{"id":10638,"date":"2022-10-15T18:50:13","date_gmt":"2022-10-15T16:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=10638"},"modified":"2022-12-25T11:38:29","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T09:38:29","slug":"defiance-an-essay-from-sara-mokhavat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/defiance-an-essay-from-sara-mokhavat\/","title":{"rendered":"Defiance\u2014an essay from Sara Mokhavat"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Simin Keramati, “Me, Myself and a Memory,” acrylic and spangles on canvas, 32″x45″, 2014, acrylic and spangles on canvas, 32″x45″ (courtesy Simin Kermati<\/a>\/Advocartsy).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

When an oppressive, insulting cleric makes life unbearable at a university campus in Tehran, students rebel. Pandemonium ensues.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sara Mokhavat<\/h4>\n

Translated from the Persian by Salar Aboh<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Religious Studies was one of those dreary courses that everyone at the university was forced to take. And not just for one term, but three. The so-called professors were always third-rate clerics who hated us and whom we hated with a special venom in return. And none among them was worse than Vaseghi, a turban from Mashhad whose favorite grade to dole out was Fail<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was on another wasted hour of an October day in 2005 when Vaseghi offered us a smirk and, apropos of nothing, suddenly blurted, \u201cAll the women at this Art school are whores.\u201d Then he pointed to the two girls sitting in the front row and added, \u201cThese two, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few students laughed nervously. The two girls were thrown so off guard that all they could do was smile uneasily. Our class had a pair of twins, brothers. They stood up and protested. The class blew up. In no time the twins were thrown out of the university and so began the student strike.<\/p>\n

\n

\nStudents sat in a straight line in the college yard chanting, \u201cProtest!\u201d Someone banged on a metal pot to give our chant some rhythm. Word had come down not to return to our classes until someone from admin came to talk to us.<\/p>\n

I had a problem. I loved my Directing and History of Cinema class, so I went anyway. The class was nearly empty; there was only one other guy in there, plus a girl who had her face glued to her desk sleeping. Outside, the protest continued and it was loud. Very loud. The professor said he couldn\u2019t teach like this. He was right, of course. We left to join the protest.<\/p>\n

It took no time before our daily protest became routine.<\/p>\n

At first no one cared about a bunch of students at the Art University protesting. It wasn\u2019t as if we were University of Tehran students, always serious and always angry. When those guys protested, it made headlines right away, whereas a bunch of artsy kids with their bright shawls and smiling faces no one took seriously. We didn\u2019t know politics and didn\u2019t care about it. What we knew was color, and musical notation, and drama, and aesthetics. We could keep a beat and sit there for hours on end shouting \u201cprotest\u201d as if we were in a carnival.<\/p>\n

Our college and the College of Industry and Polytechnic shared a wall. But familiarity between us began and ended right there. Polytechnic was massive. It had gates on Hafez Avenue on one side and Valiasr on the other \u2014 a sprawling fusion of new, multi-story structures that truly dwarfed our humble little two-story building. Top students from across the country competed to be in that imposing place, whereas all we had were stifling little workshops for photography and pottery and sculpture, plus a few barren trees, and a modest cafeteria that often smelled less like a place to get food and more like a public bathroom.<\/p>\n

It was love that kept us here. Love for the forlorn basketball court we\u2019d sometimes play ball in before the dreaded herasat<\/em> security detail came to shoo us away for no reason. Love for a place we did not want changed at all, worshipping every single piece of brick that kept it together so that we could go on imagining all the legends who had studied here before us.<\/p>\n

After a few days, the students from the Music Conservatory in Karaj came down to join us. Now we had their more complicated percussions to go with ours. This made the passersby on the street begin to take notice. In the mornings people would stop on their way to work holding their donuts and coffee, especially those on their way to the nearby metro station. They\u2019d watch us for a while from the sidewalk, smile and wave and move on. Their numbers began to increase by the end of the first week, so did the amount of time they\u2019d linger there. We were putting on a show and their sleepy mornings suddenly had a bit of color because of us.<\/p>\n

Herasat security decided to throw a huge piece of black cloth over the metal bars of the school entrance so that our audience would go away. Wrong move. We attacked that thing with a vengeance and shredded it into a thousand pieces while the people on the street clapped and whistled and encouraged us not to give in.<\/p>\n

The week passed that way. The college president still wouldn\u2019t come down to see what this was all about. And yet each day Vaseghi, the instigator of it all \u2014 the man who at one time or another had insulted every single female student who attended this university \u2014 would materialize with that same hateful smirk on his face, throw a triumphant fist at us as if to give us the finger before disappearing inside the building.<\/p>\n

