Tara is not a spy

This is an article about the play, "We are not Spies" by Mansour Taeed

The original article is in Farsi and could be found in the following link:

//www.iran-emrooz.net/index.php?/politic/more...

We are Iranian; we are human beings; we love our country.

By Reza Fani Yazdi

rezafani@yahoo.com

Translated by Fares Hedayati

Tara is not a spy.

Mansour ‘s eyes (*) were full of tears, his whole being was full of a clamor: clamor of generations of people in our homeland that have experienced the worst forms of discrimination within their flesh and bones, from early childhood at schools… to the last moment of death at gallows.

It has been decades, from Amir Kabir to Ahmadinejad, from Nasser al-Din Shah to Ayatollah Khamenei, and from yesterday to today, that Baha’is have been persecuted on charges of being unclean, on charges of foreignism and espionage. Now Mansour, the third generation of them, cries out on stage,

"We are not spies!".

"Tara is not a spy!"

"We are not spies, we are Iranian. We are Baha'is. We love our country. We are the ones whose homeland is the earth but we still love our country. We are indeed human beings."

Who knows? Several tens of Baha’is in the courts of Islamic republic cried out like Mansour, “ we are not spies, we are Iranian, we are human beings, but we are Baha’is and we love our country”. Their cries fell on deaf ears. They were executed. They were crying out,

“We have worked for years in this country, made films, wrote plays; we were pioneers at starting schools in this country; Arj chairs, those that in funerals and at weddings, in happy and sad occasions, in Mid-Shaban celebrations [celebrations of the birth of the Islamic Messianic figure Mahdi ], in classrooms and offices you sit on- we made them. The biggest Agro industry was run by Hojabr Yazdani, a Baha’i, the products of whose company, sugar and sugar cubes were sweet to all of us, Baha’i or Muslim or non-Muslim. We were the managers of the largest producer and distributor of medicine, a company whose Johnson-Johnson soups were used to wash newly born babies and whose medicines were used nation-wide in all drugstores to cure the sick. In hot mid-summers too, when you became thirsty or craved for a cold drink with you sandwiches, you drank Pepsi.

“In movies it was Ahdieh who sang for you and in your weddings and celebrations her songs increased your happiness one hundred fold.

“We are Iranian, we are not spies. We love our country”.

Mansour was right; when he was crying out we love our country. By the way, which minority do you know that has served their country this much?

Who brought Agro Industry to Iran? Who founded schools for girls in our country for the first time? Who brought RTI Weblomond TVs to our homes for the first time? Who distributed medicine, and sanitary products all over Iran? Which minority group do you know that has served his country this much and has been accused of espionage and foreignism this much? Being fair is a good thing.

Before the revolution the population of our country was a bit more than 30 million. Baha’is constituted only half a million, and they did so much. I wish that half our population were “Spies” like them: started up factories, schools, distributed medicine, produced goods and created jobs.

Tara is not a spy.

When Mansour was crying out “Tara is not a spy”, I started crying. I comprehended then, what happened to the Baha’i community of our country, and this is still going on. Tara is fourteen years old. Mona was sixteen when she was arrested. Mona, along with ten other Baha’i women, was arrested on charge of espionage and all of them were executed.

The 16 year-old Mona that day was as innocent as our fourteen year-old Tara today. Just imagine that if the 14 year-old Tara was in Iran now: two years later she might have had the same destiny as Mona.

If Mansour, out of his responsibility towards his religion, felt that he had to take part in administering the affairs of the Baha’i community of Iran, he might have been a member of the Friends of Iran, a group that for months has been in prison on charges of espionage and is waiting for their trial. No one knows what will happen to them.

Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet, two members of Friends of Iran are yesterday’s Taras of our society. Neither were spies when they were Tara and Mona’s age, seated behind classroom desks nor were they spies when they rose up to serve their fellow countrymen by administering the affairs of the Bahá’í community of Iran as members of the Friends of Iran

Fariba Kamalabadi is not a spy. Mahvash Sabet is not a spy. They are Iranian. They love their country. They are indeed human beings and they are Bahá’í.

Charge of espionage is the most ridiculous and at the same time the saddest accusation against our Bahá’í fellow countrymen. It is so ridiculous because the only thing they can possibly do in their defense in courts or under interrogations is deny that they Bahá’ís, or post an ad in a government-run newspaper recanting their faith and embracing Islam. With an ad in a newspaper, all of a sudden, all evidences of your espionage evaporate into the air and vanish. As Islamic judges and interrogators put it, you become “holy and pure like a newly-born Muslim baby”.

