We Are Iran

this book review appeared in the Financial Times magazine, 17 December 2005

Nasrin Alavi

Published 13 October 2005 by Portobello Books

£12.99

365pp

The discrepancy between Iran’s image in the West and the reality of the country is so great that after every visit to Iran, I am shocked on returning to see archive footage of protestors burning the American flag and chanting women veiled in voluminous black chadors. The reality that I see in Iran is so far from this, and the issues that the Iranian populace struggle with daily are so much more complex than these simplistic images that I often feel defeated by the difficulty of trying to fill in the gaps for my friends in the West.

Iran is an ancient country that took a swift and brutal turn away from the world’s eyes when it ousted the last Shah with the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and even now, 26 years later, the Western world rarely has a chance to glimpse behind the veil that Iran has drawn over itself.

Inaccurate representations of Iran have long been frustrating to those who have a better understanding of the intricate reality of this contrary country, but ever since topping Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ list, it has become a more serious matter. With the election of unknown hardliner Mahmood Ahmadinejad as president in June and his subsequent confrontational pronouncements, bridging this gap in understanding has become a matter of urgency.

Nasrin Alavi’s dense book, We Are Iran, addresses this gap. A collection of Iranian blogs translated from the Persian, the book is divided into themes in which direct quotes from assorted weblogs make up part of the text with additional discussion of the topics and background provided by Alavi.

For the uninitiated, a weblog (also known as blog) is an online diary or journal. Of an estimated two million blogs in cyberspace, some 64,000 blogs are in Persian, making it the fourth most popular language for bloggers.

This remarkable scene was born when the first Iranian blog was posted in November 2001 by Hossein Derakhshan, a young Iranian journalist who had recently moved to Canada and who, at the request of a reader, posted instructions in Persian as to how to build a weblog. Now, on its fifth anniversary, Ms Alavi’s book translates some of these blogs and, for the first time, the voices of ordinary Iranians can be heard outside Iran.

The phenomenal popularity of blogging in Iran can easily be explained. Reformist newspapers have nearly all been shut down and many editors jailed; Reporters Sans Frontières has called Iran ‘the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East’. So cyberspace has become the retreat of many journalists and is now the medium used for publishing transcripts of trials, speeches and other events not recorded in the state-controlled media. In 2003, Iran became the first government to take direct action against bloggers and this has continued with mass filtering and arrests made earlier this year, one journalist being sentenced to 14 years. But Iranian bloggers have carried on, many anonymously. One blogger explains why:

‘I keep a weblog so that I can breathe in this suffocating air… in a society where one is taken to history’s abattoir for the mere crime of thinking, I write so as not to be lost in my despair…’

Iran might be closed to the world, but the rest of the world reaches Iran through the internet and satellite channels that many homes tune into, despite the official illegality of owning a satellite dish. There are more personal computers in Iran than the regional average and internet cafés proliferate. Iran’s population is young – 70% is under 30 – and well educated, with literacy rates standing at over 90%, again well above the regional average. And it is not just middle class or well off families that are connected via computers and satellite dishes: even poorer families have at least a dish and access to a computer. Email is widely available, again more easily than in some other countries in the Middle East and Iranians use cyberspace to communicate information on protests, coordinate relief efforts for NGOs, post news, make banned books available and even chat about David Beckham and Harry Potter.

Early in the book, Alavi lays out some of the contradictions in Iranian society that confound expectations fostered by those archive images. She details the cultural fixation with the West that grips the youth of Iran to the extent that Valentine’s Day has recently been wholeheartedly adopted, despite the best efforts of a regime that favours vitriolic anti-Western rhetoric. The majority of Iran’s population, the children of the Revolution, care not a fig for their leaders’ attempts to keep them from the ‘cultural onslaught’ of the West, instead its repression has made them ever more curious about it.

The voices revealed are irreverent, politically engaged and educated, reflecting the regime’s mass education policy which has seen literacy rates shoot up since the Revolution. Where the regime fails these youngsters is in providing jobs: despite having 9% of the world’s oil and 15% of its natural gas, Iran’s per capita income is actually 7% lower than before the Revolution. Just 20% of the population hold 80% of the nation’s wealth and 12 million of the 70 million population live below the poverty line. And with any form of recreation restricted and means of expression controlled, it comes as no surprise that there is an epidemic of drug addiction in Iran, with official figures estimating two million drug users, acknowledged to be below the reality.

No wonder, then, that Alavi writes with such passionate disdain for the regime, cataloguing its multitudinous human rights abuses – and she allows the blogs to colour her opinions. As well as setting the historical context, chapters cover many aspects of life in modern Iran, from feelings about the Iran-Iraq war to religion, the state of the economy, love and romance, art and cultural icons such as the singer Googoosh. It is mostly a narrative of enraging repression, frustrating mismanagement and brutal suppression and Alavi picks the blogs that best flesh out her assertions. The book is strongest when it allows the blogs to speak of the paradoxes in Iranian life and character without too much comment. The below, from a blog posted during the month of Moharram, a time when Shias mourn the 7 th-century murder of Imam Hossein, sums up the Iranian ability to live with both a devout Muslim faith and an obsession with Western culture:

‘My favourite links for today:

• A website by Hossein Ansarian, commemorating the month of Moharram

• Link to Yahoo for the latest pictures of the Oscar ceremony’

The chapter on women is particularly inspiring, with simple facts – such as that the majority of university graduates are women – again exploding Western stereotypes. The clamouring throughout for change, the detailing of activism and revealing of opposition figures are so strong that you will be left convinced that this small band of clerics cannot possibly hold on to power in the face of such widespread dissent. With the election of Ahmadinejad questions are raised which Alavi tries, in the final chapter, to address. What becomes apparent is the hardline backlash that started with the banning of thousands of reformist candidates in the parliamentary election of 2004 and that darker days may be coming for the irrepressible people of Iran. With the regime’s current attack on the blogoshpere, it may even be that Alavi has charted a unique moment in Iranian history – when Iran found its voice, uncensored.

Nasrin Alavi’s book is packed with information about modern Iran, there are not many topics she does not approach, although there were times when I longed for her to reflect some of the fun, vitality and grace of Iranian society and culture. Despite the disconnection between the rulers and the ruled, there are positives in Iranian society: grassroots effort is strong and though Alavi mentions the 8,000 NGOs that are operating in Iran, she goes no further. There is reliance on a select number of sites and she admits that she has included mostly sites with the most hits. There are just three entries from the other side of the ideological divide though again Alavi points out that as they have the conventional press for expression, hardline blogs are rare. On Hossein Derakhshan’s blog at the moment, Alavi’s book is being enthusiastically welcomed, though as one blogger points out: ‘We are not Iran. Iran is full of those who support Ahmadinejad and voted for him.’

What makes this book special is the voice of the bloggers, the ordinary people of Iran who get to have their say at last. And they are eloquent, educated, poetic, charming, witty and brave. In the midst of the struggles of every day life and the dangers that speaking your mind can bring, they display a unique courage and sense of humour that tells us more about the spirit of modern Iran than countless images ever can.

© Kamin Mohammadi, 2005