On the tenth day something happened. Something big. The students at Polytechnic finally decided to pay us some attention. In the beginning we were the butt of the usual jokes to them. They said things like, \u201cThese watercolor girls and boys mistake dancing for revolution.\u201d But then on day ten, a huge banner was thrown from their side of the wall to ours declaring solidarity. The fight was on; we were no longer alone.<\/p>\n

I was only 19 then. The world was nothing but light and possibility for me. And why shouldn\u2019t it be? The very first year that I\u2019d taken the national exams I\u2019d been accepted into my first choice as a film major. I was free of my family at last and could pack up and come to Tehran. To live and study in the capital and, now, to be able to be a part of a campaign for justice \u2014 if this wasn\u2019t independence I don\u2019t know what was.<\/p>\n

Next came support from the University of Tehran. Their student leaders sent us a letter and decided to shut down classes for a day and have everyone come join us. They wrote about our cause in their papers and officially asked the Art University students not to give in until they could come to our aid. Our protest had suddenly taken on scary dimensions. This wasn\u2019t just a group of easily ignored art students anymore. The presidents of University of Tehran and Polytechnic sent a direct complaint to the Ministry of Education and the minister called our college president to his office and gave him an ultimatum to make this protest disappear or else.<\/p>\n

The man still refused to see us, and instead began sending spies among the protesting students and had herasat harassing us the whole time we were there. We were afraid. Afraid of many things, but mostly afraid of being kicked out. So many of us had dreamed for years of strolling casually on the grounds of this very campus. We had absolutely nothing else, especially those of us like me from the provinces. Everything we\u2019d dreamed of passed through these gates; we knew there was no choice but to retreat and so we did.<\/p>\n

The college summoned the student leaders and promptly confiscated their student cards. Everybody else was given a stern warning \u2014 show up to your classes or you\u2019ll be kicked out of school. We did as we were told. Though there were still some twenty students who wouldn\u2019t give up. Mehrnoosh and Elham were two of those people. They were my dorm mates and friends. When they realized that if they left the campus they\u2019d never be allowed back in, they decided to stay in and even sleep in the college courtyard if they had to. I on the other hand went back to classes. I especially missed acting class. I wanted to drink in cinema, all of it. It was my life\u2019s priority; everything else came a distant second.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\nFrom the women\u2019s dorm to the campus was a ten minute walk. We ended up taking sheets and blankets for our classmates who had decided to continue the protest. It was well past midnight now. I lay on my bed, alone, reading up on the Stanislavsky method of acting. I\u2019d gotten a call earlier from none other than one of Iran\u2019s most successful directors, Ebrahim Hatamikia. He wanted me to come in the next day and test for a new TV series he was going to direct. To say I was excited is a huge understatement. All afternoon I\u2019d hardly been able to breathe. Acting for the famed director meant covering ten thousand kilometers of a career in one day. I\u2019d be set. My dreams were literally around the corner.<\/p>\n

Our suite had a shared phone. Those were the early days of cellphones in Iran and none of us had one yet. At some point the phone began ringing and it would not stop. Someone somewhere finally shouted that I should pick up the damn phone. Reluctantly I jumped off the bunk bed and picked up.<\/p>\n

I heard Elham\u2019s voice whispering, \u201cWe\u2019re told there\u2019s someone in our room. Go see who it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRasouli is on guard duty tonight. The woman never gives extra keys out. You guys come find out what\u2019s going on yourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t. They\u2019ve locked the campus gates. There\u2019s no way to get out. Something is going on tonight, Sara. I\u2019m sure of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her words so terrified me that I hung up the phone.<\/p>\n

Our rooms were on the ground floor. Elham and Mehrnoosh were in suite 3, diagonally across from us. There were two other rooms besides theirs in that unit. The lights of both those rooms were on. I put an ear to Elham\u2019s and Mehrnoosh\u2019s door. No sound. I knocked and tried the handle. Right away a girl in one of the adjoining rooms opened her door, pointed, and made enough awkward gestures with her face to make me understand something was going on. I figured she must have been the one to call Elham. The girl was one of those who always know what\u2019s happening but never get directly involved.<\/p>\n

The guard room was next to the dorm\u2019s entrance. Whoever was on duty stayed here and their main job was to know when students entered and left the building. Past nine pm, no one was allowed in. If a student was late, their parents were called right away. The assumption was that if you were late, you were up to no good.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Rasouli, who was on duty that night, was a big woman, tall and broad shouldered. Yet despite her bulk and expressionless face she was actually more lenient than the other guards. She would always let us inside even if we were a little late, though first we had to hear one of her speeches about how grateful we should be to be here and how we shouldn\u2019t abuse the trust of our parents who had allowed us to come study in Tehran.<\/p>\n

