AT THE BEGINNING of the summer of 2013, I met a woman who told me about her early years in Iran – a story that eventually became this book. She wanted to share her experience, but she needed to keep her identity secret to protect the members of her family who are still in Iran. Some of the details have been changed, but this story is essentially hers.
Iran is a great nation of poets and scientists, of filmmakers and craftspeople, of athletes and academics. It is a land of many cultures and points of view, full of people who are reaching out to engage the rest of the world. It is also a nation of deeply held traditional and religious beliefs, full of people whose vision does not embrace coexistence and progress. And, like every nation, its history is full of the push-pull between these two ways of thinking.
Iran has been inhabited for over 10,000 years. Since 1501, the beginning of the Safavid Dynasty, until the revolution in 1979, Iran was ruled by a Shah or king. The early twentieth century saw a demand from the people to have more say in the running of their country. A parliament was created in 1906, but its powers were limited.
In 1908 the British petroleum companies discovered oil in Iran. During World War I, Iran was occupied by the British, the Ottomans, and the Russians, who all wanted to secure their grasp on the oil supply lines.
A military coup in 1921 put Reza Khan Pahlavi in power as the new Shah. He pushed for modernization – roads, telephones, radio, cinema, schools – but did so at the expense of human rights and their religious traditions. He also became friendly with the Nazi regime. In 1941, Soviet and British forces, who were back in Iran protecting the oil supply, ousted the Shah. In his place, they enthroned his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who remained Shah for almost thirty-eight years.
The new Shah was very young when he took power. The parliament used the opportunity to gain strength and hold popular elections. In 1951, the prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, moved to nationalize the Iranian oil industry, taking it out of foreign hands to keep the profits in Iran. He was kicked out of power later that year in a coup orchestrated by the American CIA and the British MI6.
From then on, the Shah held onto power with the military support of the United States. The Shah’s secret police – known as SAVAK – arrested, tortured, and executed political opponents. In 1964, the country’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was sent into exile.
Opposition to the Shah, and to his backers in the West, grew until in the 1979 Revolution, when the Shah was forced to leave the country. Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile and became the Supreme Leader of Iran.
Not long after the revolution, Iraq, backed with weapons supplied by the United States, attacked Iran. The war between the countries lasted ten years. Iraq used chemical weapons, and it is estimated that 100,000 Iranians died in the attacks. The Ayatollah Khomeini declared chemical weapons to be against God, and the country never used them against Iraq. Instead, Iran sent waves of soldiers across the front lines, many of them children. In 1988, by the end of the war, up to one million Iranians had died.
In the months after the war, the Iranian government stepped up its battle against those Iranians it considered to be enemies of the state. Thousands were executed.
According to the Iranian gay human rights group Homan, over 4,000 lesbian and gay Iranians have been executed since 1979.
Iran is not the only nation that still imposes a death sentence on lesbians and gays. Others, as of the end of 2013, are Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, the Republic of Sudan, Yemen, and parts of Nigeria and Somalia. In more than seventy countries spread over Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean, being gay or lesbian is a criminal act. Some countries impose fines. Others sentence lesbians and gays to hard labor or time in prison. In Barbados and Sierra Leone, gays and lesbians can be sentenced to life in prison. In Dominica, they are forced into psychiatric ‘treatment,’ and in Malaysia, they can be whipped.
For more information about gay rights in Iran and around the world, check out:
Amnesty International at: www.amnesty.org
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Organization at: www.iglhrc.org
The Gay and Lesbian Arab Society at: www.glas.org
The Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees at: www.english.irqr.net
The Iranian gay human rights group Homan at: www.homan.se/English.htm
As a proud, gay woman, I am honored to have been entrusted with the story of Farrin and Sadira, and I hope that the real-life Farrin will be able to spend the rest of her life with whatever peace and happiness she is able to find.
DEBORAH ELLIS