The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Iranian writer Roya Hakakian: "For them, I am the enemy of the regime, and also everything I fight for" | Israel today

2022-06-11T09:49:27.543Z


Roya Hakakian immigrated to the United States in 1984 in the wake of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Regarding Iran • and about the younger generation, who are already “asking lots of questions, demonstrating in the streets; I liked the 'Tehran' series because there are young people there who live as we know it "


It took 17 years to publish in Israel a translation of Roya Hakakian's book, "Journey from the Land No" (published by Ketav / Mandali, translated by Tomer Ben Aharon).

The book, which describes through the eyes of a Jewish girl in Tehran the storm that wiped out the Jewish community in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, was published in the United States in 2005, garnered rave reviews, won the readership of the prestigious Elle magazine and has been translated into many languages. The story of a community that refused to believe until the last minute that it came to an end with the rise of Khomeini and the transformation of their homeland into a fanatical Islamic republic.

In the late 1980s, the Iranian Jewish community numbered about 100,000 people, but as Khakakian admits: "The Jewish community dreamed of a land flowing with milk and honey, but wanted to wake up in the morning in Tehran," the former Tehran, to be the pearl of the Gulf in the Middle East. Arrogant and proud of her education, culture and the smells that surrounded her bustling streets.

Tehran of the markets, of vibrant young people who dreamed of freedom, creativity and inspiration, but became the non-land, a land where dreams vanished and Shiite Islam rose that persecuted all who were unwilling to straighten and follow him with closed eyes, covering women, girls and girls in uniform and black veils. And to the head.

***


From "Journey from No Land": "I felt lost - not in the city, but in my own clothes. Under the uniform, I was fuzzy. Where did Roya go? I stopped, opened the top buttons of the uniform and peeked inside: Where am I? I saw only darkness. A cave leading to a pair of folded denim hats, faded blue suede shoes and dirty asphalt.Somewhere under the dark, musty, I hid, but out of the collar of 18-year-old Roya came no hint of a youthful spirit, but an 18,000-year-old stench of something "Rotten. Something very rotten. And I realized that something is a rotten girl."

Roya Hakakian immigrated to the United States in 1984. That same year her parents decided to burn all her memories, the diaries she wrote, the books she loved, fifth grade certificates from the Shah's Ministry of Education, records and tapes, so that the Revolutionary Guards would not find reason to dump their daughter or Put them in jail. "Dad went out on the porch.

He stood behind me, put both his hands on my shoulders, cleared his throat and said weakly: 'It's time for us to leave for America' ".

In an interview from her home in Connecticut, Roya talks about the excitement that the journey in which she takes her readers into the lives of Iranian Jews during the revolution will be published in Hebrew, in Israel, in a country where many of her family chose to live.

"I am sure that readers in Israel will read the book differently from readers in other languages. Many who immigrated to Israel from all over the world left home and friends and memories and longings, in addition to the story of an Islamic revolution that made the country I loved so much Israel's bitter enemy."

High school students in Tehran after the revolution, with their teacher, who appears in May,

Most Iranian Jews refused to immigrate to Israel until the revolution.

All the waves of immigration of the 1950s passed over them.

Do you think they were less Zionist?

"I agree that the Jews were happy in Iran, especially in Tehran in the 1960s and 1970s. In those years they had a high socio-economic status and they were rooted in society as they were not before. But I will give you an example: I was 10 and we flew to visit Israel. My parents lay on the ground and kissed her and I did not understand what they were doing. It took them years to assimilate into society and start a new life. "

Hakakian weaves her experiences gently and sensitively: from demonstrations against the Shah, through underground protest songs and the cheering of young people who led the revolution in the streets, to Hakakian's internalization that she, her family, friends and all Iranian Jews live on borrowed time and are in danger.

Precisely in the inner silence in which she describes her life and the life of her family, she best illustrates the storm and existential threat that hovered over every man and woman.

From the book: "I'm probably next in line: next in line to be arrested. Next in line to be tortured or end up executed. Next in line to flee. "Wrong. Wrong sentence in connection with school. Anyone could be an agent of Sooama, a brainwashed zealot who wants to serve Allah through the service of the Imam ... Time has stopped passing just like that. He has become a countdown."

"What fascinated me about the book was the fact that Roya tells the story of the Jewish community in Iran in the first person," says Prof. Lior Sternfeld, a researcher of Iran and Iranian Jews in the Department of History at Penn State University in the United States. Innocent, to be a part of the processes that the beloved country went through until the great disappointment. "

According to him, there are almost no studies describing the life of the glorious Jewish community before and during the revolution.

The reader, Prof. Sternfeld writes at the end of the book, will get to know the urban geography of Tehran and the Alley of the Honorable and will feel the lightening of the shade of the trees, the route on the boulevard and the destination and the smells and tastes of the city.

From these descriptions the reader will also be able to understand why aliyah activists in Israel found it difficult to persuade Iranian Jews to leave their country and immigrate to Israel.

Sternfeld tried for years with regard to book publishing in Israel to publish the book in Hebrew, but was refused.

"There is no daring escape in the mountains and escape from the clutches of the Revolutionary Guards in the book, and the great publishers thought he had no chance of being accepted, even though he was a bestseller in the United States."

Only after years, with the help of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, Penn State University and a reporter, whose publisher Moshe Manshoff immigrated from Iran, did the project materialize.

Next week, Hakakian will land in Israel again, this time to promote the Hebrew edition of the book through several meetings around the country.

