My Name is Iran: Journal

Women’s Search for Justice

2007-01-27T14:06:00-05:00

A Tribute to My Spiritual Warrior

2007-01-08T19:28:01-05:00

His Name is Saied

2007-01-04T13:36:00-05:00

Iranian Satirist Takes On President Ahmadinejad

2006-12-18T13:27:00-05:00

John Oliver Smith

2006-12-16T11:04:00-05:00

ABC features Jim Bakhtiar - All American Football Player 1957 UVA

2006-12-08T14:41:00-05:00

Jahangir Razmi to claim Pulitzer Prize

2006-12-08T14:19:01-05:00

Why I wrote this book

2006-12-03T13:10:01-05:00

1. To relate what it was like living through the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. 2. After the revolution, to decipher the sense of fear, confusion and alienation that I felt as a teenager, living in Brookline, MA, with a name like IRAN. 3. Why it was that I dated the nephew of the former King of Iran but ended up marrying the nephew of an Islamic cleric at the age of 19. 4. To understand the Islamic heritage that I carry with me in the tradition of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammad. 5. To document the struggle of Iranian women, both religious and secular, as they demand freedom of expression and human rights. 6. To share the origins of Sufism, the mystical dimension of Islam, in Persian Architecture, as taught to me by my mother, a Sufi and Islamic scholar and my father, a Harvard-trained architect. 7. To explore the powerful Persian myths and legends that make-up the psyche of Iranians. 8. To explain how back in 1927, in New York City, my fifty-five year old Iranian grandfather mesmerized my twenty-two year old American grandmother by reading her passages from Persian poetry. The two then went back to Iran in 1931 to start a hospital and had seven children. 9. To introduce you to my adventurous American grandmother Helen who loved Iran and Iranians. As part of President Truman’s Point Four Health Mission, she traveled by donkey, camel and her trusted Jeep through the rural villages of Iran in the 1950’s to teach the women and young girls proper healthcare. 10. To discover what a typical American man named John Smith (of Lima, Ohio) with four sons finds endearing about a woman named Iran with four children.

