Azar Nafisi, author: Iranians are fighting for their freedom

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.

0:45It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:09Hello, I'm BBC journalist, Svetlana Reiter, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention. We have never seen a people so united. Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey. Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not. We're more popular than populism. For this interview, I met the Iranian-American writer Azhar Nafissi on Zoom, where she was speaking from her home in Washington, D.C.

1:56Born into a political family in Tehran in 1956, the story of her life has been greatly shaped by the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. At the time, Nefisi taught English literature at the University of Tehran. And although initially in favor of deposing the Shah, she came to regret the Ayatollah rise to power. And although initially in favor of deposing the Shah, she came to regret the Ayatollah's rise to power, unable to reconcile her own liberal politics with the new conservative theocratic government. She was expelled from the university for not wearing a hijab and eventually left for the U.S.

2:56less than two decades later. Nefisi is best known for her New York Times bestseller Reading Lalita in Tehran, in which she wrote about her experiences under the Islamic regime. The book focuses on a short period before she left Iran in 1997, when she would gather a group of young women at her house one morning every week to read and discuss forbidden walks of Western literature. And nearly 30 years on, amid ongoing protests by ordinary Iranians against the Islamic Republic, Nefisi has renewed hope for regime change so that she might one day be able to return home. I don't think whether they are on the right or the left, the Iranians, like the Americans, like the French, like the Russians, They want the same thing.

3:57They are not coming from another planet. And so you have to treat them the way you treat your own neighbors. That the fight in Iran for freedom should be supported, not because it is philanthropy, not because these poor people, look at them, look at what's happening, we better go and rescue them. I have seldom seen the kind of courage Iranian people have shown. Thousands of them poured into the streets saying freedom is neither western nor eastern. Freedom is universal.

4:45Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Azhar Nafisi in a conversation I recorded last month. People look at the Islamic Republic of Iran mainly from a political manner. I want them to look at the Islamic Republic through the eyes of its people. That real Iran, which has been pushed underground, which tyrants are trying to silence it. So the sins that come out of Iran, what is important is that they're not political, they're existential. As a woman, as a teacher, as a believer in human rights, as a writer, my right to be myself has been taken away from me by the Islamic Republic.

5:44the first thing that a totalitarian regime does is to lie, is to turn reality into a lie. So they turned Iran's history into a lie and they tried to remake the citizens the way they wanted it. And that is why you see people coming into the streets knowing they might be killed and yet say, okay, I'll be killed, but I will keep who I am. What the regime does to us is, even if they don't kill us, is a kind of murder when you make a woman to not be herself, to not speak the way she does, to not connect the way she does. So we're fighting for our existence. We're fighting for our survival. Do you have any friends, any relatives or natives who are still living in Islamic Republic of Iran?

6:54Yes. Yes, I do. Both family, relatives, my cousins, my uncle, and closest friends. We went through so much when I lived in the Islamic Republic. You know, the memory of all the nights we spent waiting for the missiles to hit us. So those friends are living in Iran. And the last time I talked with one of them was weeks ago. Since then, I have not been able to contact them. There's no response. What are they facing now? They had a feeling that I have. One is the feeling of outrage, the feeling of anger, and sometimes the feeling of despair, as if this nightmare will never go away. But at the same time that my friends had this feeling, they also had hope.

8:03And the hope is in the fact that now certain things with these latest protests have changed in Iran. First of all, it is not just women. It is not just young people. It is everybody. It's the retirees. It's the shopkeepers. And men and women are united. This movement, this uprising is not just political. Everybody participates in it. Now, they can kill the leaders of a political group or put them in jail, as they have been doing. But what can they do when those thousands turn into millions and come into the streets and sing and dance? That is what gives us hope. That just their thing, it is a nonviolent way of defeating the regime.

9:02Because what can they do? Can't they put everybody in jail? They cannot. Two things are amazing. One is this regime's greed for blood. This regime, you know, stopping at nothing. And that shows how weak it is that it has to constantly kill in order to stay in power. And the second thing is this amazing fight that is going on in Iran right now for their freedom, for their democracy. And that is why the slogan, woman, life, freedom, is very relevant to what is happening today. As I understood, you participated in the Islamic revolution, in the events of Islamic revolution. And as I understood from your book, reading Lalita in Tehran, you were in a way against of Mahmoud Reza Pahlavi regime.

10:13So don't you think that in a way, let's say, Western interference or United States interference in this situation can make it, let's say, in a way worse like it was with the Pakhlevi regime in your days? I don't think whether they are on the right or the left, the Iranians, like the Americans, like the French, like the Russians, they want the same thing. They are not coming from another planet. And so you have to treat them the way you treat your own neighbors. that the fight in Iran for freedom should be supported, not because it is philanthropy, not because these poor people, look at them, look at what's happening, we better go and rescue them.

11:14I have seldom seen the kind of courage Iranian people have shown. And right now, who is it in the world that is fighting for freedom? Iranian women at the beginning of the revolution, thousands of them poured into the streets saying freedom is neither Western nor Eastern. Freedom is universal. So to make this short, what Iranian people need from other countries, from the democracies, I'm not a political person and I don't have much faith in some politicians, but I think we should reach the heart of the people. And I think Iran does not want invasion. It does not want more violence. It wants more support.