The curtain to the guard room was drawn. I knocked tentatively. Rasouli had always been kind to me. Whenever I was late for dinner, she\u2019d make sure to set aside a piece of bread at least. She drew the curtain open and on seeing me unlocked the window.<\/p>\n

\u201cElham and Mehrnoosh are worried. Their neighbors heard sounds coming from their room. They think it\u2019s a thief.\u201d<\/p>\n

She frowned. \u201cYou go back to your room. I\u2019ll check myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather go with you. Or just give me the spare key so I can go look.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rasouli went pale. \u201cI can\u2019t go into anyone\u2019s room without permission. And you won\u2019t either. If something gets lost in there tomorrow, they\u2019ll be blaming me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll blame you tomorrow if that thief gets away with their stuff tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was getting angry now and began raising her voice.<\/p>\n

Sakinah, a student rep whose suite was on the second floor, must have heard us. She came downstairs. When I told her what was going on she began arguing with Rasouli, who was getting paler and angrier by the second.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll break the door down if you don\u2019t open it,\u201d Sakinah told her.<\/p>\n

Rasouli banged the porthole shut and locked it. \u201cI\u2019ll call the men from herasat to come deal with you guys if you don\u2019t go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

By now everyone was awake and they were trickling down from the various floors to see what was happening.<\/p>\n

It was only the second month of the academic year and the freshmen had only moved in a few weeks earlier. Rumor quickly spread throughout the floors that a man was inside the building, but he\u2019d been seen and now was hiding in one of the rooms. This drove all the new girls to put their hijabs on. Their sleepy faces were terrified as they held onto each other and watched while us older students, hijab-less, half naked and incensed, tried to reason with Rasouli.<\/p>\n

Several people now stood behind the suspect room and started banging on it. Things were getting out of hand. Someone brought news that our male classmates had gotten wind of the situation and were heading this way from their own dorms. I was handed a piece of paper and told that the protest leaders wanted me to write a paragraph describing all that had taken place tonight and then have everyone in the dormitory sign it. I sat on my knees in the middle of the hallway trying to come up with the right words. Girls stood over me offering advice on what to write. My paragraph went from bad to worse. It was impossible to concentrate.<\/p>\n

There was still no sound from the room and no one could get it open. In the midst of all the uproar \u2014 me trying to write my witness account with half the girls giving me advice on how to write it and the other half hovering around the room and taking turns shouting and banging on the door \u2014 suddenly a loud scream from inside there stopped everybody in their tracks. There was dead quiet for a moment and then I jumped up shouting, \u201cWho\u2019s in there? Open up right this second.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDirty spy,\u201d someone pitched in, \u201cCome on out of there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The room had gone quiet again.<\/p>\n

One of the girls offered to go hang from the window of the floor above and try to see what was going on in there. There was a collective \u201cyes\u201d and several other girls went upstairs with the volunteer.<\/p>\n

Rasouli lost it. She was running around screaming at the top of her voice and threatening everyone with suspension. \u201cHerasat is on its way,\u201d she kept shouting. \u201cYou\u2019ll all be kicked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were two long lines by the phone kiosks at the end of hall. Rasouli had already cut off all the private phones inside the suites. Now the newly arrived first year students were taking turns calling their parents from the kiosks and begging them to come get them. The story of the imaginary rapist was making the rounds from one call to another.<\/p>\n

Upstairs they finally managed to see into the room. Someone ran downstairs to tell us there was definitely movement behind the drawn curtain. As soon as they put a flashlight to the window whoever was in there froze and after a while slipped under the bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s get a head count and see who isn\u2019t here,\u201d Sakinah suggested. \u201cIf there\u2019s a spy in this building, we\u2019ll know right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cForget that,\u201d I said. \u201cLet\u2019s ask the girls upstairs to break the window.\u201d<\/p>\n

This set Rasouli off again. \u201cYou! I\u2019m having you thrown out of this college first thing tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just then a shriek from inside the room stopped us cold again. \u201cStop it! You\u2019re killing her. That\u2019s right, we\u2019re in here. She has a heart problem for the love of God, she\u2019s not breathing. Ms. Rasouli, please help us.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was as if someone had clobbered me over the head. That was Najma\u2019s voice. My own roommate. My kind and caring roommate who slept on the bunk below me. The same Najma who over the past two years would make me soup whenever I was sick and took me on long walks when I was depressed. I could not process this. Najma, a spy? The Najma I knew was a straight A student who turned each Domestic Handicraft assignment that professors gave us into a total work of art. It could not be. And as for the other girl, the only one here with a heart problem was Maryam. That had to be her. A gentle girl who had a weight issue and could often be seen hanging out in Rasouli\u2019s office chatting with her. Trying to hide under the bed must have made her queasy and apparently, she had difficulty breathing. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Rasouli gave up. She pushed us aside, took out her enormous key chain and tried unlocking the door. To no avail. While she struggled with the door I noticed how her hands had been badly scratched up during the push and pull of the past few minutes. The key wouldn\u2019t turn and finally the entire door handle came out with the door still locked.<\/p>\n

