There’s a firestorm in the blog teacup around Iran at the moment. Anything beyond the basic expression of solidarity with the protestors would be futile and presumptuous, and the most insightful thing that I’ve read relating to the protests was also the simplest. This quoted on the Prospect blog post by Nasrin Alavi, author of the excellent We Are Iran:
I will take part in the rally tomorrow. It might become violent. Perhaps I may be one of the people who is meant to die. I am listening to all the beautiful songs that I’ve ever heard before…. I always wanted to thin out my eyebrows… I am looking through all my family photo albums from the start. I have to call my friends and say goodbye. I just have two bookshelves full of books to my name in this world; I have told my family who to give them to. I have two units to go before I get my degree, but the hell with that… I just wrote these scattered sentences so that the next generation knows that we weren’t irrational and emotional. So that they know we did what we could to make our lives better… but we refused to give in to oppression.
The Shi’ite preoccupation with martyrdom comes through clearly, but what comes through more clearly is that this is a person with something to lose: not their life, but their hopes.
Tags: Iran