Iranian journalist Siamak Qaderi was sentenced to four years in prison and 60 lashes on 21 January. Qaderi, a blogger, was charged disseminating of false information liable to disrupt public order and publishing anti-government propaganda. Last year he was fired from the government news agency IRNA for interviewing gay Iranians and posting the interviews on his blog. Qaderi has been in detention since July 2010, his arrest was linked to eyewitness accounts he published of the opposition protests of the Green Movement.
Little Black Fish would like to share this clip of a group of Iranians in the Fars province dancing to make the best of a long traffic jam earlier this week.
It is significant in a country where music and dancing are banned social activities. When I first saw it two days ago it has some 300 views. Now with more than 10,000 views, demonstrating the engagement of our ever-growing community, it corresponds with the picture given below by a young Iranian citizen’s account of every day life in Tehran.
A report of everyday goings on in Tehran, for our friends outside the country:
“In life everyone experiences moments of loneliness — the story of being in a room full of people but feeling alone. I’m no exception to this rule, but I can say that it’s been some 18 months since I last had that feeling. In fact it’s been some time that even strangers that I meet seem familiar. It’s been 18 months that we’ve had a shared experience, that we’re all looking in the same direction, reading the same news, and it seems have the same dreams.
It’s been a long time that it’s easy to strike up a conversation with a stranger. There is something in common to be found with everyone, the most common being unemployment. I encounter people my own age who are mostly unemployed or older people who complain of the unemployment of those around them – educated and uneducated, worker and capitalist, political and non-political, like a fire that once roaring, burns wet and dry together. And for those working the inevitable question is “are they paying your wages on time?’ with the inevitable reply “we haven’t been paid for x many months”.
With unemployment out of the way, the conversation turns to the cost of living and the eradication of subsidies. Here narrative and analysis and legend are all mixed together and even the narrator can’t distinguish their boundaries. And no-one is in pursuit of the truth. It’s as though we’re drowning in a host of undesirables and our only solace in this endless ocean of disaster is in listening and telling
Beyond this, I must confess something. These days I’m experiencing a kind of freedom that I never even dreamed of. Right here in the streets of Tehran and in the darkest days of coup d’etat rule. I’ve gained a privileged freedom that even the perpetrators and supports of the coup have not encountered. Whenever and wherever I may be, I speak freely from the heart without fear of what the strangers around me might think. Never before have I had faith that those around me may think the same way as me. You can talk to anyone about the most controversial news from prisons of rape and torture, of the horrors of Kahrizak [detention centre] with the final agreement that “they’re [the regime] on their way out”. Somehow people’s empathy has transcended miles of political games. Poverty, expense, unemployment and a thousand and one difficulties have drawn us so close together that no one can break that unity easily. It may seem an exaggeration but I include military forces and police in this, I mean, you can easily stand next to a police officer and complain about the status quo and get the measure of his point of view too.
Moving on from the economic situation and politics, the next hot topic is Tehran is air pollution. As always traffic prevails, but recently I’ve noticed a new element to it, like today, as we were stuck in heavy traffic the driver said: “It’s probably the work of the people-harassing Basij [street militia]” referring to their directionless stop and search operations.
Hashish smoking among young people is so commonplace that it’s considered as ordinary as smoking a cigarette, and no-one even bothers to give good advice on it, as though it’s completely acceptable. Only the use of crack, that is the most current and cheapest substance, is considered somewhat disgraceful and that’s probably due to the negative view towards its destructive effect. Even so, every night crack addicts are visible on street corners throughout the city, their bodies showing the infected wounds of their addiction.
The number of street sellers has exceeded all imagination, though they haven’t uprooted the beggars – after all they too have something to sell, the simplest being your fortune, the famous ‘fal-e Hafez”. Otherwise there are wind-up toys, torches and digital watches, the most expensive going for 2000 Tomans (2 US Dollars). The latest CDs and DVDs can be bought at red traffic lights.
I’m not sure why, but it’s been a while since there was any talk of football, no longer considered a hot topic for discussion. Instead (comedy series) “Bitter Coffee” has captivated everyone and with each new set that comes out the talk is of whether you’ve seen it. The most popular character in the series seems to be Baba Shah, whose expressions have caught on and are used in everyday conversations. Farsi1 [a new TV network broadcasting from Dubai] and more recently Manoto [broadcasting from London] have become serious competitors. Of course Parazit [broadcasting from Washington D.C.] is as popular as ever.
Among students and young people there are two more subjects of great importance. The first is emigration, which has long been relevant, but these days it has a new intensity. The second is arrest and prison. The situation is such that there are few youngsters who haven’t suffered the prison experience — however short. Somehow the authorities have managed to take the edge off that experience too, making it normal.
The long and short of it is that it’s not so bad. We’re together and we suffer it together. People still fall in love here and I think in a country where love still exists, there is still life and hope.”
The Iranian judiciary has sentenced Kaveh Kermanshahi, a member of the Kurdish Human Rights Organisation to five years in prison for “actions against national security” and propaganda against the regime. Blogger Navid Khanjani convicted on the same charges as well as membership of illegal human rights organisations. He was given a 12 year prison sentence.
These striking images from a Tehran production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler caught my eye on the Revolutionary Road Facebook page. Sadly the accompanying statement announced that the play had been shut down by the authorities; the director and cast had been “summoned”, accused of promoting “degeneracy”. Iran’s state television Fars had called Vahid Rahbani’s production a “platform for degeneracy and normalising polyandry, the intermingling of men and women and other worthless proceedings”.
However unreasonable such claims may seem, it’s no surprise that Ibsen’s idealistic heroine doesn’t sit comfortably with the powers set on controlling every outward voice in Iran, however fictional. Fear of impression and influence is paramount.
