Exiled Memories: Stories of Iranian Diaspora

Lily

Lily Educator and writer, Lily earlier talked of her life in Iran as a child, a student, and a worker for the literacy campaign. She now tells her story of the revolution and her departure into exile. We left Iran in 1979. I experienced the Spring of Freedom. It was a very strange feeling. I was not young enough to share that ecstasy with the youth. I could see what was happening and I was not happy. But I was not old enough to lose my faith in the people and say that all our lives depend on the king and that we would be lost without him. I had grown angry with the Shah toward the end and was very much in favor of some sort of radical change. And that spring, it really was the Spring of Freedom. It was magnificent to walk on Shah Reza Avenue and see all sorts of people standing around discussing all sorts of subjects they were not earlier allowed to discuss— forbidden books, politics, arts, everything. You could feel the solidarity of people toward each other. But this “spring” ended. There was a shadow that I felt on one particular day. That was the day I saw Zahra Khanum. [She means a type of traditional woman, hence the name “Zahra.”] Zahra Khanum was a woman from the south of Tehran. She had a chador, but not casually worn. She was shrouded in it. That day, I was walking from Shah Reza Avenue up Vesall i Shirazi and suddenly I heard her say, “Pedar i Shoma ra dar avordeem” [a familiar curse that implies the exorcising of fathers, or, we will damn you]. I asked, “Pedar i Kee ra Daravordi?” [“Whose fathers do you refer to?”] “Een zanaye patyare—jam shodan—meegan ma chador nemkhaeem, ma azadi meekhaeem, ma ketaab mekhaeem.” [“You women who organize demonstrations and say that you don’t wish to be veiled, that you wish for freedom and for books.”] That was the first time I felt the shadow. Then the book burning started. One day I came to the office and I said to my coworkers, “What’s going on in Shah Reza Avenue? They’re burning books.” And then a coworker, a young girl, a Zoroastrian, said, “Hah, we experienced that one thousand, four-hundred years ago. Now, you are going to feel it too.” 142 revolution: narrating upheaval Now that I look back, the warning signs were there, only we couldn’t always read them. When I first read Khomeini’s book, I went to a friend at work who was also an educator and a revolutionary and very much against the Shah. I asked him if he had read Khomeini’s book. It was 5:30 in the morning; you know we used to come early to the office to be able to speak openly, not during office hours. He said, “Yes.” “And you still believe in this man as a leader of the revolution?” He said, “Yes, but he wrote this book fifteen years ago.” I said, “Is there anything in this book that he has since denied?” He says, “No, but this was fifteen years ago.” I said, “But what if he still believes in this rubbish. A person who has written this is a second Hitler to me. Thank you, I don’t want him as a leader.” And this is another problem. I don’t know how many of those who hailed him, the young intellectuals, had really read the book. I knew that if he would succeed, something awful would happen. Would you tell us about the persecution of Baha’is? About three years before the revolution, I became a Baha’i. It took me twenty- five years to make such a decision. I had somehow picked up so many prejudices against Baha’is in that culture that I feared they were heretics—or worse, traitors to Iran. But I gradually learned the falsity of that. Baha’is suffered so much persecution through their history. Falsafe destroyed the Hazirat (Baha’i Center) during the Shah’s time. Reza Shah closed Baha’i schools. Thousands of people were killed for their faith. I had seen many Baha’is lose their jobs. I was very close to my husband’s family and to many other Baha’is. Gradually I became really interested in the philosophy of this faith. Finally, I registered as a Baha’i. I did that...