Journeys I took as a child in Iran in the 1970’s

2006-12-03T12:35:02-05:00

* SOLOMON’S MOSQUE- Solomon’s Mosque, known as Masjid-i Sulayman in Persian, is some one hundred miles from the mouth of the Persian Gulf and is where the first modern oil wells were discovered in the Middle East back in 1908. In 1964, my father accepted a job with the National Iranian Oil Company to design housing for its workers. This barren and traditional land would become our family’s first attempt at integrating modernity with tradition, in the form of architecture. While working as head of the oil company’s architecture department, my father began to get involved in archaeological digs in the area. A French archaeologist, Roman Ghirshman, who was working on the Achaemenid and Sassanian sites asked my father to spend weekends with him documenting his findings in the south of Iran. There at the stone threshold of 7th century Bard-i Neshandeh, my father first noticed the care with which an archaeologist took a half-inch wide sable paint brush to the centuries of dust that covered the stone of a temple under which lay gold coins that could date the site. * TAKHT-E-SULAYMAN (Solomon’s Throne) –This sacred site was home to a community of Magi or Zoroastrian priests back in 500 B.C. Located in northwest Iran, part of the throne area was the fire temple, devoted to warriors and Kings during the Zoroastrian pre-Islamic era, and is believed to have been lit from oil in the region. In front of the fire temple is a great fathomless lake filled with overflowing limestone-calcinated water of a warm spring. My sister and I took great delight in jumping in for a dip. * NAIN – One of the most memorable trips during our time in Iran was a two-week voyage around the great Salt Desert ‘Kavir Namak’ in southeastern Iran. We had a Land Rover that seated seven—our driver and my father and my mother in front, my sister, brother and I in the back seat sitting across from each other. We all wore cowboy hats that my parents had bought in Texas. Our first stop was the historic town of Nain that in ancient times was surrounded by a 4,000-foot citadel wall, now in ruins. Nain is most famous for its carpets, so my parents found a guide to take us to a weaving studio, where, in a small, dark mud-brick room filled with two large looms, my sister and I were mesmerized by girls our age weaving intricate carpets. * ISFAHAN - We began at the Friday Mosque that had been built over many generations. I had seen mosques before, but never one as stark as this. In my father’s eyes, it was the most beautiful and truthful building of Iran, because it was an elegant construction in only one material—brick. Without anything to hide the perfect geometry of the structure, my father deemed it “pure architecture,” going on to note the way the columns and domes caught the light and refracted it onto the building. We walked the bazaar, taking in its myriad sights and sounds. Each section was devoted to a particular craft or product, such as carpet, jewelry, pottery, coppersmith, leather, spices, cloth, etc. The stalls where these were sold were aligned in rows across from each other, traversed by a hallway with high vaulted domes, at the top of which were openings where sun could filter through. A grand dome divided each section. Later my father explained that the bazaar was the model upon which western malls were based. * TUS – We visited the tomb of the great Persian poet Ferdowsi. In the late 10th and early 11th centuries, Ferdowsi wrote the Shahnameh, or Epic of Kings, where he described the mythical and historical eras of Iran. A poem seven times longer than the Illiad of Homer, the Shahnameh is an Arthurian like chronicle based on experiences of past generations of the Iranian people. Ferdowsi’s tomb has a beautiful mausoleum that you enter through a garden, with a covered gazebo structure and a statue. Famous lines and quotes from his poems are carved into stone for all to read and appreciate. My grandfather Abol Ghassem and grandmother Helen are both buried in Tus near the tomb of Ferdowsi. Tus is also the birthplace of the famous Muslim theologian Muhammad al-Ghazzali, who played much the same role in the Islamic world as St. Thomas Aquinas had played in the Christian world. I remember it as yet another brick on brick building with a beautiful dome in the center. * MASHHAD – the holy city of Mashhad in northern Iran is the home of the shrine of the 8th Shia Imam, Imam Reza. The shrine is a place of Shia pilgrimage throughout the year. Pilgrims circumambulate the shrine seven times, while chanting prayers and tying wishes on the metal grilles. Both my grandfather Abol Ghassem and my grandmother Helen’s bodies were circumambulated around this shrine before taken to the town of Tus for burial.

