Good and Bad, I Define These Terms, Quite Clear, No doubt, Somehow

This summer, instead of staying in Helsinki and enjoying that one month of the year where it’s possible to wear sundresses, float around the city and smile at strangers without freaking them out, I decided to travel to Iran. I was overwhelmed by how much I missed my family, friends, and good food, so the minute I received my first dose of vaccine, I hopped on a plane and left. It was only a week or two after my arrival that a looming rumour started spreading about Iran’s parliament debating whether to restrict the use of international social media platforms and instant messaging services, legislation that threatened to plunge the country into cyber-darkness. Journalists, political and online activists, and ordinary citizens were concerned that the restrictions would devastate Iran’s fragile civil society and eliminate the already limited online rights and liberties that remain open to the public.

To self-isolate an already isolated country is beyond any common-good-serving logic. What do I mean by an isolated country? How about a quick history lesson here?

Despite invasions by the Greeks, Arabs, and a variety of Turko-Mongol armies and enduring massive losses and casualties, Iran has somehow managed to keep its languages and cultures while also carving out its own distinct niche within Islam by accepting Shiism.

According to Shirin Hunter: “Iran has also paid a price: loneliness. In its neighborhood Iran has no natural allies or ethnic kin. Those who are closest, like Afghanistan and Tajikistan, are separated by religion while those who are close by religion like Iraq and Azerbaijan are separated by ethnicity and language. This loneliness also means that one can mistreat Iran without having to face opposition from other states.”

Add to this the decades-long, torturous political and economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the US and its countless allies, sanctions that have negatively impacted the country and its people’s livelihood in every possible aspect.

I have often thought about how this situation, geopolitical and otherwise, has affected us in terms of our understanding of solidarity with people of other nations, races, ethnicities, and religions and their social, political, and economic struggles. What does solidarity mean to us? Who do we choose to extend or not extend it to, and whom do we wish to receive it from? This is a complex question on many levels, and I don’t have an oversimplified answer for it. All I have are observations that will not amount to any solid answer. I have tried to approach it on a personal level, though, as one does on NO NIIN.

For my parents’ generation–those currently in their 60s and 70s–history is divided into before and after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. If you ask the same question of us millennials, I reckon many would recall the Iranian Green Movement in 2009 as their personal turning point. The Green Movement protests were a significant event in modern Iranian political history, possibly the largest since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Protests by the Green Movement erupted following the 2009 Iranian presidential election, with protestors demanding that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be removed from power.

In 2009, I was 20 years old and enrolled in a painting BA programme in Isfahan. I was and still am very interested in politics, except that back then, I was clueless about what was going on. What narratives are at work, and to whose agendas am I contributing? I have a memory of myself on Quds Day, which is celebrated in Iran as a day to condemn Israel. That year, the protestors were hoping to use it as an opportunity to vent their anger under the legal guise of an official rally, so we took to the streets with our green wristbands and victory signs, blending with the crowd and chanting our own slogans. A popular slogan was born that day, and one that I mindlessly ended up repeating afterward: “No Gaza. No Lebanon. I give my life for Iran.” People were tired of the neverending economic problems. There was and still is a popular belief that all our money is being spent in Gaza and Lebanon and that we’ll be better off if Iran stops its “meddling” in the region’s affairs. Meanwhile, we were also chanting slogans like “Obama, Obama—either with them or with us!”. Apparently, we thought it was fine for the US to intervene in our affairs. I have to add that there were more progressive voices within the Green Movement that denounced these slogans, but sadly I couldn’t hear them. The movement didn’t last more than a year; it was quite brutally suppressed, and our “leaders” were put under house arrest, where they still are. So we had no choice but to accept a temporary defeat and go back home. The Arab Spring followed a year later. I distinctly recall the night that Hosni Mubarak stepped down during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. I remember it because I didn’t sleep the entire night, not because of the joy I was feeling for the Egyptian protestors, not at all, but out of sheer jealousy. At that moment, in Tahrir Square, they were living our dreams. I couldn’t feel joy because it hadn’t occurred to me yet that we in Iran are not the centre of the universe and that it’s OK if this is not our moment. I couldn’t feel joy because that joy is born out of sharing solidarity and empathy with others, and if no one has ever taught you what that looks like or feels like, then it won’t come to you that easily. Losing this notion of solidarity is a byproduct of surviving within oppressive authoritarian, imperialist, capitalist, or neoliberal systems, as they do a great job of turning every single aspect of our being into a competition and alienating us from one another.

I did eventually move on from that self-absorbed and overly sentimentalised image of resistance that was carved in my head by less than intelligent opposition groups and diaspora stunt activists whose limited imagination couldn’t allow them to envision a world in which we are not alone in our struggle, and one does not have to be indifferent or belittling towards other people’s struggles or pit them against each other, in order to be heard. I’ve learned that if one has truly understood the devastation caused by oppression of any kind, they will see it, recognise it, be unsettled and enraged by it, and speak up against it, not only when it happens within their own borders but everywhere. Being positioned in isolated geopolitics that we can’t do much to change. We can, however, stop allowing that isolation to leak into our mindset and our entire understanding of the world. So yes, I stopped chanting that cruel slogan and I don’t plead with Obama–or any other imperialist for that matter–anymore. I know far better these days.

To us, sharing lived experiences is crucial as it contributes in many ways to the arduous—at times hopeless—dream of building communities, reclaiming spaces that bring us together, and within them, sharing tools and ideas on how to resist oppression, whether online or in person. What is of great value to us is our personal journeys in understanding the interconnectedness of our struggles, our common ground, and making space for the different roles and capacities with which we can afford to partake in a movement or a community. What we all need and deserve is time to get there, patience, guidance, and generosity from those who are already there, and above all, resources, resources, resources.

I started with a quote from Sara Ahmed and will end with a quote from Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leader of the Green Movement, in his statement published on Quds Day in 2009:

"_Our victory is not something in which anyone is left worse off. Even if some of us are slow to recognise the good news, we must all succeed together. " —_Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Statement No.13

پیروزی ما آن چیزی نیست که در آن کسی شکست بخورد. همه باید با هم کامیاب شویم، اگرچه برخی مژده این کامیابی را دیرتر درک کنند. — میرحسین موسوی