We all felt ridiculous. From inside the room Najma was now imploring us to open the door before Maryam suffocated.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpen the window in there so she can get some fresh air,\u201d Sakinah commanded<\/p>\n

We heard Najma open the window and as soon as she did several girls took turns jumping inside the room.<\/p>\n

I looked around. Locked out on our end, the rest of us could only imagine how it must be inside there. Disheveled, stressed, angry and scared, we all looked like a truck had just barreled over us. And none looked worse off than poor Rasouli herself, who hung onto that broken door handle like some bewildered animal.<\/p>\n

I have no idea how and from where Sakinah came up with a hammer, but there she was pounding on the lock until it finally gave. The door opened and Najma and Maryam hobbled out of there like two criminals. The photography students had their cameras out snapping pictures left and right while a film student recorded the whole proceeding with a handycam. Rasouli tried shielding the two girls. Maryam, her face hung as if in a fog, looked like she might drop and pass out any second. Most of her weight was leaning on poor Rasouli, who kept telling us to call an ambulance.<\/p>\n

No one called an ambulance. Najma, my roommate\/traitor, had her face in her hands bawling. The bitter taste of her betrayal coursed through my veins and I wanted to puke. I felt feverish and on seeing her my entire body had begun to shake. As she brushed passed me she moaned, \u201cSara, this was all your fault. All of it!\u201d<\/p>\n

That did it. Now everybody attacked them. Rasouli, Maryam and Najma were knocked to the floor. To protect the three women from being thrashed I had no choice but to fall on top of them.<\/p>\n

It was complete mayhem. The girls wanted to beat the shit out of the two traitors while Sakinah was desperately trying to pull me off that floor. Now someone began screeching wildly at the top of their voice so that eventually the scratching and hair pulling and eye gouging stopped. I could barely breathe. The hallway was spinning around me. How had it come to this? All we\u2019d wanted was to teach a lesson to a nauseating mullah who\u2019d been insulting us every single day for as long as we remembered. All we\u2019d wanted was a modicum of justice from the administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To think that until a few hours ago I\u2019d been daydreaming about my screen test in the morning and imagining a whole new life ahead of me. Later \u2013 and not much later \u2013 I\u2019d learn that life in this country was always going to be a version of getting to the threshold of something good, something worthwhile that you would give everything for, and then losing it all.<\/p>\n

At last we managed to pull Maryam, Najma and Rasouli off the floor and somehow get them inside Rasouli\u2019s office. The whole time the rest of the girls were screaming, \u201cSpies, dirty spies!\u201d<\/p>\n

During the melee a couple of the girls had broken into Rasouli\u2019s room and reconnected all the phone lines to the suites. Now the entire building\u2019s phone system was ringing off the hook. One of the calls came from the leaders of the protest. They were insisting that I get on with writing a report of what had happened and have everyone sign it. My hand could barely hold the pen and tears were making the ink run off the paper. Somehow, I managed to write something half legible and everyone took turns putting their name and signature on the document. Even as I was writing the thing, try as I might I could not fathom how my roommate, and dear friend, could have been a spy for the last two years that we\u2019d known each other and I hadn\u2019t had the slightest idea.<\/p>\n

The news was getting worse. Herasat had apparently asked for backup and with clubs and sticks they were busy beating up the students who had meant to join us from the men\u2019s dorm. This meant no help was coming our way. And soon herasat was outside our building too and chomping at the bit to get inside. They gave Rasouli ten minutes to make sure the girls were properly dressed.<\/p>\n

We wouldn\u2019t budge. Some of the girls even took off the clothes they had on and stood there naked. \u201cMen are not allowed to enter our building,\u201d they kept shouting.<\/p>\n

It was a futile stand, however. Once the ten minutes were up, herasat broke inside. They were not kidding around. Girls began running every which way. A bottleneck formed on the stairway and everybody was trying desperately to put on clothes and some kind of hijab. Me? My legs would not move. I was numb and just sat in that hallway wondering whom, if anyone, I should call. It was 3:30 in the morning. My appointment with the famous director\u2019s assistant was at 10. Who was I kidding? Where was I going to go and what was I going to do looking the way I did at this point? In acting class they\u2019d emphasized how important it was to rest the day before a screen test. We were supposed to relax, lie down, meditate, drink soothing teas and turn in early for the night. Good luck with any of that now.<\/p>\n