How I came to know Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

2006-11-17T20:46:00-05:00

I first learned about Shirin Ebadi in 1997. My colleague Jacki Lyden was in Tehran working on a story about the upcoming Presidential elections. This was the election that brought in Mohammad Khatami and six years before Ebadi would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Jacki interviewed Shirin Ebadi in her law offices. I want to share parts of this interview that never aired on NPR. The atmosphere in Iran in 1997 was one of hope that with the election of a new President reforms would take place within the government and there would be more openness and freedom of speech. This was a particularly sensitive time for writers and intellectuals. Some had died under mysterious conditions, others had received death threats - even Shirin Ebadi had received a death threat in the form of a letter. But when pressed on these threats Ebadi was emphatic: “It is not clear who wrote this letter, who posted it.” Ebadi said in 1997. “I cannot condemn anyone because of it. I received this letter and several other people received the same letter.” Are you frightened Jacki asked. “No” Ebadi answered. Jacki then asked her to share her work as a human rights activist: Ebadi said she reviews the laws concerning human rights, “For example, in relation to the Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration for Children’s Rights, both of which we (Iran) have signed, it is not possible to execute a child under the age of 18. Now, in Iran, the age of maturity of a girl is 9 years. This means that we can execute a 9 year old girl,” Ebadi said. She continued, “The situation in the prisons is much worse for girls than it is for boys. For instance, in several large cities in Iran, like Mashhad and Tabriz, we have a law that young boys who are condemned to prison who are under 18, are sent to a corrections center that differs from the adult prison. But unfortunately young girls do not have this situation. Throughout our prisons, if a girl under the age of 18, or a 9 year old girl are condemned to prison, they are put in prison with 45 or 60 year old women.” “All of my work and interest” Ebadi continued, “has been in the social issues of the law. I am extremely sensitive to any injustice that the law might have. The highest form of oppression is the oppression of an oppressive law. Therefore, as an attorney, I feel I have the responsibility to object to these laws.” “Let me give you another example,” she said. “Say that there are 15 women sitting in a house, all educated women, and a thief comes with a gun. Not only does he steal things from the house, but also he rapes one of the women. We 15 women go to the court and bear witness that this man raped that woman. The court will not take our witnessing into consideration because the witnessing by women alone is not proof. Not only do they not punish the rapist, but because of we 15 women going against the law, each one of us has to receive 80 whip lashes.” Shirin Ebadi is part of a larger peaceful movement in the Islamic World for more moderation. At the heart of her battle for human rights and women’s and children’s rights in Iran is her call to reinterpret Islamic law. She has said, “We need an interpretation of Islam which complies with human rights.” I came to know Shirin Ebadi myself personally in December of 2003 when I traveled to Oslo to cover the Nobel Peace Prize and gather material for my documentary. While in Oslo, I met some of Mrs. Ebadi’s colleagues who had helped her with her foundation for children. In 1996, Ebadi helped create an NGO for children’s rights. I met one of her collegues in Oslo. He told me that each day some 40 therapists work on children’s issues and monitor a hotline where children of all ages call in with their concerns. According to the foundation, child abuse in up in Iran. Many of those calling are teenagers talking about physical, sexual and mental abuse. One of the goals of the foundation is to gather data and statistics on children’s conditions and take those directly to the parliament to demand for more protection for children. On December 10th, the day Ebadi received the Nobel Peace Prize, I arrived at the press-filing center at Oslo’s City Hall. As the international sound system was being tested for broadcast and the orchestra got in one last practice, the Hall started filling up one by one. Looking down from the press center I saw some familiar faces walking in to honor Shirin Ebadi. One of them was Parastou Forouhar. Her parents Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar were well-known intellectuals and dissidents in Iran. The two had been brutally murdered by agents of the Islamic Republic in 1998 and Shirin Ebadi was the family attorney. I then saw human rights lawyer Karim Lahiji proudly walking down the aisle to take his seat. Until that day, Karim Lahiji was considered one of Iran’s most well-known human rights activists. He had been one of several scholars who were asked by the Ayatollah Khomeini to draft Iran’s new constitution after the revolution. But when the new revolutionaries felt he was too secular they marginalized him and eventually he fled Iran and lives in Paris. On that day Shirin Ebadi took her seat next to the Royal Family of Norway. The walls of Oslo’s City Hall were adorned with paintings featuring themes of wartime occupation, resistance and liberation. Azaleas, Ivy, and white roses adorned the main hall. And after some graceful piano music, the Nobel Laureate was serenaded with music from Kurdistan. Needless to say the hall was transfixed! When it came time for Ebadi to take the stand for her acceptance speech, in a dramatic gesture at the Nobel Ceremony she raised her right arm and said “I am an Iranian - A descendant of Cyrus the Great.... the emperor who at the height of his power said he would not rule over the people if they didn’t want him to.” Ebadi is one who knows the power of the past. While in Oslo I asked Shirin Ebadi if she would autograph a book I had - the book was called “Davar va Adlieh” - Davar and the Justice System. It was a biography of my great grandfather Ali Akbar Davar, Iran’s former Justice Minister. In the late 1920’s, he helped draw up a progressive legal code for Iran that combined Western legal precepts and the Islamic legal code known as Shariah. Eighty years later, the same tensions to reconcile modernity and traditional Islam are alive today in Iran and Ebadi is at the forefront of Iran’s current legal reform movement. Ebadi graciously autographed her name and added, “Iran is proud of Davar”.