[Marxism] The consequences of reading Garcia Lorca in Tehran

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times Magazine, December 2, 2007
Lives
Poetry of Protest
By ZARAH GHAHRAMANI, as told to ROBERT HILLMAN

In my native Iran, choosing the wrong heroes can have frightening 
consequences. I chose my first hero (not counting my adored father) a 
decade ago when I was a university student in Tehran, studying Spanish. 
My teacher put before us a book of verse by the poet Federico García 
Lorca, who was killed by nationalist soldiers at the outbreak of the 
Spanish Civil War. Even reading his poems of dire prediction, I was 
thrilled by his bravery, facing life and its torments with no balm other 
than words. I remember the experience of reading one of his poems, “The 
Weeping.” A sympathy for my fellow men and women, no more than a seed 
before I read it, grew shoots above the soil by the time I finished.

Tehran was enjoying a mild Prague Spring in the late ’90s when I first 
read García Lorca. After 18 years of repressive rule by a government of 
puritanical priests, a liberal reformist, Mohammad Khatami, was elected 
president of Iran. Khatami’s reforms were wishy-washy by the standards 
of Iran’s serious radicals (a little more freedom of speech, nothing 
extravagant), but I welcomed them like a new dawn. When the reforms were 
swept aside by the puritans, who remained as powerful as ever, I raised 
my voice in the street, along with thousands of other student 
protesters. I believed I was keeping faith with García Lorca, and also 
with the great poets Saadi and Hafez of long-ago Persia, who honored 
love and liberty. My friends and I sat on the steps of the library 
chattering like happy children as we planned new protests. With so many 
joyful people on our side, it was impossible to believe that those who 
despised happiness could ever prevail over us.

Then one sunny afternoon in 2001, when I was sauntering home from 
university, a police car pulled up beside me, and I was told to get 
inside. I said: “Me? Why?” I was more affronted than frightened. What 
gave these homely cops the idea that I would get into a car with them? I 
was told that I was required to answer a few questions downtown.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was only one of hundreds of student 
protesters detained that day. Our demonstrations had exhausted the 
patience of the hard-liners in the regime, and the police had been let 
off the leash. “Downtown” meant a tiny cell in Evin prison, in North 
Tehran, and “a few questions” meant protracted torture. I found it 
difficult to believe that my cheerful protests could have roused my 
interrogators to such violence. Bruised black by fists and boots, my 
shoulders and arms livid with lash welts, my scalp left bare and 
bleeding after my hair was shorn, I persisted in thinking, even as I 
wept and raged at my captors, This is ridiculous!

In the city-within-a-city that is Evin, there is no night and day; the 
lights burn constantly, and it is only ever “now.” I kept a rough tally 
of my time in detention by listening for morning prayers, broadcast all 
over Evin. After two weeks, I was reduced to longing for the touch of my 
mother’s hand and conjuring fantasies of revenge. I imagined doing harm 
to the people who were trying to murder me. I didn’t think of García 
Lorca, or of Saadi or Hafez, or of liberty. I thought of revenge. The 
intimacy of these fantasies eclipsed even my longing for love. I was 
aware that I was being corrupted by the violence inflicted on me, and I 
hated it. Unlike my poet heroes, I was unable to make a balm out of 
words; unable to defend myself with my imagination.

One morning after the broadcast of prayers as I sat with my back against 
the concrete bricks of the cell wall, words of solace came to me from a 
braver part of myself. “If I survive Evin,” I thought, “no matter how 
bruised I am, I will still have Iran. I will still have my country.” 
Because Evin was not Iran. It was just a prison of a sort that could be 
found in a hundred other countries. The interrogators of Evin could 
never have what I could have, if I lived. They could never have Iran. 
This thought consoled me that day. But by the next, it had no power to 
soothe. I said the words over and over anyway: “I will still have Iran.”

After 29 days of interrogation, friends on the outside were able to 
secure my freedom. The danger of rearrest compelled me to leave my 
country, and I now live far from Tehran. I have a beach to lie on, work 
to occupy me, a husband to love. But not all of me survived. And I’m not 
sure in what sense I still have Iran. I have less courage than before, 
or at least less willingness to test it. At the same time, I have an 
even deeper respect for the courage of others. If I’d known what the 
interrogators of Evin could do to me, I’d have kept my mouth shut. 
García Lorca knew exactly what to expect from the people who hated him 
but kept speaking out. I understand that now.

Zarah Ghahramani has collaborated with Robert Hillman on “My Life as a 
Traitor,” a book about her experience in prison, to be published next month.