Perspective, Spring 2018

Perspective

Spring 2018 University of California, Berkeley Iranian Students' Cultural Organization Since 1995

a letter from the editor Dear Reader, It is with great enthusiasm that we present to you the Spring 2018 issue of Perspective Magazine. We are a student-run publication at the University of California, Berkeley, that offers anyone interested in Iran or the Iranian-American diaspora an outlet to explore key ideas and issues related to the community.

Since our establishment in 1995, we have aimed to provide an original and authentic perspective of our heritage by both celebrating the richness of Iranian culture and analyzing it critically. We hope to encourage an open and honest dialogue surrounding Iranian society through our work, both among ourselves and throughout the world.

It has been an honor to serve as your Editor-in-Chief for the 20172018 year. This is my eighth and final semester writing for Perspective Magazine, and I have watched its quality in content and design improve with each subsequent issue. I would like to thank our staff, donors, and readers for their commitment to the publication. Without your support and dedication, we could not have come this far.

If you are interested in becoming involved with the publication, please send an email to info@perspective.berkeley.edu. We accept new applications from potential writers and staff members each semester and always welcome donations and advertisements for future editions.

I hope you enjoy the issue.

Yours, Negin Shahiar

Editor-in-Chief

contents

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Like the Cat Dorna Movasseghi

12

Ambiguity of Religious Identity Donna Fotoohi

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More Than A Name Bardia Barahman

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Halva for the Soul Saba Moussavian

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Arsalan Kazemi: An Iranian Icon in American Basketball Anahita Ghajarrahimi

untitled poem Azin Mirzaagha

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Iran & The Beautiful Game Cameron Salehi

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Crossroads of Identity Sahar Hashemian

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The "I" in ISCO Dorrin Akbari

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The Tehran Metro Sean Adibi

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A Modern Take on Mehrieh Mahshad Badii

18

The Persecution of Iranian Baha'is Mina Aslan

29

From School to Work: A Cultural Dichotomy Charlotte Laurence

19

The Lost Mizrahi Jasmin Toubi

30

Pioneering, Not Plagiarizing Arsalan Qureshi

20

Cinema Rex: 31 Generational Trauma & Revolution in Abadan Bahaar Ahsan

21

Savoring the Taste of Cherry Yaron Moaddel

22

Bastani Sonati Nasim Ghasemiyeh

4 5 6

#PROTESTS Kayla Fathi From Diplomacy Negin Shahiar

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8

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Breaking the Shisheh of Drug Abuse in Iran Cultural Appropriation is Not Gucci Saalar Aghili Where is Iran?

Ali Setayesh

References

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Perspective Staff Negin Shahiar Editor-in-Chief

Leila Assistant Editor-in-Chief

Donna Fotoohi Asst. Layout Editor

Nasim Ghasemiyeh Head of Outreach

Anoush Razavian Photographer

Dorrin Akbari Copy Editor

Azin Mirzaagha Copy Editor

Jasmin Toubi Copy Editor

Kayla Fathi Copy Editor

Charlotte Laurence Copy Editor

Bahaar Ahsan Copy Editor

Anahita Ghajarrahimi Copy Editor &

Yaron Moaddel

Cameron Salehi

Mina Aslan

Sean Adibi

Saba Moussavian

Copy Editor Copy Editor Copy Editor

Arsalan Qureshi

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Sahar Hashemian

Bardia Barahman

#PROTESTS #PROTESTS #PROTESTS Kayla Fathi Censorship in Iran is by no means a new concept for its citizens, as exemplified by the inaccessibility to popular media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. After recent protests, this was taken a step further by placing a ban on Instagram and the messaging app Telegram, which boasts about 40 million users in Iran—more than half the population. It’s safe to say that one of the reasons behind this choice has to do with the power these apps placed in the hands of their users.

The last time protests of this caliber broke out in Iran during the Green Revolution in 2009, roughly one million protesters had smartphones. Today, that number is 48 million. As protests in Iran stretched to their fourth consecutive day, Iranian authorities continued to restrict the media tools that had become pivotal sources of information in realms of organizing events as well as delivering messages. Internet access as a whole was sporadically cut off in the midst of protests. The restriction of access to media technology had played arguably as large of a role as the physical presence of police during the government crackdowns.

Not only was there a gap in communication amongst protesters, but also many businesses that are dependent on Telegram felt the negative economic impact of the clampdown. Since the Iranian government has had filters for the country’s internet access already in place, it is “surprisingly easy” to add new sites and services to the blocked list, as all of their internet use goes through

Telegram is a popular mobile communication platform in Iran photo: telegram media

Iranians engage in and document a demonstration photo: voice of iran

internet exchanges controlled by the government, according to Oliver Farnan of the University of Oxford.

As many Iranians who do not currently reside in Iran may note, awareness of the intricacies and specific altercations going on during the protests was much higher with the aid of social media to see live videos, trending hashtags, and harness the ability to communicate directly with family and friends in the midst of the events. Many were able to digitally stand in solidarity or express their opinion on the occurrences. International leaders from all corners of the world chimed in, often with support for the protestors.

These events exemplified just how connected and aware people are capable of being with the aid of media and technology.

Rather than one large outlet with many followers, there were a wide series of small networks of people sharing and disseminating the news, and they were able to make it go viral and bring individuals of more than 90 different Iranian cities and towns to the streets. The bans on Instagram and Telegram have been lifted as things have calmed down in the streets of Iran. This leaves the question of what to anticipate for the future of social media use in protests, and in a wider scope, Iran as a whole. Ayatollah Khatami, among others, has called for the creation of homegrown apps in Iran where revenue and oversight of servers would stay local to the nation as an alternative to the popular digital tools that were utilized over the course of the protests. President Hassan Rouhani has reportedly instructed his communications minister to seriously pursue possible investment and support for domestic apps. Only time will tell if the Iranian people will accept domestic apps with open arms. Until then, with the use of VPNs and international apps, they manage to stay connected. In the case that Iranian officials move in the direction of an increase of permanent bans on foreign media apps: Iran has a highly educated, tech-literate population, and in some ways, Iranians are tech-savvy out of necessity. They have found a way to have an online presence while living under years of sanctions and will likely navigate a way to keep their voices heard loud and clear moving forward.

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Negin Shahiar

My visit to Tehran in July 2015 overlapped with a critical juncture in U.S.-Iran relations. Iranians poured into the streets to celebrate when the P5+1 and Iran struck a nuclear deal after twenty months of negotiations. Men and women danced in the middle of traffic, and red, white, and green fireworks lit up the streets. For the first time since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the U.S. and Iran had successfully engaged in diplomacy. No one in the crowd that day could have known, however, that within just two years, U.S.-Iran relations would again unravel.

Since his election to office, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced the nuclear accord as “the worst deal ever negotiated” and threatened to “rip up” the agreement. Trump spurred headlines around the world in October 2017 with his decision not to recertify Iran’s compliance with the deal. In the coming weeks, he is set to again announce a certification or decertification of the accord and, critically, whether the U.S. will remain in the agreement. As the world waits in anticipation of Trump’s announcement, I sat down with several U.S.-Iran experts to hear their insights on why diplomacy succeeded, and why it may now fall apart. I was particularly surprised to learn that U.S. policy toward Iran may be driven more by psychology than by geopolitics.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif during negotiations on March 27, 2015 in Switzerland photo: time magazine

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Under Barack Obama’s administration, the U.S. pursued diplomacy, because as Iranian policymaker and scholar Seyed Hossein Mousavian pointed out, the alternative may have been conflict. Interestingly, Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry’s personal backgrounds may have driven the administration’s decision to eliminate the possibility of war. According to former White House staffer and advisor on the nuclear deal Ben Rhodes, Obama opposed war due to his upbringing in Indonesia, where “power was not some abstract thing,” given the brutal dictatorship of President Suharto. “I don’t think there’s ever been an American president who experienced power like that at such a young age,” Rhodes remarked. Trita Parsi, who is the founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, contended that Kerry, likewise, was determined to pursue peace over war because of his experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Speaking with tears in his eyes after the signing of the nuclear deal, Kerry shared with U.S. and Iranian officials, “When I was 22, I went to war. I went to war, and it became clear to me that I never wanted to go to war again.”

While the personal backgrounds of Obama and Kerry may have shaped the success of the nuclear deal, Trump’s own psychology could determine its unraveling. Although Trump claims that he opposes the accord because it is a “disaster,” senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Karim Sadjadpour argued that Trump’s antagonism of the agreement is unrelated to its clauses. “He clearly hasn’t read the deal, because his criticism is never specific,” Sadjadpour noted. Instead, as Sadjadpour, Mousavian, and Parsi agreed, the decision against recertifying Iran’s compliance with the accord is related more to Obama than to Trump. “Trump absolutely hates the idea of recertifying an Obama-era accomplishment,” Parsi remarked.

Mousavian agreed, contending that U.S. policy on the nuclear deal is driven by Trump’s “passion to undo Obama’s legacy.”

Could Trump’s mark of a successful term in office be the degree to which he expunges Obama’s presidency? Notably, Trump has undone several of Obama’s accomplishments, as he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate accord. He even entered the political scene by attacking Obama, questioning his birthplace as well as his level of education.

In his seminal work The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, U.S.-Middle East analyst Kenneth Pollack points to the absence of a coherent U.S. policy toward Iran since the 1979 Revolution. Unfortunately, fifteen years after the book’s publication, U.S. policy, and now the future of the nuclear deal, remain unclear. As my interviews suggest, the inconsistency may be a result of the impact of the psychology of U.S. presidents and their cabinets on foreign policy. This is problematic, because as Parsi noted, U.S.-Iran relations are characterized by decades of mistrust, and the announced decertification of the nuclear accord has vindicated the anti-U.S. narrative of Iranian hardliners. “Why would you trust the U.S. when it walks back on its own word?” Parsi remarked. “More importantly, why would you trust the duration of any agreement with the U.S. when it is only going to last as long as a presidential term limit?”

Leila Zarifi

For the longest time, seeing my grandfather and his brothers smoking outside during family gatherings was merely commonplace. I always assumed they were smoking hookah or cigarettes; never did I think it had been opium all these years. To my surprise, opium is not nearly as frowned upon in Iranian culture as it is in the U.S. In fact, smoking opium is considered extremely culturally permissible. According to the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, Iran has one of the worst drug problems in the world, with nearly 2.2 million people addicted and seventy-four percent of the world’s opium seizures in 2012.