A dozen huge and fearsome looking men stood facing us. Not one of us who was there was unfamiliar with this scene. A few years back we\u2019d seen images of the same sort of men who had attacked the dorms of the University of Tehran, throwing students off rooftops and out the windows of the buildings while murmuring their favorite prayers.<\/p>\n

I looked across the hall and saw a bunch of freshmen cowering in a corner weeping. A hand shoved a black cloak at me. The overhead lamp was hitting me right in the eyes so that I couldn\u2019t see who it was. I grabbed the piece of cloth, threw it over myself and stood up at attention.<\/p>\n

The chief of herasat stood before us, incensed, wearing his perennial shaded glasses and reading off a list of names of students who were going to be called to report themselves to the Disciplinary Committee. Amazingly, my name was not on that list. I looked over at Rasouli who bit her lips and cursed something under her breath before turning away from me. I didn\u2019t understand why she hadn\u2019t given them my name or why she wasn\u2019t pointing at me right this second.<\/p>\n

The herasat chief spoke as if the two traitors, Najma and Maryam (that no doubt he himself had planted among us) were just regular thieves and he was going to deal with them accordingly. Then he warned us to return to our rooms and stop the clowning around. He also wanted to confiscate all the cameras, but the girls made a tight circle around our photographers and vowed to fight this one out. The herasat chief grinned and told his men to forget the cameras for now.<\/p>\n

I could hear the traitors sniveling inside Rasouli\u2019s room. Someone told me I had a call from Elham and Mehrnoosh. They were taking turns telling me how proud of me everyone was. Supposedly I\u2019d saved their lives, the movement, our dignity, whatever. \u201cPlease sleep in our room tonight,\u201d they said, \u201cso we\u2019ll be sure they won\u2019t plan something new for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The girl with the handycam passed me her gadget. \u201cHold onto this please. I\u2019m afraid they\u2019ll come and take it from me.\u201d One of the photographers tossed me her roll of film for the same reason. Suddenly I\u2019d become a star.<\/p>\n

I walked into Elham and Mehrnoosh\u2019s room and threw myself on Elham\u2019s bed. The handycam and the roll of film I hid under the pillow and then went on sobbing until daylight. At some point I forced myself up, gazed at the mirror, took in my puffed up ruined face, and then as if on auto-pilot I continued to blub all the way to the famed director\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

The assistant was shocked when he saw me in person. \u201cIn your photos you looked full of life. Innocent and carefree. You don\u2019t look like your pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n

All I could do was shrug. I came out of that office and picked up where I\u2019d left off with my useless crying. I cried while sitting in the History of Art class. I cried again that night in the dorm. And the next day and the day after that. Finally, an old friend showed up, packed my things while I looked on with dead eyes, and took me back to her own place.<\/p>\n

Sometime later, when the protests were already just another memory, we heard that herasat claimed Elham and Mehrnoosh had been reading Rushdie\u2019s Satanic Verses<\/em> to the other girls at the dorm. Here was a book that supposedly disrespected the Quran. It wasn\u2019t just a matter of suspension from school; you could go to prison for possessing the book. Our traitors swore that herasat had forced them to go into Elham and Mehrnoosh\u2019s room to search it. The girls\u2019 plan was to spend a few minutes inside there and then come out and report to herasat that they\u2019d found nothing. But how could we believe the two spies? What if the real plan all along was to plant a copy of the book in that room and then have herasat come in and \u201cfind\u201d it?<\/p>\n

I never went back to the dorm. Elham and Mehrnoosh were suspended. Several other girls were forced to give their word they wouldn\u2019t cause any more trouble, Rasouli was transferred to report for duty at another campus, and Vaseghi \u2014 the mullah who had started it all and who had made a name for himself by slandering every female at the college \u2014 was, unsurprisingly, given a promotion.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the president of the college was fired from his post for ineffectiveness, \u00a0no one ever spoke to the two collaborators again, and a new university president began his tenure so as to cultivate fresh collaborators to embed among the student population.<\/p>\n

For a while I was the heroine of the campus, especially among the first year students who looked up to me as the woman who supposedly broke up the feared herasat\u2019s evil plans for us \u2014 the same woman who was not selected to play in the famous director\u2019s TV series and whose ambitions therefore turned into nothing but pipe dreams for years afterwards.<\/p>\n

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When an oppressive, insulting cleric makes life unbearable at a university campus in Tehran, students rebel. 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