12:12Some people are starving to death. The thing that I have in mind whenever I think of Iran's fight for liberation is South Africa and a leadership like Mandela. And when I talk of the world, I'm not just talking of the leaders of the world, but of the people. You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

13:05the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

13:52Nefisi spoke to me from her home in Washington, DC, and I was in BBC studio in Riga, Latvia. We are both authors exiled from our homelands. She left Tehran after Islamic revolution. I left Moscow after Russian invasion of Ukraine. When I first contacted her agent about our interview, she didn't hesitate. She seemed eager to share her story and her worries about the turmoil in her country with the world. When a couple of days later she appeared on my screen surrounded by books in her home library, I was nervous, but Nefisi was incredibly welcoming, well-mannered, and polite. Her erudition impressed me from the start.

14:46The first thing she told me was how she has loved Russian literature since childhood. She named Bulgakov, Mandelstam, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and many others. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Azhar Nefisi. Can you explain to me what do people of Iran want, like most of all? Is it economical problem, repressions? Are they tired of Ayatollah? The Iranian people, the reason I say this fight for them is existential is because totalitarianism gets its name from total, from absolute. That leaves no room for your movement, for your assertion that you're here and you're alive. So that is why they don't want just one thing.

15:46I mean, the economy is in a terrible shape. It is in shambles. Iran used to be one of the richest countries in the world. And now look at it. My friend was telling me that children are fainting in schools because they're starving. That is what this government has done to us. It has not fought just against us by putting us in jail or killing us, but by starving us. The Iranian people want to have the freedom to make economy and education and all these other things to make them right. But we are not just changing a regime. We need to change a mindset. it. Some Iranians were against the Shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and they wanted him gone.

16:45But what they didn't take into consideration is that you should get someone who is better than him, not such a corrupt and violent government that we, the Iranian people, brought into our own country. One friend used to say, I can't believe that we brought our enemies back into Iran, carrying them on our shoulders. So Iranians have learned that we don't want something violent. We don't want something like this regime. We want something opposite this regime. And for that, you have to change the mindsets, not just the regime. That's very, very clever and very wise what you told. Thank you. As I remember in your book, reading Lalita in Tehran, you also had some hopes and sympathies for Ayatollah regime, right?

17:55You had it in your mind, in your soul. I was against the Shah and I didn't know much about things, but I feel that I have to own the fact that I was wrong. I wanted human rights, but I didn't know how to gain it. Of course, we didn't use violence. I was in the student movement. I never used violence, but I would protest without really knowing much about the history of Iran or what is happening. But I was always against the Ayatollahs. The first time Ayatollah Khomeini gave his fatwa about women wearing the veil, I decided that this regime is not going to be good for me. and I was right. We're seeing a lot of people on Instagram with your book in their hands.

19:00So it's some sort of, sorry for comparison, but some sort of a Bible for the, I don't know, for the girls, for the women who want to understand Iran and, you know, women in Iran. So my question is, Why you decided to write this book in the first place? How you find a bravery in yourself to teach Russian, British, all the prohibited and forbidden literature in Tehran? You won't believe it, but the way I feel, there is a moment there where you look into the mirror and you see a stranger. And I felt when I was living in Iran, and I still feel it, that if I am a stranger to myself, I might as well be dead.

20:00Because you want to be alive in order to be allowed to be alive. And the second thing is that I have discovered literature and art are great uniters. They do two things that makes them important in our lives. You know, some people think it is ridiculous. You live in a country that is killing people by thousands and all you have to show is a book. And I like to ask these people that say that and they think that it's reading books becomes an escape from reality. I want to say that reading books, in fact, takes you to another world. And when you leave that world of fiction, you see the world through new eyes.

21:06Tolstoy used to say through rainwashed eyes, I think. I don't remember the exact quote from him. So if literature is just a pastime, if literature is not important, why is it that some of the most powerful tyrants in the world constantly harass, censor, torture, and kill writers, poets, filmmakers, artists. Why is it that Ayatollah Khomeini gives the death sentence to a man whose only weapon is his pen? So there is something very strong about fiction, about literature, about poetry, that makes these tyrants scared. And what they are most scared of is truth. Because reading and writing exposes the truth.

22:17And tyrants hate the truth. They are the first enemy of truth. That is true not just of Iran, but of everywhere. when the Islamic Revolution came into power one of the first things it did was to bring down the statues of the Shah and his family and change the name of the streets which belonged to the members of the royal family and they brought all those statues down but then they decided to do the same thing to our great classical poets. They wanted to bring down the statue of Iran's epic poet Ferdowsi and change the name of the street of Omar Khayyam, who was the agnostic poem that the clerics hate.

23:17And there, the people stood up. They would not allow that to happen. And the government had to retreat. And he even praised Ferdowsi, although they hated him. And Ferdowsi, my father used to tell me, this country we live in is very ancient. And it has been invaded many times. But what makes us call ourselves Iranians, what gives continuity to us is our poetry. and it goes back at least to Ferdowsi, our epic poet, and a thousand years ago. So Iranian people have poetry in their blood. First of all, it connects us to the rest of the world. In Iran, we were not allowed to be connected to Western democracies and literature took them to those forbidden spaces.

24:21Second of all, I felt so good that the regime could bring down the statue of a king, but they could not bring down the statue of a poet. That shows the poet's strength. Thank you for listening to The Interview. For more compelling conversations, search for The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You'll find episodes from Syria's only female cabinet minister Hind Kabawat, free speech campaigner Maria Ressa, Indian author Twinkle Kanna, and many others. Until the next time, bye for now.

25:17I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

26:01I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.