Historically, early use of opium traces back to the fifteenth century. In the ancient world, opium was used in medicine, mostly for pain relief but also recreationally among the upper-class in Iran. The history of opium use can likewise be traced to the impact of Iranian poets, who believed in the drug’s “healing properties.” In a quote by Hafez, a famous Iranian poet, he recites, “If you hurt me, it would be better than that others medicate me; If you poison me, it would be better than that others give me opium.” The strong influential effect on Iranian cultural formation stemmed from the appeal and widespread use of the drug and has nonetheless persisted over the years.

As opium production rose in Iran, opium consumption did as well. One of the reasons for the widespread consumption is its availability. As one of the main trafficking routes between Afghanistan and Western Europe for poppy, the source of opium, Iran lies victim to possession of the drug. Besides the fact that it is an externality of drug trafficking, causes for opioid abuse can be attributed to rises in “poverty, unemployment, homelessness,

adultery, family crises, divorce, domestic violence, and runaway children.” Opioid abuse is only one of the many drug problems Iran faces today. Other abuses have become especially common among the young. The use of methamphetamine has grown especially prevalent among wealthier, young Iranians, who refer to it as shisheh,or "glass." It is used as, “...a way to lose weight, focus on an exam or get high for parties.” Needless to say, drug abuse transcends economic, social, and age barriers in Iran.

Rather than ameliorate the health problem by limiting opium use, the enforcement of harsh anti-drug measures by the Iranian government’s “war on drugs,” has only seemed to lead to a larger criminalization of drug-use, with nearly fifty percent of those incarcerated charged with drug-related offenses. Each year, large numbers of convicts are sent to death row. Recently, there have been movements to do away with capital punishment for nonviolent drug crimes.

If the Iranian government is to see any improvements on the growing problem within its borders, it should focus more on drug reduction programs and move away from punishing those involved in drug-related offenses. The criminalization of drugs has had little effect on actually preventing drug-use, demonstrating the counterproductive nature of the government’s approach.

There needs to be a balance between enforcement and treatment if there is to be any change in the startling drug consumption rates in Iran.

An Iranian man smokes opium in the mid-twentieth century photo: peace-mark.org

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Cultural

Appropriation is

by SAALAR AGHILI

Not Gucci As fashion week came to a close around the world in late February, many designers received recognition for their avant-garde concepts and styles. Alessandro Michele, who has been the creative director of the internationally renowned fashion house Gucci since 2015, first revolutionized the fashion world by making a comeback for the brand. This year, Gucci hosted its runway show in Milan, and Michele’s Fall 2018 Ready-to-Wear collection combined elements from and touched on a number of different decades and regions of the world.

Michele’s collection raised controversy, however, when thousands of people across social media accused him of cultural appropriation. During the show, one of Gucci’s white models dawned a blue turban resembling that of traditional Sikh headwear, and several models wore headscarves that were “incarnations of a hijab,” according to a review by Vogue.

Many of the headscarves were decorated with floral patterns, and the models complemented them with velvet jackets that had jewels trailing at the ends of bell sleeves. To top it off, two models wearing headscarves stood out with staunchly drawn-in unibrows. I instantly connected their looks to Qajar attire and practices from 19th century Persia but failed to find any mention of official Qajar influence in Michele’s commentary on the collection.

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Evidently, Gucci’s “Ready-to-Wear” Fall 2018 collection is not so ready to wear in many streets in Europe that host these haute couture runway shows. In fashion capitals like Paris, headscarves and other religious symbols are banned in public spaces led by the state. An overwhelming sixty-nine percent of the French population support the hijab ban in public spaces and, therefore, the appreciation for Michele’s latest collection is hypocritical. If such outfits were worn in a public school or workplace, for instance, those models would be told to remove their headpieces, and they would potentially receive a fine.

Most recently, more than 30 French localities along the Mediterranean coast issued a ban on veils as swim attire in 2016. Pictures of Muslim women removing their hijabs whilst being surrounded by police on French Riviera beaches went viral. Institutions with reputation, like premium fashion designers, take advantage of their esteem by exploiting centuries-old traditions that make their collections one of a kind, but fail to acknowledge what consequences can be brought upon the people who actually practice these traditions.

The glorification of such Eastern traditions, which are then criticized in practice by the West as backwards, makes Michele’s collection an issue of cultural appropriation. Again, I could not find any hint of official acknowledgment by

Gucci for Michele’s drawing upon Islamic and Sikh traditions. He did not use a Sikh model to wear the turban nor a Muslim hijabi woman. Instead, he used conventional white models who satisfy the fashion industry’s Western beauty standard.

Even his idea to play with the concept of non-binary gender roles shares roots in Eastern tradition. As seen in the beauty of gender neutrality in Qajar art pieces from the 19th century, pre-Westernized practices in Qajar Persia showed the insignificance of binary gender roles. Scholar Afsaneh Najmabadi discusses the topic in her book, Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards. By analyzing visuals dating from the Qajar Dynasty, Najmabadi contends the notion that there was a rigid pre-modern Islamic gender system.

Michele aimed to replicate Qajar visuals with his androgynous looks and claimed, “We have moved on… Now, we have to decide what we want to be.” While his tone suggests that his Cyborg collection was an original idea, he claimed he drew inspiration from an essay written by feminist writer Donna Haraway.

Combining the looks of his Cyborg collection with the concept behind androgyny, it is hard not to be reminded of the Qajar period. The unibrow, or abroo peyvasteh in Farsi, was a sign of beauty in pre-Westernized Iran and Central Asia.

These customs became overshadowed by

Gucci's Fall 2018 Ready-to-Wear collection photo: vogue magazine

the effects of globalization, as all societies were homogenized to fit into Western ideals. Now, as big names like Gucci reintroduce values deemed different from Western norms like abroo peyvasteh, it lacks the authenticity of its origins and corrupts the ancient beauty standard with fill-in makeup. The hierarchical structure of fashion is what gives brands like Gucci the ability to bring back a custom that would otherwise be perceived as primitive. Ultimately, the trend will spread and credit will be given to Gucci for bringing back the “bushy brow.”

Outside the glamour of a fashion show, many premium fashion houses have a track record of exploiting Eastern traditions by not letting the profits benefit

The essence of the Qajar look in Shadi Ghadirian's 1998 exhibit photo: shadi ghadirian

the people whose ancestors created these traditions. Former Givenchy creative director, Ricardo Tisci, used Persian carpet patterns in his Fall 2015 collection. While Tisci acknowledged that he drew inspiration from Persian carpets, no profits were passed on to the people who actually create those carpets. Dolce & Gabbana released an exclusive hijab collection in 2016 to target the Middle Eastern market but did not care to use Muslim models to showcase the outfits. While the European countries that are home to these fashion houses explicitly deter immigrants from their traditional religious practices, brands like Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana are profiting from selling these same traditions as haute couture.

Executives of large designer corporations, like Gucci’s parent company Kering, stay silent when outrage over collections such as Michele’s hit social media.

They also remain bystanders to the policies that limit what their creative directors can produce for the European market.

Why can models throw on a headscarf in Milan and be praised for a look that “drew fresh focus to the face,” while in nearby Novaro there is an institutional resistance to Muslim women practicing their hijabi lifestyles? I guess tradition has no value until you add a price tag to it.

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Ali Setayesh “Where is Iran?” may seem like a simple question to many people. Looking at a map, you’ll see that it is between Iraq and Afghanistan, with the Caspian Sea to its north and the Persian Gulf to its south.

This understanding, however, ignores thousands of years of shared culture and history with different regions. Up until the mid-19th century, Iran was a much larger country than it is today. The Caucuses and parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia were all under Qajar domain, which was Iran’s last dynasty before the Pahlavis. To this day, there are expressions in Iran that show cultural connections to other regions. When people want to sarcastically refer to a long trip, they say, “Magar safare Kandahar mikhay beri?” This indicates that in the past, trips from modern day Iran to Kandahar were similar to trips from San Francisco to New York. People viewed it all as one civilization with the same culture and language.

It may come as a surprise that if you open a book on the history of Persian literature, you will see that some of the greatest Persians writers we call Iranian today were actually born outside of the modern 10 PERSPECTIVE

day borders of Iran. Molana and Naser Khosrow, for example, were both born in what we would call Northern Afghanistan. However, if you were to ask them where they are from, they would probably respond Khorasan, which is the name of a province in Iran. The history of Khorasan shows us that it was a much larger province than it is today; Eastern Iran, Northern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan were all a part of Khorasan. This province is of utmost importance to the Persian language and history because of its location. Being very far from Baghdad, Khorasan was the first Iranian province to re-embrace its heritage and develop the Iranian-Islamic culture that later spread to other parts of the country.

The Persian language is still used in many parts of Greater Iran. It is the official language of Afghanistan and Tajikistan in addition to being spoken in some parts of Uzbekistan. Moreover, at many historical sites outside of these countries, you can still see remnants of Persian. For example, there are lines of Persian poetry written on the walls of the Taj Mahal indicating Iranian influence in Southwest

Asia. Furthermore, Pakistan’s official language, Urdu, is full of Persian vocabulary, and one of their most famous poets Eghbal Lahori wrote much of his poetry in Persian.

Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is celebrated in eleven different countries. Although there are variations in Nowruz traditions and practices among these countries, in most there are symbolic preparations of water and ritual dances involving jumping over fire. They also all place high importance on the Nowruz table and poetry. These similarities show a history of cultural unity among these countries.

Overall, Iran is much greater than what we see it as today, and there are extensive connections between Iran and other areas that are often hidden. Theoretically, anywhere that has been exposed to Persian language and culture is more or less culturally Iranian. Iran’s current borders do not reflect Persian culture and history; we Iranians should broaden our view of where Iran is and start to look at our neighbors when trying to learn about our past and developing cultural bonds.

Dorna Movasseghi Oh the great polarity between Iranian and Persian! How the seemingly more veracious label of Iranian taunts us, as the word Persian passes through our lips! Does it fill the trepid space between us and the inquirer? Is the word Persian softer, more euphonious, or perhaps safer? The concept of implementing Persian into one’s vocabulary as a means of identification has occurred over time through Western pressure. The radical origin of the word further demonstrates this, as it was the Greeks who in fact deemed the entirety of Cyrus’ Achaemenid empire with the hellenized descriptor, Persia. It was an exonym for a small part of this empire known as Pars or Fars (after the Arab invasion), and yet it came to represent the entirety of the region and its inhabitants.

The enduring endonym for the empire was actually Iran or Eran. The polarity between an exonym and an endonym is also where the polarity between Iranian and Persian is thusly born. An exonym is defined as a term used by ‘foreigners’ to describe something; for example, Germany is an exonym for Deutschland, and Deutschland would be the endonym for

what we refer to as Germany.

