through our window and landed in the wall above our bed. The country became like … | Continue reading
(33/54) “On the day Khomeini’s plane landed the road from the airport was lined with hundreds of thousands of cheering people. I hadn’t completely lost hope. The king was gone. But we still had a government, a parliament, a constitution. The only thing new was this man. Maybe he’ … | Continue reading
(32/54) “In the end the king turned against his own friends. One day a colleague approached me in the halls of parliament. She was married to a former minister, and the king had just thrown her husband in jail to appease the mobs. She asked me what I thought was going to happen. … | Continue reading
(31/54) “One of Dr. Ameli’s first acts as Minister of Information was to bring cameras and microphones into parliament. For the first time ever, our speeches would now reach the ears of ordinary Iranians. During the first recorded session I gave a speech. I spoke about the same t … | Continue reading
(30/54) “We were at the eighteenth birthday party of our daughter Ahang when we learned that a crowded movie theater had been set on fire in the town of Abadan. The arsonists had locked the exits from the outside, and four hundred people were killed. It was the largest act of ter … | Continue reading
(29/54) “The riots began in Qom. One day Khomeini gave a speech saying that the moment had arrived for a true Islamic revolution. And that it was the duty of all Muslims to oppose the monarchy. The rioters targeted anything they deemed anti-Islamic: cinemas, liquor stores, shops … | Continue reading
(28/54) “The king loved Iran. And I believed him when he claimed that it was his dream to have a more open society one day. With a truly free press. And truly free elections. But he didn’t think Iran was ready. It was fear. So many foreign powers were trying to control Iran. The … | Continue reading
(27/54) “One morning I was called into the Speaker’s office along with another colleague. We were told that he’d received a call from the king’s office, and the king needed our two votes on an upcoming issue. My colleague was silent. But I replied: ‘I cannot do it. If I was a sol … | Continue reading
(26/54) “Mitra was the oldest in her class, but all the younger students loved her. She knew all the latest in culture: the movies, the magazines, the trends. Every night when I came home she’d always be up listening to tapes. The seventies were a golden age of music in Iran: Goo … | Continue reading
(25/54) “There is a game that Mitra and I would often play. One of us would recite a verse from a poem. Then whatever letter that verse ended with, the other person would think of a verse that began with that letter. We’d go back and forth until someone got stuck. And Mitra could … | Continue reading
(24/54) “One afternoon the empress and prince attended a session of parliament. It was an important day. Everyone was hoping to make a strong impression, and I’d prepared a speech especially for the occasion. I was the last speaker on the schedule. The Speaker of Parliament saw m … | Continue reading
(23/54) “Each night when I came home from parliament I’d find Mitra ready to go out. And no matter how tired I felt, off we would go. She always looked perfect. She stayed current with all the latest trends. Every few months she’d have her hair cut in the style of a different Ame … | Continue reading
(22/54) “Dr. Ameli was elected to parliament in the same election, and was chosen by his peers for a leadership position. He was a unifying figure. A man without enemies. His words never cut. He attacked philosophies; never people. And he was one of the best speakers in parliamen … | Continue reading
(21/54) “After the election I took one more visit to Ferdowsi’s tomb. This time I brought my own children with me. It hadn’t changed much in thirty years, but I had changed. I had a better understanding of the sacrifice he’d made for his ideals. Ferdowsi worked for thirty-three y … | Continue reading
(20/54) “Dr. Ameli helped me open a party office. He was an established man by then. But he took the time to come to Nahavand, and I’ll never forget the speech that he gave. He said: ‘Now it is winter, the rivers are frozen, the trees are all dead. But soon green sprouts will bur … | Continue reading
(19/54) “It has always been my philosophy: wherever I am, I try to make the most of the responsibilities I am given. Managing a factory was not my ideal position. I had hoped to find a place where I could have more of a national impact. But I tried my best to improve the lives of … | Continue reading
(18/54) “The king threw a celebration on the 2500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy. It was the largest gathering of world leaders in history. He constructed a city of tents around the ruins of Persepolis, where Cyrus’s grandson Xerxes ruled the ancient world. 1500 cypress tr … | Continue reading
