From Revolution to Café Latte by Kamin Mohammadi

Twenty-six years ago this week, Iran’s Revolution became victorious after a year of riots, killings and increasing chaos. The Shah left, Ayatollah Khomeini came back from exile and, after they put my father’s name on a gravestone, we left too. But, not before seeing Khomeini come back into the country to an ecstatic reception, not before seeing him interviewed on the plane on his way back after nearly 20 years of exile, and not before hearing him say, when asked what he felt on returning to his country in this way, “Nothing.”

Nothing.

People died, lives were shattered, blood was shed, and all he felt was “nothing.”

The ‘Victory of the Revolution’ is marked by 10 days of celebrations and known as the ‘Dah-e Fajr’ which means ‘ten days of light.’ Almost universally, however, Iranians here call it the ‘Dah-e Zajr’ meaning ‘ten days of suffering.’ Nonetheless, flags bedeck the streets, lights flash in the night, pictures of the Imam (as Khomeini was later named, meaning Saint) proliferate even more than usual and on the streets, little makeshift galleries display photos of the Revolution and subsequent war, all pertaining to the glory of the Islamic Republic. The television constantly replays images of those days, images of thousands in the streets, their hands punching the air as they chant ‘death to the Shah,’ and later ‘long live Khomeini’ and even later ‘long live the Islamic Republic.’ Pictures of the dead, shot by the Shah’s armies, are interspersed with pictures of Iran’s ‘martyrs,’ the thousands of Iranian young men who died in the war with Iraq, all displayed to the rousing notes of Revolutionary songs. And all the while, images of Khomeini flash up: Khomeini waving, Khomeini addressing the crowd, Khomeini descending from the plane that brought him back from exile. The section of the interview in which he said he felt “nothing” has long been cut.

There are also images of women demonstrators in voluminous chadors, punching the air and covered from head to toe in black, even their hands encased in black gloves, the only bit of flesh showing a small triangle of face. My cousin who was a feminist and finishing her PhD at Tehran University in those days, joined in the demonstrations to chant ‘Death to the Shah.’ In the following weeks and months when the demonstrators started to chant for Khomeini and an Islamic Republic, she looked around and started to see in the crowd these women in their strict hejab. ‘I left,’ she says now, ‘this wasn’t what I wanted the Shah out for. This wasn’t the society I was after.’

Now, my 17-year-old cousin walks in with her mascara-framed eyes and bare midriff and changes the channel to a Persian music channel beamed in from ‘Tehrangeles.’ The singers make their videos on the beaches and in the deserts of California, fill them with lingering shots of scantily-clad lovelies and mix it all up with lashings of Arabic dance and Spanish rhythms - a world away from women in chadors and black gloves.

Riding in a saveri (taxis that pick up multiple passengers, so that two sit in the front seat and three to four in the back) late one night squashed up against my friend (male, and not a relative), he told me that there is a bill in the Majlis (parliament) at the moment to enforce the wearing of the chador, as it alleges that it is the national dress of Iranian women (FYI: it is NOT). Meanwhile, in a café in Tehran the other day, I drank a café latte, ate a Greek salad and openly kissed a male friend with whom I have no semblance of family relationship on both cheeks. On past trips, even my uncles have greeted me only with a handshake in public, and even that with a sense of great daring.

Of course this is nowhere near normal, but if today it is happening in Tehran, long live the Islamic Republic indeed.