Being cognizant of this dichotomy allows one to better comprehend the reality of the terms we employ to describe ourselves and our ethnic backgrounds. Persian was constructed by the West and is still exploited by Iranians to placate the West. Yielding our agency in response to political tension between the governments of Iran and the West does not exhibit any concrete sense of unity to the international community. We succumb to the inadvertent, subtle occidental threats and pressures. Regardless of what narratives we feed ourselves and others in regard to the rationale behind our identification as Persian, it does not historically or culturally harbor the same currency as Iranian. It has been the name of the land and its people since the time of Ardashir I, dating to approximately 226 BCE. Iran did not come to exist when tensions with the United States came to be.

Fear still lingers in the bones of our parents. They say Persian because it did not lay heavily on the hearts of the Americans that felt so betrayed by Iran, and consequently, Iranians. So the pressure reached

their throats, and we learned from their habits, their fears, their language. Yet, as a new generation, one that is invariably torn down and denigrated by the media and the government, we must exude a sense of pride, not even in the political structure of the nation we were carved from, but rather in the lifeblood of our ancestry. Persian is not prettier than Iranian. Its history is no richer. We are not condoning the actions of those associated with negative connotations and falsehoods surrounding the title of the country, of Iran, by being Iranian, by identifying as Iranian. Persian is a pacifier, a pleaser, a do-not-mistakeme-for-Iraq characterization of ourselves.

Those who assembled and demolished Iraq, generating its modern condition, are the same ones who press us to be Persian.

While the raw essence of ourselves does not concretely belong to a mere word, we must nevertheless insist on being deliberate and conscious when we are presented with the question of our provenance.

There is no reason for us to continue the blandishment that is identifying as Persian.

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AMBIGUITY OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY Donna Fotoohi

When considering our individuality, there are many ways to define ourselves based on such identities as ability, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and others.

Among the others lie yet another identification—religion. Religious identity for Iranians in many respects seems straightforward. The presumption is often that Iranians, being an integral part of the Islamic Republic, are Muslim. Of course this is not always the case; Jews, Baha'is, and Zoroastrians have lived and do live in Iran, even today. The normative narrative that has been imposed on those living in the nation-state of Iran is that their Islamic religion is the most significant aspect of their identity. Due to “the revolution and the subsequent institution of the Islamic Republic,” Islam has shifted “to the center of what it means to be Iranian.” Although religion is rigorously focused on in the Iranian state, it is placed on the backburner in many diasporic communities spanning from London to LA. The Iranian diaspora has not only worked to dismantle the presumption that religion is essential to their identity, but also has created a diverse set of perceptions regarding its specific relation with Islam, and religion in general.

Many second and third generation diasporic Iranians were not raised with the Muslim upbringing that was so integral to their parents’, as well as present-day Iranians’, everyday lives. The diasporic

experience is completely different from that of Iranians in Iran; it may be that once given a level of freedom, diasporic individuals choose to forget their Islamic roots. Or, it may be the desire to learn and experience new things separate from Islam, while maintaining their allegiance to their home country in different ways. Either way, a large portion of diasporic Iranians do not identify as Muslim, and if they do, it is more often than not a cultural identification rather than a religious one. Historically, yes, a majority of Iranians are Muslim, which constitutes a cultural identification, but there is no “Islam requirement” that defines Iranianness. Non-Islamic Iranians are not any less Iranian, and the perception that their decision to not subscribe to Islam makes them less Iranian continues to frustrate them, leading to even more adamant secularization.

Secularization is the diaspora’s aggressive attempt to distance itself from what is perceived to be a fundamental part of its identity. Diasporic individuals try desperately to concoct a new identity for themselves: “the longing for ‘Iranianness’ is a constant factor shaping the diaspora, forms and ideas about what constitutes ‘Iranianness’ are subject to negotiation, which, against the background of actual environment, results in new and distinct manifestations of Iranian identity and culture.” The diaspora will continue to shape their identities

by determining which aspects of Iranian identity can connect them best with their heritage. One example of this is Norooz celebrations, which are enjoyed by all Iranians collectively, regardless of faith.

Why do Iranians who are persecuted on the basis of their faith (read: those of Baha’i and Jewish faith) maintain such strong ties to it, even abroad? Is there something within the oppression they have faced that connects them more directly to their identity? While a historically Muslim majority of the diaspora relieves themselves of their religious identity, those who were persecuted maintain it strongly and integrate themselves within their religious communities abroad.

In many ways, there is something fascinating about the integrity of these individuals, and their ability to acclimate with their culture abroad in ways they were unable to do in Iran. Through them we realize the ambiguity of the Iranian identity: a shapeshifting identity with no true definition, and no constraints. An identity that need not be entrenched in Islam, but could be. One that considers the individuality of diasporic Iranians of all backgrounds while connecting them along the way.

Than Bardia Barahman Walking down the aisles in our tiny local Persian market surrounded by exotic pastries, packages in foreign script, and the smell of freshly baked sangak bread, I could barely contain my excitement for the zereshk polo my mother would be preparing that night. Every extra minute we spent in the market only added to my growing impatience for the upcoming feast. My mother's cooking was one of those special things that made me feel uniquely connected to my Iranian heritage.

During my childhood, I would always reflect on how privileged I was to be an Iranian-American. Surrounded by the vibrant Iranian community in Los Angeles, overhearing Farsi was common and no one ever gave me trouble for my ethnic background. Instead, being an Iranian-American meant receiving compliments from friends on my mother's cooking and always looking forward to celebrating Norooz. Every time a friend came over, explaining the significance of the haft sin to my American friends reinforced my pride in being an Iranian-American.

However, because I was born and raised in a predominantly white suburb, taking pride in my Iranian roots wasn’t always easy. As a consequence of having such a unique name, I used to get easily frustrated when teachers would fail to pronounce it correctly after multiple attempts, leading other kids to tease me about it. I re-

member wishing that I had been given a different name, something easier for all of my American friends to understand.

However, each time this happened, my mom was there to remind me that it was my duty to teach them how to correctly pronounce it—no matter how many times it took. My name was special, and more than anything, it became a constant reminder of how special my Iranian heritage was. Having a unique name made me proud to be an Iranian-American.

As I grew older, I came to learn that I was different from not only most of my school peers, but also from many of my peers in the Iranian-American community. I was gay. Despite internally knowing that I liked boys, when I looked to my Iranian side for guidance, I was left with confusion. My American side also left me with little support. Despite feeling extremely proud of my family’s culture, I suddenly felt excluded. My unsuspecting Iranian parents didn’t know how to guide me, especially given the homophobic culture in which they were raised. Looking to the greater Iranian-American community proved to be a similarly futile effort, as nowhere could I find someone to confide in. To make matters worse, overhearing the subtle homophobia of my family and family friends led me to further internalize my sexuality.

Lost and confused, instead of embracing my identity, I chose to hide it–denying myself of my own acceptance. If the only gay people I had been exposed to were the extravagant and unrelatable figures in the media, and no Iranian-Americans in my community were gay, then where did that put me?

This question plagued my existence until I moved to Berkeley for school.

Separated from my restrictive past, I was somewhat able to lower my guard.

Instead of immediately attempting to defend my sexuality to others, I allowed myself to be vulnerable and slowly came to realize that I didn’t want, or need, to defend anything. Once I found friends who I could joke about boy problems with just as easily as I could about school, I realized the lie I had been living. It was almost as if this burden of self-hate,

which had been weighing me down my whole life, had been lifted. After years of confusion and distrust, meeting other queer Iranian-Americans my age was by far the biggest catalyst in reinforcing my pride in my Iranian heritage. I came to realize that I didn’t have to be alone in this struggle, and that each and every one of my friends was there for me regardless of my identity.

While such a realization might seem simple, for me it was what allowed me to finally feel comfortable in my own skin.

My friends here have shown me that you can be a proud Iranian-American while simultaneously being unbound by society’s expectations of sexuality. No longer was I an outcast or embarrassed by my identity, but rather, I was finally proud to be part of a community that treated me and respected me for who I was. If anything, I have come to learn that just as my mother would make me correct others who teased my ethnic name, it is now my duty to correct those who try and impose any restriction on how I choose to express myself.

It goes without question that my parents suffered a lot to afford me the opportunity to grow up in the United States, but my generation also has its own battles to conquer. While I know the culture my parents were born and raised in was governed by homophobia and prejudice, that does not mean that their hearts cannot change and learn to love and accept others for who they are.

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untitled poem Azin Mirzaagha The sky frees itself from its grey colors The sun’s warmth shines upon the land

The rains of winter water the thirsty earth And joyful colors can be seen during this time

The scents and aromas of blossoms fill the air The songs of birds caress the ears with pleasant sounds

The colorful hyacinth of spring becomes apparent on the haft-sin table And in its surrounding, the symbols of the new year are captured in one’s gaze

Another season of life begins And gradually spring arrives

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CROSSROADS OF IDENTITY Sahar Hashemian It is likely that many of my Iranian peers haven’t been to Iran. It is also likely that many of them travel to Iran every few years, bringing endless amounts of soghati for their family members that they won’t get to see for another few years. I remember being a small child and watching my baba leave for Iran. I would beg to come along with him, to be able to experience a part of my culture and explore part of my Iranian identity. I would ask my parents what their fondest memories of Iran were– all of them consisting of trips in their childhoods before the 1979 Revolution. Hearing the change of pitch in their voices, seeing the tears form in their eyes and hesitant smiles form on their faces. I wanted to experience Iran the way they did. I wanted to visit my foreign motherland.

My time to experience this part of my identity came at age 21. Since I grew up in predominantly non-Iranian spaces, being in Iran was not something I would be able to fully prepare for. Watching countless YouTube vlogs, speaking to various Iranian-American friends about their experiences in Iran, and reading blogs about what Iran is “truly” like were merely glimpses of what I experienced. The most memorable parts of my trip were not from the places I was able to travel to during my stay there, but from the reflections of myself that I thought out after I returned to America.

Living in California, I can’t hide the fact that I am Iranian. But being in Iran, I couldn’t hide the fact that I am khareji. Speaking broken Farsi because I didn’t grow up constantly speaking or never being able to visit Iran were only a few of the factors that contributed to me denying my Iranian identity. I didn’t realize how much I had deprived myself of learning about my culture and the intersection of my identities until I entered more Iranian-dominated spaces, and when I did, I yearned for more.

I yearned to learn more through interactions with other Iranian-Americans who have struggled through the same diasporic problems as I have.

I felt myself becoming uncomfortable with be-

ing labeled khareji for almost the entire duration of my trip. No matter how hard I tried to hide it, I couldn’t help the fact that I was looked at as both an outsider in my California home, and at my second home in Yazd.

