Revolution

There is a dark cloud in my house now.  As we awake to another day of silence. Everyone feels it.  The tension.  It isn’t an entirely new feeling for me.  I met my now husband in 1998, a tall, dark and handsome doctor who drove a flashy SUV, wore Bally loafers and had a sexy accent (I’m a sucker for an accent).  I remember going to a noisy dance club for our third date, I was 24, newly single, and in what seemed like a perpetual cycle of failed first dates. The fact that we made it to a third date at all was a big event for me. I remember asking him where he was from and him screaming something that sounded familiar: Iraq?  “NO! IRAN,”  he yelled, Whatever same difference I thought.  Then we hit the dance floor .  One thing I learned early about Persians, they LOVE to dance.

We were had moved in together by the time 9/11 happened.  Suddenly living with a Middle Eastern immigrant got a lot more political.  I was mad, all the time, about how he got lumped together with a country that he actually fought in a war against.  A war the US armed and funded Sadam Husein in, a war everyone conveniently forgets.  He can’t forget, he has the scars to remind him.  But he never complains and never got angry.  He was just grateful to be in America, still is.  I could write a book on the geo-politics of Iran now.  28 years with an Iranian will do that to a girl.  The importance of Mosaddegh, the Prime Minister of Iran that was overthrown by a coup d’stat led by Kermit Roosevelt Jr (yes that Roosevelt).  The way a secular revolution led to a theocracy.  Why Iranian’s hate Jimmy Carter (they have good reason).  Iran is a shining star of bungled foreign intervention and self-serving diplomacy….and proxy wars.

But this isn’s about esoteric foreign policy debates.  This is about family.  Coincidentally both our Middle school children are working on their Social Study Fair projects.  This years theme? Revolution.  They both chose different aspects of the Iranian Revolution as topics.  My daughter chose to focus on the impact the Revolution had on Women’s Rights (yes she’s my daughter and I couldn’t be prouder).  My son chose the Hostage Crisis.  An interesting choice , one of the more dramatic events for sure, at least from the American perspective. My son is named Cyrus , a name I chose myself, an homage to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king whose legacy of religious tolerance and just rule inspired Thomas Jefferson and our own Declaration of Independence. I have been through this before, many times.  The collective breath holding of expat Iranians dreaming of the return to normalcy for their beloved homeland.  1999, 2003, 2009-2010, 2011-2012, 2019, 2023 and now.  My children have not. My daughter came storming into the bathroom yelling about the propaganda on-line.  About how the websites she is reading for her project don’t match her father’s first hand accounts of what happened during the Revolution.  “Why are they lying?!” She yelled “Baba says it wasn’t even about Islam!”   It was one of those moments where you see the future adult peering through the eyes of your child.  One of those breakthroughs where you know you did something right.  She’s questioning things and learning to think independently. I didn’t  even say anything in reply.  Didn’t need to.

There are people, all across the world, in homes like mine.  Worried sick, trying desperately to contact their loved ones.  Praying that they are safe and not one of the thousands dead, whose bodies are being held ransom by a heartless regime.  Families that although they weren’t born here are incredibly patriotic and true believers in the American Dream. The mere fact that a country can completely cut its entire population off from communication with the outside world is terrifying.  The fact that so many that have the privilege of free expression are staying silent is disgusting.  Where is the humanity in silence?  Maybe you don’t see it, maybe in your mind the entire region is kind of this problematic blob of desert and unending conflicts that don’t really impact you because it’s football season and we can’t be the world’s police.  I get it, I do.  We have our own problems, plenty actually.  But now you do know someone, me, and my Husband, who believes in the America that stands up for freedom, and doesn’t sit by and watch innocent people get slaughtered in the streets.  We live in a crazy time.  It’s hard to see the good in anything these days.  Easy to become bitter and cynical about the State of our Union.  I see more pride in America in my husband’s eyes than my own lately.  Which is why it breaks my heart to see him eagerly awaiting American intervention.  Why it hurts me and my family to get calls from loved ones that fear the worst for those inside Iran.  The only communication now is via Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite communication system that is now a thin lifeline for Iran.  For the record I have a strong political viewpoint of my own.  But I also give credit where credit is due.  People are just people, none all good, or all bad.  As someone with Young Onset Parkinson’s disease I have learned that there is good and bad in everything, even an incurable, neurodegenerative brain disease.

We were watching a show about the American Revolution last night, about how we would not have succeeded in obtaining our own freedom if it wasn’t for the intervention of the French and Spanish.  I learned a lot.  It’s funny how history gets re-written, and certain things de-emphasised to fit a certain perspective.  We are a country born of Revolution, but we didn’t do it alone.  We had the support of our friends.   I hope that our country will remember that.    Freedom is important.