Heart Day - February 11th

As the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution approaches I feel anxiety and dread. Although I am so glad that the people have taken to the streets to demand back their rights as citizens of Iran and plan to walk again on February 11th, the security forces are planning to aggressively break up these "illegal" gatherings. More people will get hurt, more will die, and many a heart will break, including mine. Iranians are wonderful people with a rich history and it hurts that they have to struggle so much for such basic freedoms.

Coincidentally I am reading "We Are Iran - The Persian Blogs" translated and edited by Nasrin Alavi. Persians blog a lot. Alavi states that Farsi is the fourth most common language used in blogs. It makes sense; as print and visual media is so carefully censored blogging is a safe way to for them to write freely. I would like to reproduce a few snippets of entries:

"... At a time when our society is deprived of its rightful free means of communication, and our newspapers are being closed down one by one - with writers and journalists crowding the corners of our jails... the only realm that can safeguard and shoulder the responsibility of free speech is the blogosphere."

"... I think... I live... I blog... therefore I... exist."

"...I keep a weblog 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 somewhere where my calls for justice can be uttered... I write a weblog so that I can shout, cry and laugh, and do the things that they have taken away from me in Iran today..."

"...What have the likes of me learned after 12 years of formal religious education? What is the outcome of being consistently bombarded with sacred information in this Islamic Republic of ours?  
1) When you talk about your religion for over 20 years, its problems will be highlighted.
2) Religious education is the best way to create agnostics in the modern world. Just look around at the people you personally know who went to the infamously strict Islamic schools...
3) Even those most addicted to religion will at some stage overdose.
4) 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. After so many years of being bombarded with religious facts you just stop hearing them."

"...This is Iran. You hear my voice from the land of the most compassionate mother - mothers who break your legs for fear that you may hurt your ankle walking on our very hard pavements......This is Iran. Mothers have to worry, they have to be anxious, and they have to break your legs."

"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 neo-conservatives, 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 war... If the US doesn't bring stability and democracy to Iraq the greatest beneficiaries will be the rulers of the Islamic Republic."

"If George Bush, Dick Cheney and the Fox News Network swapped places with Ayatollah Kamenai, Rafsanjani and our own state-controlled television network, nothing much would change in the world. Just as everything in Iran is the fault of the Americans, in America, Middle Eastern terrorists are to blame for all the woes of the world..."

"Death to American! Death to Bush! Death to Colin Powell! Death to Elizabeth Taylor! But I want to go live in America."

"Yesterday during the BBC news report on the Bali bombing, the reporter kept repeating that the majority of Bali Muslims are peace-loving and do not in any way support the bombers. 
   The thief said: 'I don't know why every time something goes missing around here they come after me. But, interestingly, they always find the stolen loot here.'
   Now that has become the story of we Muslims, where it's left to the non-Muslim TV, out of common decency, to defend us as peace-overs. We are useless."

"What is there to be done with our own Islamic fascists? Our electoral system does not give us an opportunity to vote against them. Have we put up a fight? Yes, for 25 years our prisons have been packed to the rafters, we have seen the best of our kind sent to the gallows and buried in mass graves. Are the fascists in the minority? Yes. In two recent subsequent general elections they gained only 10 per cent of the votes. But they are armed and willing to kill for their beliefs and we are only willing to die for ours..."

This book is over 350 pages long and I am on page 96 where Alavi discusses the poetry of the celebrated modern poet Ahmad Shamlou who died at age 75 in 2000. Persians live and breath poetry, and Shamlou wrote poetry with the language of resistance. Alavi relates that during his funeral procession mourners chanted a line from one of his most famous poems:  "I have never feared death... My fear is to die in a land where the gravedigger's wage is higher than the price of an individual's freedom..."

These blog entries offer a extraordinary look into the hearts and minds of the young adults in Iran. Democracy cannot be forced from an external source, it comes from within a country, a people. These bloggers may just make the difference in keeping the resistance fueled with the energy of fresh ideas and unity of purpose.