My time in Iran taught me to be okay with being uncomfortable about certain parts of myself. I used to be really hard on myself for not being “Iranian enough” in comparison to my peers. It was, and in some ways still is, one of my biggest insecurities. How could I claim being Iranian when I wasn’t as well-versed and educated as others about Iranian history, culture, and literature? When I had never been to Iran, but my Iranian peers were able to openly share memories and souvenirs of traveling to our homeland?

Allowing myself to feel this discomfort has led to growth, self-acceptance, and knowledge. I am aware that visiting Iran may not be a feasible option for all when discovering more about what it means to be Iranian. But for me, it was a way to uncover a different part of myself through my travels.

The inevitable erasure of our Iranian identity was due to the lack of constant recognition of it.

This process of needing to claim one of my identities in order to prove to myself and others that I am “Iranian enough” is violent in itself. Seeking recognition of my identities in order to merely exist is a tiring and conflicting process. It never ends.

Parts of my Iranian identity are in constant competition with my American identity. Yet, the more I find out about Iran, what it means to be “Iranian” and being able to visit my displaced homeland, I am able to find comfort in being uncomfortable with the intersection of my identities. The Iranian diaspora is uniquely diverse in our stories, our reflections, and how we find ourselves intersecting with our various identities. I am a multitude of identities—and I am comfortable with wanting to learn more. More than anything, my experience has shown me new ways to learn about my own unique Iranian-ness.

PERSPECTIVE 15

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Map of Tehran Metro system in March 2018 photo: tehran metro

Throughout the 20th century, Iranian nationals relocated from rural provinces to Tehran, which transformed Iran’s capital from a walled city of 19 square kilometers to a sprawling metropolis. However, rapid urbanization engendered a typology now commonplace in the developing 16 PERSPECTIVE

world: social-spatial segregation. This arrangement culminated in the formation of slums in the South and gated communities in the North. Shahreza Street, now known as Enghelab Street, served as the unofficial partition separating upper-city urban elites from lower-city rural new-

comers. An absence of equitable urban planning produced residential segregation on the basis of social class and ethnicity, one of the many grievances that citizens harbored, provoking the 1979 Revolution.

Today, slum-cities, like Eslamshahr, Ro-

bat Karim, Gharchak, and Varamin, have grown from pre-revolution village outposts to sprawling suburbs with hundreds of thousands of residents. While disconnected from Tehran proper, these municipalities house high populations of lowwage laborers. In contrast, Iran’s wealthy continue to gather in the hilly North, which, with the proliferation of shopping centers and high-rise commercial buildings, has transformed into Tehran’s new job center.

In 1985, the Iranian Parliament approved plans for the Tehran Metro, which focused on alleviating symptoms of Tehran’s deeply entrenched pollution and traffic congestion. Although the Tehran Metro began operations in 1999, policymakers in 2008 allocated 5 billion dollars from the annual national budget to a policy package, which endeavored to accomplish several objectives. Focus was placed upon expanding Tehran’s two-line metro system, promoting environmentally friendly fuels, and integrating Tehran Province residents through transportation planning.

With their third and final goal, policymakers strived to dismantle the partition between Tehran’s upper and lower districts by spurring daily social interaction through public transportation. However, according to a report by the Transportation and Fuel Management Organization (TFMO), policymakers solely focused on public transport in central Tehran districts and delayed the construction of two southbound metro extensions. As of early 2018, only two of three southbound lines—lines 1 and 3—have been built.

While this neglect of Tehran’s lower-city urban poor may stem from the planners’ sense of supremacy over residents with low levels of political influence, it more likely arises from a pressing need to quell Tehrani center-city residents’ fears of traffic congestion and pollution.

Regardless of the planners’ intentions, the metro has successfully cut travel times in half between northern and southern neighborhoods. A trip between Ghaem

(at the northern terminus) and Azadegan (at the southern terminus) takes roughly one hour and twelve minutes, according to the official Tehran Metro app. If driving a private car in rush hour traffic, this trip can take up to two hours.

By the same token, numerous Afghan immigrants and low-income Iranians commute between southern slums to northern extremities to work as carpenters, tailors, gardeners, and construction workers, among other low-wage occupations. Not only does the construction of over two metro lines between the north and south cut travel times in half, but it also makes lower-income residents less reliant on private cars or taxi services for their commutes.

Although an estimated 2.3 to 3 million Afghans now reside in Iran, the Islamic Republic has implemented restrictive laws, like limitations on movement, against Afghan immigrants. The Tehran Metro’s southern extension counteracts the Islamic Republic’s ethnocentric national policy against slum-city Afghan immigrants. For one, Iran’s Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants’ Affairs (BAFIA) announced in 2012 that Afghans are prohibited from entering two-thirds of Iranian territory. However, Line 1 and Line 3 of the Tehran Metro circumvent BAFIA’s movement limitations by providing public access to major job centers.

Furthermore, police are less likely to send metro-riding Afghans to deportation centers for evading movement limitations than they are for those driving private cars past morality police checkpoints en route to central Tehran.

As of February 2018, Mashhad, Esfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz had also developed rapid transit systems. Although many of these cities are not nearly as sprawling and socioeconomically segregated as Tehran, the inception of one-line metro systems assuages residential segregation by connecting disparate urban nodes.

Shiraz planners, for example, have built Line 1 of an extensive metro project. As of early 2018, this line spans the length

of Shiraz’s elongated urban form, linking central-city elites and peripheral poor populations. While the upper- and lower-city paradigm does not exist in Iran’s secondary cities, residents are nonetheless segregated by their social classes. However, just one metro line serves as precedent to relink previously disconnected urban fringes.

The municipality of Tehran, much like its secondary-city counterparts, has entered a new phase of urban planning.

Private cars, which have primarily been utilized by upper- and middle-class Iranians, have restrained both socioeconomic and ethnic interaction. While this article focuses on the Afghan immigrant experience, Tehran Province is home to over four million low-income Iranian residents who now depend upon Tehran’s extensive metro system. Policymakers, in drafting later mass transit plans, must consider both transportation efficiency and social equity.

The Tehran Metro is a necessary first step in mitigating southern Tehran’s slumification. For one, the unintentional equity resulting from public transportation services evades the Islamic Republic’s ethnocentric policy toward Iranian ethnic minorities and immigrants. Moreover, northern Tehran has grown increasingly expensive, and in response, center-city dwellers may be incentivized to live in now more readily-accessible, lower-city regions. In turn, the rapid transit system may re-link Tehran’s divided urban fabric following decades of separation. Policymakers must now consider developing a more interconnected railway system that links slum-cities like Eslamshahr, Robat Karim, Gharchak, and Varamin to urban nodes other than the center. Ultimately, there should be greater services provided to Iranian ethnic communities and Afghans alike in order to draw them out of an entrenched cycle of poverty.

PERSPECTIVE 17

THE PERSECUTION OF IRANIAN BAHA'IS

Iranian Baha'is pose for a family photo photo: baha'i historical archive

“I turned the key that would lock the door of our home in Jordan Street for the last time. Your mother, grandfather, and I said goodbye to our lives in Iran forever, and we never looked back.” My seven-year-old heart was pounding out of my chest as I listened to my grandmother describe my family’s escape from Iran. Everyday, I begged for her to repeat this story, laced with the fragrance of resilience and built on the foundation of deep-rooted faith. As I traveled with her voice through the mountains of Iran and Turkey, I was infuriated by the injustices my family and thousands of Baha’is were forced to face during the Iranian Revolution. Almost four decades later, this narrative of injustice has only escalated against the Baha’is of Iran and so much of the world continues to be silent. Silence can no longer be justified in the face of oppression. It is the responsibility of the Iranian diaspora to become aware and vocal about the deeply ingrained prejudices against the Baha’is of Iran.

The Baha’i Faith is Iran’s second largest religion after Islam, with Iran as the birthplace of its Prophet Baha’u’llah. From the time of the faith’s inception to today, the Baha’is are one of the most institutionally oppressed religious minorities in Iran.

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The Baha’i faith believes in the Prophet Baha’u’llah as the newest manifestation of God in a sequence of progressive revelation, which is seen as blasphemous in Islamic theory. Following the 1979 Revolution, members of the National Baha’i leadership were executed along with the deaths of over 202 Baha’is. In addition to regime-led incitements of hatred against the Baha’is, more than several Baha’i holy sites from as late as the time of Baha’u’llah were destroyed in the revolutions aftermath. The Islamic Republic has stated that Baha’is are a political faction serving as Zionist spies for Israel, as the Baha’i holy land is located in Haifa and Akka, Israel. However, these accusations have been proven to be false, as Baha’is do not participate in international or domestic politics.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, more than 200 Baha’is have been killed or executed, hundreds more tortured or imprisoned, and thousands banned from entering the workforce, having access to education, and facing the protection of state rights–all due to their religious beliefs.

Government-led attacks on the Baha’is have grown stronger over the last twelve years. Since 2005, more than 1,006 Baha’is have been arrested, and the number of Baha’is in prison has risen to over 100 Iranian citizens. Currently, five members of the former Baha’i leadership of Iran have been released, including the most recent release of Mahvash Sabet and Saeid Rezaie, who were released in September 2017 and February 2018. In 2010, the seven imprisoned members of the Baha’i community of Iran’s National Spiritual Assembly were wrongfully sentenced to 20 years in prison, the longest term then facing any prisoner of conscience in Iran.

Five years later, their sentences were reduced from 20 years to 10 years, to adjust to the changes in the Iranian Penal Code of May 2013. The constant threat of raids, arrests, and imprisonment is among the main features of the Baha’is persecution in Iran today.

by Mina Aslan

Discrimination against the Baha’is in Iran also takes the form of educational and economic banishment, where Baha’is are banned from institutions of higher education and many private and public sector jobs. The government continues to release anti-Baha’i propaganda in different government-led news forums that catalyze severe prejudice against the Baha’is, among other Iranian citizens. Since 2005, there have been at least 68 physical assaults against Iranian Baha’is that have gone unprosecuted.

Despite his promises to end religious discrimination, President Hassan Rouhani hasn’t changed the situation of the Baha’is. In fact, there has been an escalation of prosecution in all areas of state activity, including but not limited to the arrest of 283 Baha’is, thousands blocked from college and university access, and over 645 threats of Baha’i-owned business closures by the government. Over 26,000 pieces of anti-Baha’i propaganda have been released during Rouhani’s administration.

These are just some of the main forms of persecution experienced by the Baha’is of Iran. The sole justification for this violation of human rights is on the basis of faith—there have been no documented crimes of incitements of hatred by Baha’is against the state or other Iranian citizens.

