Wednesday
November 1, 2000
Raw destruction
For those of us who were out of Iran by the time the war wit Iraq had
begun, I don't think it is possible to imagine what must have been happening
there in the early 1980's. It was a period of chaos and terror, and one
which we were wholly absent as we were beginning lives here and around
the world.
For the Iranian who left, hearing about the war with Iraq was an unreal,
distant atrocity reported by cold, distant American journalists who often
made no mention of gravity of the situation, nor gave us the images to
understand what exactly was going on over there.
These photos of Khorramshahr ["Rape"]
end any kind of doubt as to what transpired in Iran during the war. They
powerfully communicate the raw destruction and suffering endured by our
brothers and sisters back home during those dark and turbulent years,
and provoked a deep reflection in me...the revolution that turned life
upside down and a war that turned what little remaining shred of sanity
inside out--it made me realize how little we know about who our people
have become and how far our paths have diverged from them.
Bravo to the photographer and I hope that this exhibit evokes some sense
of the incredible price that was paid by the Iranian people in the Iran-Iraq
War.
Roozbeh Shirazi
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