REPLY TO JALADHI

Submitted by DANIEL REDMOND (United States), Feb 23, 2008 at 17:06

Jaladhi, I am happy to know that at least a few others out there can see the writing on the wall. Many years ago, back in the 1960s, when I was in college I befriended an Iranian brother and sister while we were students at the University of Oklahoma. There names were Mohammad and Azar Nafici and they were from a wealthy and privileged family; in fact, their father had once been the mayor of Tehran.

I came to know them both very well and for one semester shared an apartment with Mohammad. Both he and Azar detested the rule of the Shah---Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, as he was known---and looked forward to the day when he would be overthrown. As we now know, that day eventually came and he was replaced by the brutal, sadistic Islamic fundamentalism of the Ayatolluh Khomeini and his followers, who rule to this day.

I had lost track of my Iranian friends a long time ago and often wondered what had happened to them. Then, a few years ago, I discovered that Azar had written a best selling memoir of her life entitled "Reading Lolita in Tehran." I bought a copy and had the unusual experience of discovering in rich detail what had become of the bright and free-spirited young woman I had known so many years ago at college.

Turns out she had returned to Tehran in 1979 and taught literature at the University of Tehran until forced to leave for not abiding by the oppressive dictates of the Islamic regime. She was fired for refusing to where a veil across her face and more than one of her students had been jailed and executed by the Iranian regime. She remained stuck there for eighteen long years, unable to leave the country.

Thankfully, she eventually made it back to the United States and lives a free life here once again. I'm sure that her eighteen years of living under the tyranny of Islamic fundamentalism led her to understand that, at least comparatively, life had been pretty good under the progressive Western-influenced dictatorship of Shah Pahlavi.

- Daniel Redmond

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