The end of my grandmother’s story always finished with my mother at age thirteen removing her headscarf from the borders of Turkey and letting the wind carry it back to the land they left behind. Just like the strength of that wind, the weight of my family’s experiences instilled in me a fire to fight for my people in the name of a great cause. This is the profound beauty of diaspora: as one generation is forced to escape from injustice, it paves the path for the next to build the grounds of true justice. I call on the Iranian diaspora to not be complicit in the sight of injustice against members of your own community but to come together as a united force against oppression in Iran.

the lost Mizrahi Of those among the Iranian diaspora, Iranian Jews were one of the first to scatter. Leaving two to four million Iranians living outside Iran today, the diaspora can be understood in three main phases, with the first beginning in the 1950s. Characterized by an exodus of intellectuals seeking higher education abroad and religious minorities like Jews, Armenians, and Assyrian Christians fleeing increasing marginalization, this wave signaled the beginning of the first major migration of Iranians in over 2,500 years. For the Iranian Mizrahi, or Middle Eastern Jews, this exodus was likely the first since their expulsion from Babylon in the 6th century BCE into the Persian Empire. Calling the area home over a millennium before the rise of Islam, Jews are the oldest religious minority of Iran. While Jews have historically lived in a state of consistent exile and diaspora, the Mizrahi community remained relatively stable for this nearly 3,000-year period, effortlessly integrating into the empire to the point at which they were nearly culturally indistinct.

Since 1948, 95% of Persian Jews have left Iran. Though a small minority in the greater context of the Iranian diaspora, the impetus which pushed Jews to leave Iran at a higher rate than their non-Jewish compatriots likely follows from the outcome of the Islamic Revolution. The years surrounding the 1979 Revolution mark the second wave of the Iranian diaspora, the largest of the three. Many Jews were strong supporters of the revolution.

Jewish religious leaders often joined in protest, and Jewish intellectuals created magazines like Tammuz, which featured articles by Iranians of all faiths writing in support of the revolution and against racism and imperialism. However, the changes brought about by Khomeini’s rise left the minority with a sense of insecurity and exclusion from their home country.

Lacking secularity in their government, many Iranian Jews felt unrepresented in Iranian society. As their national identity became associated with a religion to which they did not belong, their status

as minorities became emphasized to a distressing extent. Moreover, the Islamic regime established itself as blatantly anti-Israel, which led many Iranian Jews with Israeli relatives to become targets of government surveillance and accusations of espionage. Prominent Jewish-Iranian businessman and philanthropist Habib Elghanian was executed by Islamic forces on charges of spying on behalf of Israel shortly after the revolution in March of 1979. Elghanian was the symbolic head of the Iranian Jewish community during the time, and his execution only further fueled anxiety about being a Jew in Iran.

Despite the complexity and diversity of the narratives surrounding Zionism, for many Mizrahi across the Middle East, Zionism purported an affirmation to their often belittled existence. Reflecting upon their own experiences of anti-semitism within the broader context of the Jewish Holocaust, the idea of having their own Jewish country seemed to many like a viable solution, as rejection appeared to loom on all fronts. When faced with the choice of remaining under a regime that was unaligned with their principles or fleeing, most Jews chose to leave their homes in search of a society in which they felt more welcomed. Some left all their belongings and forfeited their land, flying out on temporary visas and applying for political asylum in Western countries. Others had to be smuggled across the border into Turkey or Afghanistan.

Today, Iranian Jews predominantly reside in the United States and Israel. Iranian-American Jews largely conglomerate in the greater Los Angeles area, transforming it economically, architecturally, and culturally into “Tehrangeles.” Settling themselves on almost the same latitudinal line as Tehran, the Jewish-Iranians of Los Angeles have rooted themselves in the city to the point where it could not be conceived of without their presence. The streets of Westwood are lined with Persian restaurants and shops; the homes of Beverly Hills boast Iranian flamboyance in their style, and the immigrant and

by Jasmin Toubi first-generation community flourishes as one of the highest-educated immigrant communities in the United States. Over a hundred thousand Iranian Jews now live in Israel, the largest conglomerate of Iranian Jews in the Middle East followed

by Iran, where an estimated ten thousand remain. Iranian-Israelis seem to exist in a perpetual state of international conflict, as the governments of their home country and current residence have had political tension since Israel’s establishment. Being Persian and being Jewish consists in some degree of internal discomfort in light of these political tensions.

The external conflict that pushed the Iranian Mizrahi to leave their homes is often accompanied by internal conflict regarding political affiliations and favoritism to one side over the other. Nevertheless, in spite of these tensions, Jewish Iranians maintain duality in their identities wholeheartedly. Being Jewish and being Iranian are not mutually exclusive, despite the general ignorance surrounding their existence. The Jewish diaspora plays itself out twofold with the Jews of Iran, but like their ancestors have for the past 3,000 years, the Mizrahi still stand today.

A sefer torah in a synagogue in Tehran photo: jewish refugees blog / afp

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Bahaar Ahsan If you ask an Iranian to narrate the key events leading up to the revolution of 1979, there are certain things you can expect to hear. Often their historical narrativization of the period will begin with the coup d’etat of 1953, which overthrew Prime Minister Mossadegh. They will likely talk about jomeh siah, or Black Friday, referring to the government massacre of protesters in Jaleh Square in Tehran. Perhaps they will even include a memory of the televised testimony of convicted Islamic Marxist Khosrow Golesorkhi. Rarely, however, will they bring up the fire at Cinema Rex. Unless, of course, you’re asking someone from Abadan.

On August 19, 1978, Cinema Rex, a local movie theater in Abadan, the Southwest of Iran, hosted a screening of Masoud Kimiai’s new wave film The Deers. In the film, actor Behrouz Vossoughi portrays a low income drug addict, and he is considered by many to be analogous to the social and economic conditions that resulted from Shah Mohamad Reza Pahlavi’s White Revolution. Hundreds of Abadanis (residents of Abadan) entered the screening looking forward to seeing the new film. As the film was showing, a team of arsonists, whose identities remain somewhat unclear to this day, locked viewers inside of the theater and set it on fire, killing all of those inside. The number of people killed in the fire is disputed, with the lowest estimates at about 377 and the highest at about 500.

The fire caused immediate outrage, fear, and speculation in Abadan and across Iran. Some suggested that the Pahlavi secret police known as SAVAK were responsible for the attack. These people believe that the Pahlavi government incited this violence to instill fear in the hearts and minds of Iranians on the brink of revolution, often citing as evidence for their claim the fact that the fire department, though only down the street from Cinema Rex, took a great deal of time to respond. Others claim that revolutionaries started the fire, with the official Pahlavi government reports placing the blame on “Islamic Marxists,” The pursuit of truth and justice following the incident led families of victims to organize a campaign, including a four-and-a-half month sitin in a public office, pressuring the then new government of the Islamic Republic to take on the case. Investigation and trial ultimately led to the execution of Captain Monir Taheri, Hossein Takbalizadeh (the lone surviving arsonist), and five others.

However, these executions remain internationally contested, and significant evidence suggests that some of those found guilty 20 PERSPECTIVE

Abadan's Cinema Rex after the fire photo: reorient

were wrongfully executed. The uncertainty surrounding the exact perpetrator of this tragedy fuels the grief and despair of those who lost friends, family, and community members.

The same passion, anger, and pain which drove the families of the fire’s victims to pressure the Islamic Republic to take on the case continues to live in the hearts and minds of Abadanis in Iran and in the Iranian diaspora. Cinema Rex holds a distinct space in the collective memory of the people of Abadan. The trauma inflicted on that historic night left an impact that is still felt today. In recent times, the fire has been collectively remembered and reflected on through art. Mahmoud Bakhshi’s 2017 exhibit at the London Narrative Projects recalled the tragedy and horror of the incident. The exhibit investigated film specifically, and cultural production more broadly, as a site of politics, memory, and censorship. The exhibit’s featured installation combined footage from The Deers, the Kimiai film screened in Cinema Rex on its tragic last night, with archival footage of the cinema following the fire and original footage by Bakhshi. Viewers of the exhibit were able to experience viscerally the power of the images in a context which replicates that of the victims of the fire.

While on one level, Bakhshi’s work is intellectual and theoretical in nature, it also holds a deeply affective quality demonstrative of the lasting traumatic impact of the fire.

One must wonder, then, why such a significant event seems rather widely erased from history. The fire at Cinema Rex is regarded as the second deadliest terrorist attack after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and yet is rarely named as a crucial turning point in the moments just before the Iranian Revolution. Perhaps this is because binary and rigid understandings of Iranian history do not give us room to examine such a complex and ambiguous political moment. Maybe our limited geographical scope in analyzing the Revolution necessarily places Tehran at the center of all political action at the expense of a more geographically holistic understanding. That is to say, the positioning of Tehran at the center in dominant discourse surrounding the revolution erases key socio-political actors existing outside of the capital city. Whatever the reason for its erasure, a revisiting of the fire at Cinema Rex seems necessary in uncovering a fruitful analysis of contemporary Iranian politics.

Yaron Moaddel caution: the following contains spoilers for the film Taste of Cherry.

What do we live for? How do we get help when we need it most? These are just a few questions that are addressed in Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s award winning film Taste of Cherry (1997). The flick tells the story of Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi), a man who is on a quest to find the right person to help him end his life, and along the way, he encounters three different men who can serve as potential candidates, each with a different response. The plot is fairly simple, as the majority of this 95-minute spectacle is sculpted by scenes of Mr. Badii driving around the Iranian desert landscape, scoping the area for a suitable person to give him a proper burial shortly after he commits suicide by swallowing all of his sleeping pills before going to bed in a dirt hole. He explicitly states that he is not looking for a professional gravedigger, but rather for someone who can put dirt over his body after he overdoses on his medicine.

Despite the lack of a proper script, the film explores essential themes of friendship and self-worth while tackling the heavy issue of suicide, a taboo topic that is discussed many times in Iranian culture from opposing perspectives. Immaculate cinematography of Iran and careful writing add unparalleled layers of depth to this film, with clever sound editing to make the audience feel like they are alongside Badii. Long wide shots of the Iranian countryside and close up shots of Badii dominate the visuals of this masterpiece.

The first candidate to bury Badii is a young soldier from Kurdistan who is

initially interested in completing Badii’s request for monetary profit, and Badii makes the mistake of revealing that he is desperate as he openly yearns for the young soldier to say yes. He begs, but the young soldier is frightened by the reality at hand and eventually runs off into the desert after Badii makes a compelling case.

The second man is an Afghan student on tour visiting his friend, whom Badii offers a ride to. Badii tells him he would like to be freed of this life and notes that no one would be able to understand him.