In the legal system of our country, if Bahá’ís do not recant their faith, they are put on trial on charges of espionage, and in many cases they were and still are sentenced to death and executed. The 16 year-old Mona, the 21 year-old Akhtar, the 22 year-old Roya, the 25 year-old Shahin, the 28 year-old Mahshid, the 29 year-old Zarrin, the 32 year old-Tahereh, the 56 year-old Nosrat, the 24 year-old Simin, and the 57 year-old Ezzat were ten Bahá’í women that were hung on the same day and time in 1983 in Shiraz.

They were not a network of women in Iran spying for Israel; nor were they spies for any other country. They just refused to sign an ad in a Shiraz newspaper saying that they recanted their faith. They decided to be solely human and stay Bahá’í.

The 16 year-old Mona was not a spy. She was Iranian, a native of Shiraz, a high school student, a Bahá’í. She loved her country

If she was alive today, she would have been happy if Ali Daee [a famous soccer player] scored a goal in soccer. She would have liked it if in the Iran-Mexico soccer tournament, Iran won.

She would have liked Cholo-Kabab.

She would have liked Hafez and Saadi [two Persian poets from Shiraz] a lot.

Like all kids from Shiraz she would have gone to school, studied, become an adult, maybe a teacher, a physician, or a clerk, or maybe a member of the National Assembly of the Baha’is of Iran, or a member of Friends of Iran.

Like all girls from Shiraz, she would have been clad in a beautiful skirt and dress. Maybe sometimes she would have been spoiled by her parents a little bit. Like all kids of the city she might have sometimes sat on her dad’s lap, and if they took her picture she would have liked it and smiled.

Fridays that other kids did not go school and it was a holiday, Mona would have been in Bahá’í moral classes, to have better manners and morals. Her dad had told her that “Bahá’í means possessor of all the virtues and perfections of the world of humanity” [a quote by Abdul-Bahá] and she wanted to be the possessor of all the virtues and perfections of the world of humanity. She was taught not to lie and when the Islamic judge asked her,

“Are you a Bahá’í?”

She said, “Yeah. I am a Bahá’í!”

She was executed because she did not lie. In her moral classes, she was not taught to lie. She was not taught any dissimulation.

Mona was not a spy.

Spies know how to lie. They sign the bottom of any form, post ads in any newspaper, they recant, announce their abhorrence towards any belief hundreds of times, they hide under so many disguises. An old saying says spies have one thousand faces. Mona was not a spy. She did not have a thousand faces. She did not tell lies. Mona was indeed a human being, but a Bahá’í human being. She was not killed because she was a spy. She was killed because she was a Bahá’í.

Mansour in his impressive play, We are not spies, tells us the story of the sufferings and pains of the largest religious minority of our country. He does it with such heart-felt emotions, and with the aid of friends and family photos, his own memoirs, the day-to-day life of a Bahá’í child. He tells stories from his school and neighborhood, from falling in love to moral classes, from Misaaghieh hospital to recreational camps, etc. in such a way that even one thousand books of history cannot narrate.

Not only fanatical mullahs accused Bahá’ís of espionage. Our intellectuals: writers and so-called historians too also made “Bahá’í” synonymous to “spy and outsider”. In the time of Russians, they were spies of the totalitarian Russia and opponents of the constitutionalist movement [in Iran]. Later on, they were called spies of Britain and after the establishment of the government of Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments. All of a sudden all “outsiders, non-insiders” were accused of espionage for Israel. Bahá’ís, whose administrative and spiritual center happened to be in the newly-established Israel, were of course spies!

The We are not spies play is the best example of human defense, based on the most beautiful emotions of a Bahá’í child. After three generations of oppression and persecution, he tells the poignant story of his pain and suffering and that of his parents, grandparents and children. He conveys it in an artistic and beautiful way to the souls and minds of the viewers and acquits himself of all historical accusations.

This play is for all- a play for human rights. As Mansour puts it: “Are you a Muslim Armenian, Assyrian, or Jew? Zoroastrian or Buddhist? Former leftist? Feminist and revolutionary? Even a Bahá’í? None of these? You hate religion?” This play is for you.

Regards

Reza Fani Yazdi

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

(*) Mansour Taeed is a playwright, actor and director. He came to the United States at the age of sixteen. He received his bachelor and master degrees in Physics from UC Berkeley. To continue his studies he went to Columbia University. His great passion for theater stopped him from finishing his studies. He started acting in 1981 by playing in “City of stories” , a play by Bijan Moifd. The first play that he wrote and directed was called “a dance like this” which was acted on stage in 1986. In 1985, along with some of his friends in Northern California, he founded the theatre group Darvag. He wrote, directed, acted and produced more than 40 plays since then.

(**) A Comedy written, directed and performed by Mansour Taeed in 2009/2010in many cities in US and Canada

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyesVwhLwHA&feature...

(***) In memory of ten Bahá’í women who were executed in Shiraz

//iran-emrooz.net/index.php?/hright/more/1617...