(17/54) “We still took long walks together. Mitra hated walking through deep forests, they were too dark. She’d imagine that predators were hiding behind every tree. By that time I’d begun to organize the workers at my factory. I’d hold weekly meetings and speak to them about the … | Continue reading
(16/54) “When the children were old enough I started reading them Shahnameh before they went to sleep. The stories of Rostam were too violent. They’d cry and cry. So I started with the stories of Iran’s mythic kings. These were the first kings of Iran. They discovered fire, langu … | Continue reading
(15/54) “After my injury Mitra said it was finally time to be realistic. She began to use the words I would hear for the rest of my life: ‘You’ve already lost one eye for your ideals.’ I’d always respond the same way: “I’ve still got one eye left. And I’d like to see the world fo … | Continue reading
(14/54) “We began in darkness. Three hundred years after the Battle of Nahavand. The invaders had plundered the country. Caravans of riches were leaving day and night. There was a huge push to break our unity, to erase our identity, to make us forget ourselves. And whenever a con … | Continue reading
(13/54) “In Germany we started a family. When our first daughter was born we named her Ahang. Ferdowsi uses the word a lot in Shahnameh. It means melody, but it also means willpower. Eighteen months later our son Maziar arrived. After the children were born Mitra said it was time … | Continue reading
(12/54) “She was brave in many ways. But there were three things that Mitra feared most: darkness, silence, and being alone. In Germany we’d take long walks through the countryside. Mitra couldn’t stand the quiet. She’d recite entire poems back-to-back-to-back. At the time she’d … | Continue reading
(11/54) Before our wedding Mitra’s father gave her one final piece of advice: ‘Never let a man enforce his opinions on you.’ And she took it to heart. She was my opposite. My antithesis. The hardest for me to convince. She would tell me I was too optimistic. She’d say that I only … | Continue reading
(10/54) “Mitra loved anything beautiful. She kept countless notebooks. And on every page she’d paste something beautiful: a flower, a feather, a line from a poem. One time we went to a large antique shop, and the owner challenged us to choose the most expensive items in the shop. … | Continue reading
(9/54) “The club was called 𝘕𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘰 The Force. There were ten of us. We were all so different. But we were like charms on a bracelet, united by our love for Iran. It was nothing important: we’d graffiti our slogans onto walls. We’d stand on b … | Continue reading
(8/54) “There’s only one way for love to begin in a traditional society. With the eyes. At the dinner table Mitra disagreed with everything I said. If I said ‘red,’ she said ‘green.’ If I said ‘spice,’ she said ‘sweet.’ But there was something between us. I could see it in the ey … | Continue reading
(7/54) ”In Shahnameh there’s one word that Rostam uses more than any other: 𝘋𝘢𝘢𝘥. Justice. 𝘋𝘢𝘢𝘥 is a simple concept. It means that everyone gets what they deserve: both good and bad. Everyone gets a fair share. The N … | Continue reading
(6/54) “One New Year our whole family took a bus to Qom, one of the holiest cities in Iran. When we arrived in the city it was like stepping back in time. This was a different kind of Islam. It wasn’t my father’s. It wasn’t even my mother’s. It was an Islam from fourteen hundred … | Continue reading
(5/54) “The meaning of our most important words I learned from my mother. 𝘙𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪: Truth. I never heard her tell a lie. 𝘕𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘪: Goodness. I never heard her gossip. And 𝘔𝘦𝘩𝘳 … | Continue reading
(4/54) “My father named me Parviz, after one of Iran’s ancient kings. His story comes at the end of Shahnameh, in the historical section. Parviz was a good king. Not a great king, but a good king. His reign was a golden age of music. But he made many mistakes. His grandson Yazdeg … | Continue reading
(3/54) “It’s been forty-three years since I’ve seen my home. All I have left is a jar of soil. It’s good soil. Nahavand is a city of gardens. A guidebook once called it ‘a piece of heaven, fallen to earth.’ The peaks are so high that they’re capped with snow. A spring gushes from … | Continue reading
(2/54) “I couldn’t find it anywhere. Even on the streets of Tehran, it was nowhere to be seen. The Iran I knew was gone. Everywhere I turned it was nothing but black: black cloaks, black shrouds. The universities were closed, the libraries were closed. Our poets, our singers, our … | Continue reading
(1/54) “We begin in darkness. A siren screams. The invaders come from the desert in a cloud of dust. The king gathers his army at a mountain castle. A single battle decides our fate. The battle burns, the din of drums, the clash of axes, the spark of swords. The dirt turns clay w … | Continue reading