As the seminary student convinces him not to die, as it would violate religious laws, Badii finally opens up and begins to reveal his motivations. He reasons, “It’s not that you don’t understand, but you can’t feel what I feel. Humans can empathize and feel compassion. But my pain?

No. It’s a sin to commit suicide, but it’s just as much of a sin to be unhappy and to spread that unhappiness to everyone.”

Badii begins to defend God and makes the claim that God doesn’t want to see his creatures unhappy, so he proceeds with his plan, regardless.

The third and final passenger in the car is an old taxidermist named Mr. Bagheri who dispenses his own wisdom by preaching, “Every problem has its solution. We all have our own problems, and if we all choose this way out of our tiny problems, there wouldn’t be anyone else on this earth.” He offers a perspective that Badii had never previously considered, and it is from this point that the film heads in a new direction. Here we reach a point in the film where the road splits, and for the first time, Badii does not know where to drive next. Bagheri symbolically and physically guides him and tells him to turn left, letting him know that, “I know this road. It’s longer but more comfortable and beautiful.” Bagheri continues to tell him how he, too, was once in Badii’s position, but claimed that a simple mulberry changed his outlook on life. Reluctantly, Bagheri actually agrees to bury him if Badii does not answer his call the next morning, but strictly because he needs to use the money that Badii offers as payment to feed his child.

The ending of the film has received a

mix of both criticism and acclaim as it leaves the central questions of the film unanswered. I will refrain from revealing the ending to encourage the reader to watch the film to discover Badii’s ultimate fate. Nevertheless, I believe that this ending is imperative to the overall arc of the story as Bagheri’s advice ultimately rings true, and it is seen as the true message of the film. He tells Badii that life is not meant to be interpreted, but rather experienced, as it is the simple things, like the taste of cherries, that serve as a reason to live. This explanation is profound because the simple taste of cherries makes us realize that the world isn’t always the way we see it. Rather than driving all over Iran searching for meaning, it is up to Badii to create his own happiness.

Those who criticize the film’s controversial ending fail to internalize Bagheri’s final words to Badii. World-renowned film critic Roger Ebert famously gave this film one star out of four, saying that we as the audience do not know enough about Badii. What Ebert doesn’t see is that we do not need to know his backstory; for it is the way in which he solves this predicament that matters most. Furthermore, Taste of Cherry serves as a reminder to all of us that sometimes it is indeed the taste of cherries that keeps us striving, regardless of how bleak the world may seem. I implore you to go watch this underappreciated film, for it is films like this that inspire life and keep us going to embellish the taste of cherries.

Promotional artwork for Taste of Cherry photo: itunes movies

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Nasim Ghasemiyeh

This traditional Persian ice cream elicits feelings of nostalgia for summer nights in Iran, where juice stands stay open late serving the chilled dessert to passersby. Kids zigzag between the fountains that line park paths as families take to the outdoors under the protective darkness, a reprieve from the relentless summer sun. Plastic bowls are heaping with bastani sonati and garnished with chewy green pistachios, a scoop smashed between two thin wafers to create what is known as bastani nooni. A cup of fresh carrot juice poured over more of the sweet ice cream to create havij bastani passes from hand to hand as the lights of the Milad Tower shine above Tehran.

Made of milk, eggs, rosewater, and saffron with bits of pistachio and clotted cream sprinkled throughout, bastani sonati requires more than a timid palate. While the rosewater gives it an unmistakably Middle Eastern taste and the saffron turns it a beautiful golden yellow, the distinguishing feature of this ice cream is not the complex array of flavors, but the addition of an extract from the tubers of orchid plants. Turned into a flour called salep, adding this root extract to the ice cream gives it a taffy-like pull and richness creating the unmistakable stickiness of the ice cream. It is this stickiness that caused my younger self to bemoan the announcement that we were having ice cream for dessert, as I knew it would not be Dreyer’s Slow Churned.

As a child visiting Iran on her summer vacations, I grew to despise bastani sonati. Why couldn’t I just have a bowl of chocolate ice cream like I wanted? There were of course the bastani aroosakis (ice cream dolls), selected with great care from the market down the street from my grandmother’s house, as my cousins and I bargained with our madarjoon over how many we could get. Unfortunately, we could never convince her to let us have more than one a day. Unable to exercise the self control to wait, when the bastani sonati came out after dinner, I was always annoyed I had nothing to enjoy.

This summer, however, a Persian family friend brought a tub of homemade bastani sonati to our house, and while I refused to 22 PERSPECTIVE

A colorful serving of bastani sonati topped with rose petals photo: labsalliebe blog

eat it then, my mom convinced me to try some later that night, and I ended up eating the entire thing by myself. The not-sosubtle rosewater and saffron mixed into the soft ice cream is one of the most delicious ice creams imaginable.

While the history of ice cream is somewhat contested, an early version of it existed in 400 BCE when the yakhchal was perfected in Iran. These dome-like structures were designed to keep ice frozen in the summers, prompting the addition of fruit juice to create a cool, sweet ice. Additionally, sherbert, a frozen fruit ice cream enjoyed around the world today, derives its name from the Turkish word sherbet, a Middle Eastern and South Asian fruit concentrate known as sharbat in Farsi. Both of these words are, in turn, derived from the Arabic word sharba, which means “to drink.” When Nasser al-din Shah was king of Iran, he tried modern ice cream on a trip to France, and it is said he wished to bring it to the people of Iran but was unsuccessful. And although his son, Mozaffar ad-Din Shah, had ice cream in his courts, it wasn’t until the late 1920s that ice cream was brought to the people of Iran, when a man named Akbar Mashti opened the first ice cream shop in Tehran. From then on, as the frozen treat gained popularity, it became known as bastani Akbar-Mashti after the man who made it famous. Also referred to as bastani sonati, the saffron ice cream is thought of as being a truly Persian ice cream, as sonati translates to “traditional” in English.

With warm weather fast approaching, bastani Akbar-Mashti will be on the minds of Iranians and Iranian-Americans alike.

Tubs will be brought out after long dinners shared around the sofreh, and bastani nooni will be sold out of food trucks right here in Berkeley to those missing home.

Saba Moussavian Fresh halva, a cultural delicacy, topped with pistachios photo: the little green spoon blog

Puff pastries oozing with rose-infused cream; Akbar Mashti ice cream with so much stretch you can twirl it around your spoon; zoolbia and bamieh dripping with sweet syrup; brittle, flakey sohan that melts in your mouth. Persian cuisine includes a diverse array of decadent desserts, and yet for all their intricacies, my favorite one will always be the simplest: halva.

Halva is prepared all across the Middle East with nut butter and flour-based varieties. However, Iranian halva has a unique

Halva is often cut into small, easy-to-eat pieces photo: the little green spoon blog

significance in Iranian culture since it is typically served at funerals and other formal ceremonies. The preparation is fairly simple: flour is cooked over a stove or in an oven until it gains color, and it is then mixed with a rosewater and saffron syrup.

This thick, brown paste is flattened on a platter and sometimes decorated.

My favorite halva is the darkest halva, deep like the color of my babajoon’s sun-kissed skin, the kind that has so much oil that its surface glistens. I imagine it must take expert patience to get it so dark, because no matter how long I fry my flour or how much saffron I add, mine always ends up an orange-ish color that is rubbery and dry. My aunt decorates her halva as if she was painting a masterpiece, delicately positioning each pistachio and almond sliver to make an intricate stretch of flowers.

My grandmother has decorated hers the same way for 40 years; leaning one hip against the kitchen counter, she slowly turns her plate, using the back of a spoon to effortlessly create the perfect arrangement of curved indents.

But sometimes the best halva has nothing to do with flavor or beauty. My most meaningful halva was bright yellow. It was yellow like nabat on a stick, like nothing I had ever seen before. And stretchy, more like Akbar Mashti ice cream. I remember watching my mamanjoon sobbing over the stove for hours, stirring two pots at once, more than I thought possible to make. Mounds and mounds of yellow, stretchy halva filled every room in the house. Maybe with everyone running around, my mamanjoon had accidentally forgotten to add enough saffron. Or maybe she had forgotten to cook the flour until it browned. Or maybe—in those dark and solemn few days, the kind that leave you hollow and achy—the halva was meant to be bright yellow. I remember sitting at the kitchen table, eating endless globs of the sticky, yellow halva wrapped in pieces of thin lavash bread. And between the countless visitors all draped in black who came through the house those few days following my babajoon’s death, nothing filled my soul quite like halva.

PERSPECTIVE 23

Arsalan

Kazemi cheers for a teammate on the Iranian national basketball team photo: arsalan kazemi / twitter

Anahita Ghajarrahimi

24 PERSPECTIVE

When I think of Iran’s involvement in sports, soccer and men’s volleyball come to mind. Basketball never really strikes me as something Iranian people take part in. On the flip side, basketball is arguably one of the most popular sports in the United States. Basketball, and particularly the NBA, are heavily integrated into the lives of most Americans, and even more so in the Bay Area, which harbors the accomplished Golden State Warriors.

Since basketball is so heavily ingrained into American popular culture, I was both shocked and intrigued to find out that the NBA has had two players from Iran, Hamed Haddadi and Arsalan Kazemi Naeini. More often than not, Iranians in America, and those from the Middle East in general, are viewed as the “outsider” or “un-American.” Seeing these two players take part in a sport so close to America’s heart seemed unbelievable.

Although Haddadi had gained a little more international fame and success in the NBA, Kazemi’s experience in the United States is more interesting from a college student’s standpoint because of Kazemi’s own experience in the sport’s collegiate level. He first played for the Iranian Basketball Super League (IBSL) before attending Rice University in Texas on scholarship in 2008. However, Kazemi

did not stay at Rice for all four years; he left after his junior year, when he transferred to University of Oregon. Kazemi’s hardship waiver, which was approved by the NCAA, stated that Rice’s Athletic Director, Rick Greenspan, had made a lot of derogatory remarks to Kazemi, other players, and the assistant coach. The waiver allowed him to play for Oregon during his senior year.

Besides Kazemi, two other players, as well as the assistant coach who had recruited all three of them, were of Middle Eastern descent. The hardship waiver alleged that Greenspan told the assistant coach to “recruit more terrorists.” His ignorant and racist comments included references to Al Qaeda and the Axis of Evil when discussing Kazemi and the two other players. Reportedly, Greenspan even told airport security to search these specific players’ bags because they were Middle Eastern. Kazemi, who is Muslim, also stated that the coaching staff did not respect or allow accommodations for him to practice his religion, with regards to prayer or diet for instance. The hardship waiver granted to Kazemi is only approved by the NCAA under special circumstances, so even though Rice University and Greenspan continue to deny these allegations, the sheer fact that the waiver was

accepted and approved suggests that the claims were truthful enough.