Life after Khomeini

From the book: "The end of the high school year. Roya is 18. The tough teacher Ms. Arman, who only twice in her life gave a grade of 19 out of 20 (which only Allah can get), called her with a serious welcome to stand before her. She held her ear tight.


" Another 19 "?


" Yes, the teacher. "" To whom? "


" To someone good? "" You are the person.


"

And that's how you encourage me? "

"Encouragement do you want? You got us both in a lot of trouble ... Everyone, including all the teachers, want to see your essay. Do you know what will happen if you give it to them? They will send your shrunken ass to jail, that's what will happen! "Iraq-Iran war), it was enough to write a one-page patriotic essay! But you are blabbering on about how destructive it is. I have genius in my hands! I decided to write exactly what the Islamic Association is trying to find. That's how I lost my job at the university."

Ms. Arman proved at that moment that even at the height of the revolution not everyone was a loyal soldier in the army of God.

"Here's the plan: I'll tell everyone I forgot in the taxi the bag that contained your essay folder. You'll get 19, and no one will see the essay. You understand? Now listen to me well: you are a writer. I want you to say that."

Say, 'I count.' "" I count and do not lose it. "

Few studies on the life of the Jewish community in Iran before the revolution.

Tehran, Photo: AFP

Even before I got to this point in your book, I also murmured to myself, this is not an ordinary illustrator, this is a story written by a talented writer and therefore it has become a bestseller.

Roya is excited, her voice chokes, she wipes away a tear and says thank you.

"I think my story should be told because people do not really know today about what Iran was like. They are divided into two types. The first type, we call them ignorant, who think it is a backward country of Arabs with veils and tarps living near the desert and their opinions are represented by the Ayatollahs government. While the second group claims that the Shah's government was a CIA puppet government that controlled it, and that Ayatollah Khomeini and the clerics are a bottom-up reaction to the unwanted US intervention, because that is what we see on television. But people in Iran are not one piece, they think and know "And they want life, and it's been years, especially after Khomeini's departure, that there has been a loosening. You can see that the poisons are different, the hair is allowed to protrude sometimes, and people sometimes do normal things in secret to feel alive."

I want to tell you a story that strengthens your claim.

Years ago I met in Leipzig, Germany, an Iranian film director who wanted to talk to me on the side, lest he be seen with an Israeli.

He revealed to me that young people at the University of Tehran listen to Israeli radio and they especially like Rona Keinan.

It stunned me.

He was not even a Jew.

"It's the new young generation, asking a lot of questions, not getting things done automatically like the previous generation. That's also why I liked the 'Tehran' series. There are young people out there who look normal and live as we know each other, as everyone wants."

Prof. Lior Sternfeld, Penn State University: "The uniqueness of the book is in writing in the first person the story of the Jewish community in Iran, Photo: Michael Davis

The young people were the leaders of the Islamic Revolution, and have now become parents.

Will their children carry out another revolution?

"You do not need my opinion, you can see for yourself not only the student demonstrations and protests in the streets, but also the European-like lifestyle that many Iranians adopt for themselves. "It's enough to read things on social media, sometimes with hints and sometimes also openly and without fear. Another example is the women who at the first opportunity they can feel liberated, they remove the poison that has embalmed them."

"Mom, the FBI is here."

In the book, too, Royya describes the debilitating pain in which women were forced to cover up and paint in black every feminine sign: "We were embalmed against our will in veils. They were the white-and-black turbans that flooded everywhere. Who wore glasses by prescription. We had the weak eyes. They called themselves 'believers.' We called ourselves Iranians. They imprisoned Matisse and Picasso's nude paintings in the basement of the museums. We were artisans, and shocked. Lou, guitar or violin. We were the musicians mourning the boycott of the music. They forbade dancing of any kind. We were the ballerinas, and all our limbs rebelled. They burst into parties and sniffed the faces of the guests to detect the smell of 'sin', the alcohol.

"We were the connoisseurs who bury in the garden the last bottles of wine we have left ... They became overnight entrepreneurs eager to export their strain of salvation - first to Baghdad, then to Jerusalem and finally to the whole world. We just wanted Tehran back."

If you could go back to Tehran for one day, what would you like to see?

"I would like to see in my mind's eye my time there, the happy days, the Hebrew school."

Years after leaving Tehran and settling in the US, Roya tried to contact her good friend Zainab. The last time she saw her was after the decision was made to flee Iran.

10-year-old Hakakian, in Tehran High School,

Zainab told Roya: "You are lucky, you are a Jew, you can immigrate and be accepted anywhere. You must leave. Leave quickly! Leave and do not look back."

But the last meeting was sad and not just because of the breakup.

The spark of joy that always lied from Zainab's eyes, went out.

She lost her brother in the war with Iraq, her rebellious sister was thrown in jail, her mother's mind was preyed upon, and she remained reconciled to the fact that she had to align herself with the jarring sounds of the Black Revolution.

Years later Roya tried to contact her.

She sent a "broker" who would greet her and give her her phone number in America.

But she refused.

The fear is still great.

***


In the summer of 2019, two guys in gray suits and black leather shoes were knocked on Roia's house door, not exactly the characters you see in an American suburb in Connecticut.

Her daughter who opened the door exclaimed, "Mom, the FBI is here."

They told her they had reliable intelligence that she was being targeted by the Iranians.

Are you a threat?


"Yes".

in what way?


"For them I am the enemy. The great enemy of the regime is what I am fighting for: making a voice, wanting to emphasize that women are free and should not be silenced. I challenge them." 

Were we wrong?

Fixed!

If you found an error in the article, we'll be happy for you to share it with us

Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-06-11

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.