this post belongs to http://foreverinhell.blogspot.com/ .Before the recent protests in Iran, I rarely thought at all about Iran or its people. Iran to me was pronounced “I ran”, as in “I ran to the store”. Iran to me was one of those places, like China or Russia, filled with people who hate Americans. I never really considered what Iranians were really like or what they really thought, or how they had changed since the revolution in 1979, with its famous chants of “death to America”.
Imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning to Iranians protesting for democracy. “Where’s my vote?” they asked. “I want my vote to count,” they declared. They waved signs, and the peace symbol, wore green and, in true 21st Century fashion, twittered their revolution. Suddenly, I was a part, a very tiny part, of the Iranian revolution. Anyone who cared to watch TV or sign into Twitter was.
What really struck me was the above picture. The woman holding the sign behind the woman in the white and blue scarf could be my sister. In fact, in looking at pictures and videos of the protests, I found that I have Iranian features, especially my nose, which I’m hoping is attractive in Iran. My face in a crowd of people I had previously dismissed as hateful shamed me. In 33 years, I had not bothered to learn the truth, or even try.
I was impressed that, in what I had been told was an oppressive, misogynistic culture, women were leading the cause for change and advancement. Brave young women tweeted the world, carried signs, marched wearing green, and even confronted armed soldiers with nothing but passion and words.
Then I saw the Daily Show’s series on Iran, and met a people entirely different from what I had assumed. I saw people, just like people I can see anywhere. People who spoke beautiful English when most Americans don’t bother to learn another language, or even speak English all that well. People who answered questions openly and cheerfully. People who welcomed the American “journalist” into their homes, well-decorated homes where their children played video games, just like ours. These Iranians weren’t the boogeyman, they were people just like my friends and neighbors.
Iran has become a nation of young people, a full 2/3 of Iranians younger than me. Too young, in fact to remember the revolution of 1979 and the chants of “Death to America”. Iranians are young, full of hope, and live in the internet age, a fact I think the power structure of Iran does not fully understand. The days are gone when the government can hide the rest of the world from its citizens and vice versa. The internet has made possible friendships that would never have existed in the past, as between Sara and I.
My Iranian friends are free to see the rest of world, to see promise and freedom, to emulate what they admire and to reject what they do not, free to imagine a new future for themselves, a future as bright and hopeful as the Iranian people themselves. I wish you all the best of luck, and I can assure you of this: The new day you wish for has already dawned. It may seem as if your dreams of democracy have wilted or died, but they have not. Dawn is not an instant thing, it is not night one moment and day the next. There is a time of inbetweens, of grays and shadows, before the sunlight arrives. Now is that time. Day is inevitable. Your government can’t put ideas back in a box, or make you forget that what you want is something that other people have, and you can have, too.
I thank the Iranian people for showing me the real Iran, an Iran filled with neighbors and friends, and the hope of new understanding and peace. I someday I can walk the streets of Tehran, and meet my brothers and sisters half a world away.
thanks a lot my dear friend for to write this post.