Later that same week I saw a rather beautiful poster for a August Strindberg play in the heart of Iran and far from the frenzied pace of Tehran. Gleaning as much information as I could from the thumbnail images, I extracted the name of one of the actresses and set out to make contact with her. Strindberg’s The Stronger was opening that Saturday in a small town in a province of Iran in the same week that Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler was banned in the capital.
I arranged an interview with the 28-year-old actress who held the main speaking part in the play. I was eager to find out how they had staged the production, the significance of the work of a Swedish playwright to her environment and if she was aware of the Hedda Gabler story. Days later I was still waiting, anxious because, even though she’d been enthusiastic, I was aware that she may have had second thoughts about the possible exposure — the consequences of which can’t be taken lightly.
Strindberg’s published short stories were openly anti-establishment and as an atheist, socialist and anarchist, he was tried for blasphemy in Sweden in 1882. Today, more than 130 years and many civilisations on, the people of Iran are tried for blasphemy on a daily basis.
Two weeks later we’re in contact again. She tells me that the owner of the venue where they are performing The Stronger has been threatened and photographic evidence of “activities” has been obtained. The group have dispersed and cancelled performances. She felt compelled to contact me. We begin the interview. The following are her reflections on her involvement in the production and her short-lived performance:
The speed at which they land on you doesn’t allow for articles or interviews before it’s all over. From the first day I always said that [the play] was likely to be cancelled, so I set out to at least enjoy the rehearsals. We hadn’t had a good experience of putting on a production. We’d done some Pinter but there was nowhere to show it. As a student in Tabriz, things weren’t as limited. Here, even non-political playwrights are hot eggs.
We had about two and a half months of rehearsals; with everyone in different jobs, twice a week at first, then more in the last month. We met at an empty house that belonged to a friend’s family. It was freezing. The director would say “the cold is character building”. We kept going with hot drinks and coffees. My role in the play is full of extremes — happy, then depressed. Our plan was to travel with our performance — to take it to Badar Pahlavi, Rasht, Tehran. In the performance our prop was a table. We didn’t care what we’d find, whether we’d have a table or not, we’d improvise, we just wanted to perform. That was our plan. The coherence of it was precarious but we thought we’ll perform for one day, one hour and must be prepared for anything that transpired.
One of the main reasons we chose the café was that there’s nowhere else. There is a public hall that we theoretically could use but it has so many pillars there were blind spots everywhere. I’d heard of a café society in Tehran. Here everything is taboo. There are only two cafés in our town — both relatively new — one is completely glass-fronted and therefore not appropriate. In the café we used, you enter in darkness then go through upstairs. The owner has an artistic background. It worked out well. We thought: let’s overcome our [restricted] situation. It’s not worth our consideration. We thought we could put on a play and at the same time promote a new culture.
People of all ages came, from 17- and 18-year-olds to 60-year-olds. It was exciting. Scenarios arose, like I’d be playing with a cigarette and it would make someone in the audience ask a stranger for a cigarette. The café has WiFi so someone would be sitting with a laptop and before long two or three people would strike up a conversation with them and they’d share online stuff together. There was no control in this situation. The place was packed. What we were presenting became almost irrelevant. We were linking people. It was so busy and there was a sense of disorder. The result is that we had no control over who could be filming. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance contacted saying “we’ve heard that you’re gathering 15, 16 people”. That was too many. In reality there were 50-60 people in a café with capacity for 30. On “stage” I was fully in hijab, it was in character and I had envisaged this happening. But the problem was our audience. We previewed twice for feedback and held five public performances before we were intimidated and shut down.
On Tuesday [the day of the following performance] my friends said “You mustn’t go, don’t expose yourself”. We’ve all dispersed and I haven’t contacted the café since.
We hadn’t put posters up. It was all through Facebook and word of mouth. After the performance people would stay and hang out. They were on a high. The artistic community appeared. One guy who was much older came three times and I said to him “Tonight I will improvise differently so there’s something new in it for you” but he said no, that he was coming to see the original performance, gaining a new perspective each time he saw it. We had a box. At each performance we said, “This box has many roles…it’s for you to give your comments and it also accepts donations, according to your enjoyment.” We decided to wait until the last performance before opening it, so I don’t know what it holds.
When I was at university, there was a committee that came to oversee productions before any stage performance. There was always a mullah among them controlling what you wore, checking how tight our clothes were. We did Chekhov’s The Proposal, I wore all black — which falls in line with regulations — but they still pulled me up for my leggings. The undercurrent of our work — and I never want to forget this — has always been pressure.
I liked my character [Strindberg’s ‘Miss X’] very much. Maybe it’s pride, or vanity, but I like monologues, so I enjoyed it. I enjoy talking. I probably couldn’t write with the same audacity. My character puts all her effort into expressing herself. In some respects it’s like her last breath, an outpouring of everything, a last chance. The scenario is the character but the speech and deliverance was mine. We changed the ending. I was supposed to exit but a friend said, what are we left with? This is a cut, a slice of life. There is an oral tradition in the work of a Chilean group, it inspired the new ending we composed. When I leave the stage the other character is bereft and shaking. So I return, in a worse state than ever, I offer my cigarette and we share it. We realise that even Bob [the unseen male character] isn’t strong. If we’re weak, he’s not stronger. Ultimately, we’ve shaken the foundations through theatre. It’s a nightmare for the authorities.
Later that same day she contacts me to ask that I remove all names and locations as the situation has escalated and members of the production team have been summoned to answer for their actions. The café owner has been implicated and is still “under enormous pressure”. She still wants this interview to be published.
