First I would like to quote Nelson Mandela: “I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.” [1]

And now another quotation, this time from Nietzche. “Today, to be sure, he who has been harmed always wants his revenge, quite apart from the question of how this harm might be undone again, and he turns to the courts for its sake; for the present this maintains our abominable penal codes with their shopkeeper’s scales and the desire to balance guilt and punishment. But shouldn’t we be able to get beyond this? How relieved the general feeling of life would be if, together with the belief in guilt, we could also get rid of the ancient instinct of revenge, and if we even considered it a fine cleverness in a happy person to pronounce a blessing over his enemies, with Christianity, and if we benefited those who had offended us. Let us remove the concept of sin from the world – and let us soon send the concept of punishment after it. May these banished monsters live somewhere else henceforth, not among men, if they insist on living at all and do not perish of their own disgust.” [2]

Isn’t it this very despicable smell of revenge ruling and endangering our world now? “Shouldn’t we be able to get beyond this?”

These days whenever I think of ‘revolution’ my whole body starts to tremble? Now I understand ‘Reformism’ with my flesh and blood. I have no idea what it exactly means in academic circles and how political specialists define and explain it. What I understand of this word is peaceful shift of power. I am sick of watching massacres, executions, revengeful behaviors and… I am sure many people of the world agree with me and share the same feeling. And in this country it should be more or less a general feeling. And that is one of the reasons that despite all the comic and tragic events going on the scene of our Politics, we still? appear silent, passive, inactive, observant and. That is one of the changes that Iranians have gone through in these past two decades. They can understand politics on a greater scale. But haven’t we always been as such throughout our history and that is one of the main reasons for our survival as an ancient nation? Do you know any other country witnessing as many changes of the ruling powers in their history as this nation witnessed?

But let us leave racial epistemology and ontology alone and try to understand the differences in the mood and disposition of people of today and two decades ago (which to me more or less includes the majority of nations of the world). And for that I would like to take you to a trip of ‘political’ observations of a woman born in an ancient country under the rule of a so-called dictatorial kingdom who came to power as the result of a coup d’etat (of an English-American type) before she was born. So she was brought up in a politically oppressed air completely devoid of the so-called Freedom of Speech, not having access to any other political literature than that which the Shah’s regime approved as harmless. Seldom people talked politics and the reason seemed to be their dread of Shah’s Secret Service. She heard all sorts of things about political persecutions, tortures and… At that time say about 70-80% of adults were illiterate and the majority of villages were devoid of the blessing of electricity and…

Then she saw Hyde Park Corner on Sundays as the symbol of political freedom. But she noticed other things too, there was actually no opposition party, perhaps I should say in the old sense of the word, and communist newspapers could not easily be found in the newspaper stands which hinted how ‘insignificant’ their number or power should have been. (Let us not forget that it was a time when Communism still seemed to be the answer or practical road to Utopia) and she seldom heard people talking politics; in her boarding school the only reason English girls glanced through newspapers was to read about Football and their beloved football players. And although everybody seemed literate, but a few seemed to know anything about the world, not as much as an average Iranian who had finished high school. It was really getting tiring to explain to people who asked about her nationality that Iran was not Iraq although once they were parts of the same land called Persia. The experience didn’t really help her to differentiate between a ‘democratic’ kingdom and a ‘despotic’ one with the exception of Hyde Park Corner on Sundays.

Then came the experience of France, the Cradle of Freedom and Equality. The air was different. She rejoiced to see so many popular opposition papers on every corner and took a great delight in seeing people discussing politics in public most of the time and...

And then Germany, Marx’s homeland and the German type of ‘apoliticality,’ ‘apathy.’ (Aren’t we now like them in those days? Now I understand and feel Germans of those days much better. The air was filled with a feeling of despair and frustration resulting from what they went through before and after the World War II. Before the War, there was Hitler dreaming of establishing an Aryan Kingdom and making Germans the most powerful nation of the whole world and after the War, they were a conquered nation with an occupied country. Similarly, under Shah’s regime, they wanted to open the Gate to Great Civilization for us, with the tragic result that not only we did not understood much of that Great Civilization, but have been experiencing just the opposite after their downfall twenty three years ago: desperate attempts were made to take us back to 1400 years ago but of course under the cover of Islamic brotherhood and equality and justice. Such a Justice! They don’t even spare their peers: “Revolution eats her own children!”)

Then came the experience of America, with her totally apolitical people. Perhaps there is no country in the world (not even England) where one can see so much un-freedom within freedom. (That is a good one isn’t it, so much un-freedom within freedom!)

Back to the same dictatorial kingdom, political turmoil against Shah’s regime started. Down with Political Oppression, Freedom of Everything, including Speech. It is now hundred years that we are screaming the same thing yet in vain. More than a century. (How long did France take to make that French Revolution of Freedom that unfortunately led to Un-freedom of today, both in East and West, but of course in different ways?) Marx said that history happens twice, first in the form of tragedy and then comedy. In the Age of Technology and Speed, they are happening simultaneously in this country! Hoveida, Shah’s eternal Prime Minister is imprisoned and then executed by the Revolutionaries. Abass Abdi, one of the main activists in occupation of American Embassy and one of the theoreticians of Reformation Movement is now in prison apparently accused of this or that kind of conspiracy against the government. But wait a minute. Why can’t this be called democracy? Democracy can even try the President of the country and I don’t know why whenever such spectacles (trials) happen, there is the question of some sort of conspiracy. Let us take the case of President Nixon and President Clinton as an example. Did they really do anything exceptional? There was really nothing surprising about their deeds. In fact they did the most common thing. One man had done everything (even misusing his position) to keep his power, which is very natural and masculine and human. And the other had slept with an attractive woman, again very natural and masculine and human! Or do we want to continue claim hypocritically that morality rules the world?)

“Shouldn’t we be able to get beyond all this?” Should “this song of grief continue to eternity?” [3] Are we going to witness another series of executions, killings, massacres and…? Is America going to attack Iraq? Is there going to be another Afghanistan, people getting killed in a wedding?

1. Long Walk to Freedom, the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Little Brown and Company, Boston…, 1994, page 544

2. The Dawn, Portable Nietzche, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Penguin Books, 1982, p.87.

3. A verse by the poet Sohrab Sepehri.