Kazemi’s career in American basketball holds a lot of “firsts.” Kazemi is the first Iranian-born basketball player who played in NCAA Division I basketball.

While at Oregon, Kazemi helped them reach the “Sweet 16,” or the first round of the NCAA March Madness tournament, and he had the “best defensive rebounding rate in the country.” He is also the first player born in Iran to enter the NBA draft, picked up by the Washington Wizards after graduation in 2013. Kazemi played on the NBA Summer League for a few years after being drafted, gaining experience in the states while traveling to play in the Iranian Superleague (IBSL) and the Chinese Basketball Association during the basketball season. However, after being pushed around from one team to another in the NBA, Kazemi decided to return to Iran to play for IBSL, most

recently on one of their league teams, Petrochimi Bandar Imam, in 2017. Petrochimi had become IBSL champions with Kazemi in 2014, and currently Petrochimi ranks 3rd overall in the IBSL; therefore, Kazemi continues to be successful in his sport while he is back in Iran.

On an international level, Kazemi has gained acclaim while representing Iran in the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). Kazemi’s abilities as a basketball player have led him to play and be the captain of the FIBA Under-19 Iranian national basketball team. Representing one’s country at such a young age, and being captain of that team on top of that, is an extreme accomplishment. Kazemi helped the national team win gold at both FIBA Asia Challenges in 2014 and 2016, and while at the 2009 FIBA World Championship, Kazemi was the U-19 team’s highest scorer. Now, he currently plays for the national team as they compete for qual-

ification in the 2019 FIBA World Cup. Kazemi’s success, both in Iran and America, means a lot, because he serves as an example for young Iranian kids everywhere who want to pursue their dreams in sports like basketball—and to this day have not had representation before.

Overall, Kazemi’s athleticism is something to be proud of as Iranian-Americans since he has made a name for himself internationally, playing for American, Iranian, and Chinese teams throughout his career.

Kazemi’s legendary presence in American basketball, a sport that is so iconic for Americans, serves as an example for little Iranian kids who live in the United States and want to be like the basketball players they see on TV, like Stephen Curry or Klay Thompson. Kazemi offers these children a form of representation that provides an invaluable amount of hope for them to continue following their dreams.

Kazemi triumphantly celebrates a victory for the Oregon Ducks photo: oregon ducks media

PERSPECTIVE 25

IRAN & THE BEAUTIFUL GAME Cameron Salehi “Iran cheekaresh meekone? Soorakh soorakhesh meekone! (What will Iran do?

Iran will destroy them!)" yelled tens of thousands of Iranian soccer fans attending Iran’s group stage match against Argentina during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. The match garnered vast audiences in support of both sides and kept viewers hooked until the final minutes of the game, during which Argentinian soccer star Lionel Messi scored the only goal that drove his nation to victory over Iran.

While various sports analysts praised Iran’s performance as “spectacularly brilliant,” the result was ultimately a letdown for Iranians worldwide. Although it reached an unfortunate culmination for the Iranian community, the Iran vs. Argentina game stands as a prime example of the significance soccer, or “football,” plays in incorporating pride in modern Iranian culture and the emphasis Iranians place on the so-called “beautiful game.”

Iran finds the roots of its interest in football in Chogān, a horseback-riding game which originated in ancient Iran over 2,000 years ago and gave way to the more modern game of polo. While football involves no horseback riding, it shares the basic premise with Chogān of involving two opposing teams attempting to score against one another using a ball. Football itself was eventually introduced to Iran through Western and British colonial influences during the early 20th century.

After amassing some attraction within Iranian communities, football found itself gaining enough importance to influence the establishment of the Iran Football Federation (now regarded as the Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran) in 1920, an organization that soon after joined FIFA in 1945 and the Asian Football Confederation in 1958. Beginning in the 1940s, Iran also began to experience a surge in the formation of domestic football clubs. Today, Iran has developed a domestic football system that includes three major leagues and 40 teams.

26 PERSPECTIVE

Over the past several decades, football has become increasingly ingrained in the spirit and culture of Iranian communities.

Children now fill the streets and schoolyards of Iran, practicing their football skills with one another as a favorite pastime. In turn, various football prospects and prodigies have emerged out of Iran over the last few decades. With domestic club matches becoming more popular over the last 20 years and rivalries between such clubs as Pirouzi and Esteghlal emerging, pride in the sport has seen a significant rise in modern Iranian history.

Iran’s national men’s football team has played the role of furthering this ever-growing gravitation towards pride in the sport. The men’s national team currently holds the FIFA ranking of 33 out of 211 different national teams worldwide.

Iran has also earned a competing position in the FIFA World Cup five times since 1978, with its last two appearances occurring consecutively in 2014 and the upcoming event in the summer of 2018.

With the 2018 FIFA World Cup quickly approaching in the coming months, Iranians are looking forward in both hope and anticipation toward a fulfilling performance from their men’s national team in one of the most viewed international sporting events spectated by billions of people across the globe.

While certainly an underdog in the World Cup, Iran is being projected to deliver an impressive performance according to a number of media outlets and experts of the sport, including Italy’s Drive Sportive Radio. Over the past eight years, Iran has taken delight in giving rise to various new, young players who have become valuable international football prospects. One of Iran’s favorite rising football stars is Sardar Azmoun, a forward who currently plays for the Russian Premier League team of Rubin Kazan. In recent years, the media has likened the 22-yearold prospect to such football legends as Lionel Messi, ultimately generating much

buzz around Azmoun’s upcoming appearance for the Iranian national team in the 2018 World Cup. Other Iranian football prospects include Karim Ansarifard, Alireza Jahanbakhsh, and Reza Ghoochannejhad, who are all set to play for Iran in the upcoming World Cup. Although Iran will be facing two of the world’s national football giants in the Group Stage of the 2018 World Cup—that is, Spain and Portugal—Iranian fans are hopeful that such a promising roster of young, talented players will push Iran forward into the Round of 16.

In recent history, national football has served as a basis of pride and glory for Iranian communities worldwide. The 2014 World Cup in Brazil alone proved the significance Iranians place n football, as Iranian supporters both in Iran and Brazil flooded the streets yelling, chanting, and singing with joy after their national team put up a brilliant fight against Argentina’s squad. As such, football has found a new breeding ground in Iran in the last century. If Iran maintains its increasingly improving performance at the international level and places an ever-growing emphasis on the sport, then the world might be surprised to witness a new era of greatness emerge in Iran through the game of football.

Iran's national team celebrates victory over Uzbekistan in FIFA qualifications photo: financial tribune

Dorrin Akbari “How could I say I was Iranian when I didn’t know anything about the culture?” Rustum Chhor began our interview with the question that would set the tone for every subsequent interview.

With a few words, he implicitly created a test one had to pass to prove they could claim a cultural identity. This test was what young Iranian-Americans prepared themselves for throughout their lives. Lacking the explicit connection to their heritage that being born and raised in a country provides, Iranian-Americans often find themselves in the position of studying their country’s culture and history. There is a fine line, however, between learning about your country’s culture out of interest and learning about it to better fit the mold of what it is to be Iranian. This mold often takes shape when students join collegiate cultural clubs.

The Iranian Students' Cultural Organization, ISCO for short, has been a facet of UC Berkeley’s cultural community since 1988.

For many, ISCO is their first foray into the world of the Iranian culture of their peers. Though the club consists of both native Iranians and Iranian-Americans, the native culture dominates club dynamics. This means that Farsi is spoken freely, Persian food reigns supreme, and ghering (Persian dancing) skills are a must. While this environment can provide an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in a previously unexperienced culture, it can also put them in a position in which they feel they have to catch up to their “more Iranian” peers. For some, it feels as if they will never quite be Iranian enough.

“I’m kind of Persian, but I’m talking to him the same way any other person would. There should be a higher level of connection, but because I don’t speak Farsi, there isn’t” (Rustum).

Though Rustum, a Parsi student, noted he felt welcomed in ISCO, he acknowledged being surrounded by Farsi speakers made him more conscious of his inability to speak Farsi outside of his interactions with ISCO members. He began to set for himself an unachievable standard for interaction, generating a hierarchy that stripped him of his ability to fully claim the Persian identity—leaving him as no more than “kind of Persian.”

Similarly, Camran Kolahdouz-Isfahani, referring to other students, noted, “With Rami and Malini, most people know they’re not Iranian. I’m half, so it’s weird. You should be, but you’re not.” Camran articulates the feeling of existing in a liminal space, where one lives on a threshold. He is simultaneously both Persian and Caucasian, and neither of the two. For children of mixed descent, it is already difficult to navigate their sense of self. This process is exacerbated when their peers question their chosen identity. “When I’m around American-born Iranians, I feel like I have to impress them. I have to be Persian in the way they want” (Camran). Camran’s feelings of being pressured to meet his peers’ implicit standards play into the idea of identity

as performance.

Performance theory posits that individuals put on a performance in society. Clothing, language, mannerisms, etc. are all a signal-system to oneself and others of one’s role within a group.

Moreover, Butler has pointed to the way performances seek to reinforce and communicate one’s identity in society. When an individual plays a part, they implicitly request observers to believe the character they see actually possesses the presented attributes.

For non-Iranian members of ISCO, Iranian culture is less a performance and more a wealth of knowledge to be embraced.

This was the case for both Malini and Rami, an Indian and Jordanian student respectively. “When I first joined ISCO, people would start talking to me in Farsi. At first I would tell them I wasn’t Persian, but now I respond in Farsi” (Rami). During his time in ISCO, Rami found himself growing more interested in learning Farsi. He did not feel inadequate for not knowing the language; rather, he viewed acquiring the skill as an addition to his established identity. Like Rami, Malini sees her growth within ISCO as an extension of her Indian identity. “I love Indian culture, but not enough people on campus replicate it the way ISCO does theirs. The community is stronger in ISCO.” Instead of being torn between two identities, Malini maintains her Indian culture while finding in ISCO qualities she feels the Indian community is missing. In a sense, non-Iranians can enjoy Iranian culture without the added pressure cultural standards place on Iranian-Americans.

Regardless of the cultural identification of those interviewed, however, everyone agreed on one point—ISCO is home. “You have a family more than anything else” (Rustum). “The Iranian part of ISCO is the people, and I like the people”(Rami). “ISCO reminds me of my family when I’m homesick” (Camran). “I’m in Norouz Show this year. I get to be on stage with people I love” (Malini).

“Language is full of acronyms; nowadays we are impatient of words that carry with them histories and associations”; the “I” in ISCO stands for Iranian, but for its members, the implications of that word are not so simple.

