It’s been a year since I wrote my Adios Amigos blog. Exactly one year and so much has changed in this one year.
Let’s see; I became a Senior Contributor at PersianMirror.com, (over here JJ doesn’t even chop onion leaves for contributors 🙂 by the way their ‘JJ’ is Shabnam Rezaei and she is pretty cool; watched American economy go down the drain and 401Ks evaporate; voted for Obama; went to Iran; watched all the Iranian debates on TV in Iran, talked to people on newsstands the very next days then talked more to cab drivers and bus passengers; witnessed so much excitement; voted for Mousavi, after election went to bed with (loud) lullabies of Allah-o Akbar and Death to Dictator (coming through our terrace screened doors when our old Arj water-cooled air conditioning is off for peace and ‘quiet’ at night :-), saw the riot police for the first time and now here.
In the interest of full disclosure although I wanted to, I did not walk the streets after the elections in response to my parents’ and family’s pleas. I can’t explain it but it is like an automatic magnet or homing device when you want to join the crowds after witnessing everything prior and after the Election Day. We have a lot of young people in our family and they would go but even they would ask me not to go. I guess they thought I could not run or jump the joubs when needed or could not handle the pain of getting hit by a baton and even though I told them I had been hit by batons during football celebrations before, they would laugh and say this is another kind of baton beating!
Many also stopped going out after things turned much more violent and riot police came out in full force and brutality. Satellite media and internet is blocked in Iran and now that I watch these young people get bloodied, injured, detained or die on the streets while being photographed I can not help but be reminded of my own family members and how beautiful they are and how personal this feels. This is what many worried about, that the regime will resort to violence and once again everything turns sour and you’d see the sadness and depression in an otherwise festive mood, rallies and crowds in days and nights prior to Election Day. Tehran is once again somber and sad.
I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to visit Iran during this time. Had I been here and watched snippets of the TV debates (a first in Iran and very exciting for people) or watched the events unfold on news; I would not have been able to understand these events properly and have first hand knowledge. No offense to anyone but there is a world of difference between waving the “Lion and Sun” flag in the streets of America and waving the Green flag in the streets of Tehran.
Every one of us from Reza Pahlavi to Khamenei and everyone in between has a purpose and each word is being used and abused by both the international media and the Iranian state run media. Those who march the streets do NOT do it “to be on TV”, either TV! They march because their votes were stolen and their dignity trampled on. They are smart enough and openly discuss during the day and (tried to) march peacefully and quietly in the afternoons.
I believe we should follow their lead and stay away from “giving advice” or “leading” them. This is their time, their event, their wise desire to have a peaceful and nonviolent movement for civil rights, their desire to change, reform and finally implement democracy. While many of us were promoting boycotting the elections, millions were actively involved in getting people to vote and setting up election offices nationwide. They will find their way and they will find their own methods and strategy. Mousavi is currently, perhaps reluctantly, the de-facto leader of this movement. Some of his advisors and other reformists including Govt officials have been arrested and are in jails. Rafsanjani’s own daughter who spoke at a rally was detained and later released. Arab activists in the Middle East are .
2009 is not 1979. I may write more on this subject but which was the better choice that created this defiance, voting or not voting?
As for iranian.com, while so much has changed in this past one year, not much seem to have changed here. Well, you can now post a picture in your blogs or chat and event sections and more featured blogs lasting longer, but not much more. While there is a User Agreement policy which is actually pretty good, apparently it is for decoration only!
This is an old issue which has been beaten to death, so I’ll just say it is another Irani bazi which means there are rules but we don’t care about them. User Agreement policy is for only when Queen of England visits and someone insults her! It is like Khamenei who says election rules are good but we’ll announce ‘the winner’ regardless of the rules! Or like the Guardian Council that says they’ll recount 10% of the votes (about 4 million) randomly and when they find stuffing of votes in 50 of 150 voting districts, they’ll say it is not enough to show anything so we just don’t care!
Oh well, I am Iranian and very familiar with Irani bazi. I know JJ is very busy these days with Iranian news and it’s reflection here, so this may not have been the right time or the place for me to mention what I said but we are where we are a year later and I would have made the same brief statements had Mousavi been elected!
Hopefully I can write another season of Hajiagha, while it may not be the best time for it either, but “Everything Is Sacred” and after just coming back from Iran I believe it more and I’m going to make it a trailer for my comments, at least for a while anyway 😉