ISCO members pose for a photo at the annual Lake Tahoe ski trip photo: iranian students' cultural organization

PERSPECTIVE 27

How much do you love me?

A MODERN TAKE ON MEHRIEH Mahshad Badii On a Thursday afternoon in Tehran, a beat-up Iran Khodro pickup unloads 124,000 red roses in the courtyard of a Family Court. A chador-cladden woman walks by without blinking an eye—she is too busy looking for courtroom seven, where she will formally demand from her husband her gift of 100 kilos of flies’ wings. Meanwhile, down the hall, Mr. Sadeigh and his college sweetheart enter hour five of bargaining over 800 gold coins. He chokes that he is unable to pay what he once promised a young wife, and the thick-fingered judge stares on impassively. To an outsider, the requests seem almost laughable. But for men in Iran, the ability to deliver a thousand roses or flies’ wings can make the difference between freedom and a lifetime behind bars.

Drawn from Islamic law, mehrieh, translated literally as “affection,” is a form of dowry prospective husbands promise their wives at marriage. It must be gifted in the event of divorce, or one risks fines or imprisonment. Initially, mehrieh was established as a form of social insurance for widowed or divorced women in Islamic societies; in its simplest terms, mehrieh shifted the responsibility of welfare from the state onto the husband. Nevertheless, even as the modern Iranian woman enjoys an unprecedented amount of economic independence and the need for a dowry fades, mehrieh remains common in Iranian marriage law and tradition; new trends include asking for a mehrieh of coins equivalent to the numerical year the bride-to-be was born, although many 28 PERSPECTIVE

wives ultimately waive their husbands’ debt. I personally have overheard my own mother endlessly tease my father for never paying her mehrieh, though her small smiles somehow make me doubt she has ever asked for it.

Still, while seemingly outdated and easy to poke fun at, the mehrieh system has transformed from a safety net into an exploitative source of income and social credit for brides. As couples enter divorce, husbands unable to pay their mehrieh find themselves in danger of imprisonment.

In fact, as of March 2017, 2,297 men were in Iranian jail for failure to pay mehrieh.

The crisis is exacerbated by the everlasting competition among families to have the best wedding for their children, and thus the highest mehrieh, pushing the average price up. The 800 coins demanded by Mrs. Sadeghi is the equivalent of 10 million rials; for context, a worker receiving an average wage would have to work 50 years to earn such an amount. In the case of 100 kilos of flies’ wings, the petitioner refused to leave her husband due to their shared child, but nonetheless demanded her mehrieh on the grounds that her husband was a heroin addict who wasted all of their income. In a more ridiculous scenario, a husband filed a complaint to Family Court 240 that his wife was demanding he dress more “fashionably"; his spouse, in turn, demanded her mehrieh, valued at $14,000, as restitution.

Admittedly, the judiciary has taken some steps to stop such extreme exploitation. In 2013, the Iranian Family Protection Act

capped mehrieh at 110 gold coins, while a 2015 law revoked a jail time punishment in favor of payment in installments for husbands unable to cough up the sum; the sole exception is if the court discovers a husband lied about his financial situation.

Still, even as mehrieh-bound men rejoice at the cap and women denounce the entire system as patronizing and patriarchal, an argument can still be made for the dowry system.

In an interview with Arab News, one woman explains how men and women in Iran are still not entirely equal, especially in regards to divorce. A husband must approve the divorce or the burden of proof of abusiveness falls onto the wife. Considering this inequality, some Iranian women still view mehrieh as a means to even the playing field, holding husbands accountable to their promises and discouraging exploitation of marriage laws, which are already largely favorable to men.

In light of this reality, some Iranian women have tailored mehrieh to modern needs. Rather than requesting the traditional bahar azadi coins, many will instead request child custody or the ability to work or study. Here, women living under Islamic law fight inequality rooted in tradition with legal protections rooted in the same tradition. But whether it is over gold coins, roses, or fighting for equality, mehrieh lives on, and in its current form, it is reflective of Iranians as a whole—a people of the 21st century desperately trying to untangle themselves and adapt from the customs of a time long past.

from school to work: a cultural dichotomy

by Charlotte Laurence Within Iran, it is salutary to note that women have outnumbered men in the entering classes of universities almost 2:1 for the last several years. When they graduate, however, they are one-third less likely to work. This ratio falls further for married women and those with children.

Moreover, women account for seventy percent of Iran's science and engineering students, and propitiously in a small but promising community of startups, they are being encouraged to play an even bigger role. It is sobering to realize, however, that even in this climate of numerical dominance in higher education, women are treated unequally. Countless arrests affirm the human rights violations that inevitably ensue.

This issue of gender inequality is neither new nor immune from tradition and intransigence. Despite being a topic of debate in the Iranian government, it faces the powerful inertia of a patriarchal society. In deference to the need (if not a collective will) for change, President Hassan Rouhani had pledged to act, and his campaign promises have included equal opportunities and rights for women. As with many of Rouhani’s other plans to modernize Iran, however, there has been little sign of progress, owing to the conservative tug on power that reflects the official status quo, so assiduously curated by Ayatollah Khamenei. That the status quo extends, as previously noted, to a mismatch between education and opportunity for women, is therefore unsurprising.

The putative logic for this circumstance

offered by conservatives might, however, surprise you. Or maybe (do we see the resignation on your world-weary faces) not.

There is a frustrating, recursive logic to the conservative argument for keeping things exactly as they are. It is an economic one. If men, they posit, are more likely to use their college skills in production, then they should have greater access to higher education than women. In a ruthlessly pragmatic sort of way, this is true, even if it does admit to an anachronistic set of values. This is part of a broader dialectic over whether public economic policy can affect a favorable market outcome, but it is not a debate simply over purported workplace productivity. Even in the “softer” women-dominated fields, the assumption that women are taking slots away from men is hard to justify given the relatively low employment prospects in these fields.

Most university slots that women currently occupy are not considered “productive enough” for men to want to take them anyway and, therefore, do not represent a threat to the workplace ambitions of men.

Furthermore, even with women holding the small majority of higher education places over men, the current ratio of 110 women to 100 men in post-secondary education places is well below the historical median value of 116 in a recent study (Iran’s 2006 census shows a higher figure of 127 women per 100 men in four-year institutions). Notwithstanding debates over the appropriate ratio, there are a number of complex reasons why women

outnumber men in higher education and why, counter to the conservative ethos, the ratio in favor of women actually correlates with the economic good: the higher ratios are consistent with higher overall per-capita income in Iran.

Economists Chiappori, Iyigun, and Weiss explain rigorously why marriage is an important reason for the higher ratio of women to men in universities. Former President Rafsanjani complained in an interview in 2000 of pressures on him to limit women’s access to universities when he was in office in the 1990s: “They asked why women should study if they are not going to work. And even some radical representatives spoke from the tribune of the Majlis questioning, 'Why should we give the seats in universities to women who when they finish their education must go home and take care of children?'

I said if we have one educated mother without a job, she will be effective in the society because of the children that she will educate.”

In light of the evidence–both economically and socially edifying–it would be more pragmatic for the government to take the low employment rate as reason to incentivize women to pursue higher education rather than limiting their involvement, by offering tangible rewards like more jobs for women in the pubic and private sectors. It is true that conservatives will lament a change in the status quo, but all ships, male and female, for generations to come, would rise on this tide, and with them the fortunes of Iran.

PERSPECTIVE 29

PIONEERING, NOT PLAGIARIZING

by Arsalan Qureshi Establishing one's identity as a first generation American is quite the journey. A path of self-discovery and creation, failures and successes. The burdens placed on our backs are different than those placed on our immigrant parents, although often just as heavy, if not heavier, due to the expectation that we must stand on the shoulders of the giants that they were and achieve even more.

When many of our parents moved here during the Islamic Revolution, they barely knew any English, and definitely were not privy to the cultural norms and expectations of American society. They were also not geared towards acclimating well, entering into a radically different culture from their own. What they did have, however, was unquenchable ambition and the talent to pursue their dreams and make them a reality. Whether in the field of medicine, law, engineering, or business, they aimed for the stars and landed in other galaxies altogether.

What their success in acclimating afforded us, however, was the privilege of growing up in spaces where we aren’t merely fighting for survival. As a result, we are now able to aim for more abstract and unconventional goals. Maz Jobrani,

30 PERSPECTIVE

who spoke at UC Berkeley for the 2017 commencement, is a prolific comedian, a profession that most Iranian parents would scoff at, but he has proven himself through his success. My own cousin, albeit Pakistani, is a law student at Stanford, and he performs stand-up comedy on the side.

Comedians such as Jobrani and my cousin do not seek to mimic American comedians sets, however. They speak from an authentic source about their very real experiences in the U.S. in the post-9/11 era.

This authenticity is something that I seek to emphasize, as such comedians are not merely mindlessly chasing the same goals that their parents did but doing what they are passionate about and what they feel is right. This will undoubtedly lead them much further and leave them more satisfied when all is said and done.

Immigrants in non-conventional spaces are important. It is liberating to see them doing their best in roles like comedy and art rather than focusing in technology or science. Iranian women also have a precedent of success. For example, Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani is a rare woman in the male-dominated field of finance, serving as the Chief Investment Officer of Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs.

Their successes must also be extended to Iranian women who are still living in Iran, where they are faced with unequal opportunity in a workplace that does not value their expertise.

Globalizing commerce to connect Iranian citizens to the Iranian diaspora would result in worldwide exposure and exhibit the attitudes of the Iranian people who support modernization and progress. I believe it would result in an explosion of value for the world’s Iranian community.

An example of businesses that could benefit Iranians in terms of revenue and the West in terms of cultural value would be cashmere scarves or Persian rugs.

These items are almost exclusively produced in the area, at the level of quality that is considered the best in the world.

To facilitate the exchange of these items to the U.S. would be the perfect position for Iranian-Americans who have connections to both ends of this transaction. Not only would it be a valuable business endeavor, but it would also bring Iranian-Americans closer to the culture of their ancestors, furthering their genuine endeavor of establishing themselves as unique individuals in this constantly evolving global community.

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Halpern, Micah D. "Iran Steps Up War on Social Media."

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Cultural Appropriation is Not Gucci Mower, Sarah. "Gucci Fall 2018 Ready-to-Wear Fashion Show." Vogue. March 02, 2018. Accessed March 10, 2018. https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2018-ready-towear/gucci.

Chrisafis, Angelique. "French mayors refuse to lift burkini ban despite court ruling." The Guardian. August 28, 2016.

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Najmabadi, Afsaneh. "Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards." University of California Press.

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Where is Iran?

"Khorāsān." Encyclopædia Britannica. November 04, 2016.

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PERSPECTIVE 31

Perspective