Reminiscing on Iran

   The mountains stretched to the sky while the hot sun beamed on me. I felt as if I was being cooked but I wasn’t surprised after all this was summer time in Shiraz. When I was in high school I visited my relatives and I was at that age where I was able to understand more now than when I was a child. One moment that was embedded in my head for the rest of my life was a theater class that my cousin was part of. This class was taught by Cyrus Shamlu the son of famous Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlu. I was excited to see Iranian theater and to watch and learn from their styles of acting and dancing. I would later find out behind the scenes how ugly and political this all was.

      When I walked into the theater I saw both young boys and girls some young adults. Just by looking into their eyes you can sense their enthusiasm and passion for theater. They also had a lot of questions for me being that I am from America. The hospitality and respect of the people was great. As I sat on the bench to watch the people practice on their dancing and acting I realized how important this was. Beyond theater I saw two sides of the opposite sex in one room performing and having fun. In Iran this is quiet difficult to do. Even in schools boys and girls are kept separate so to have them in one room was shocking to me. In America we take these minimal things for granted the basic human rights in which we have over looked at times. I told my cousin about this and my thoughts and it was then when he told me how much the government had given them a hard time to make this theater class. In Iran in order to have this type of class in which boys and girls are in one room the government has to give them permission and they rarely do. It took about a year to get an approval and this obviously was with certain stipulations.

     To make sure rules were being followed the government would send one of their officials or journalists who are pro government to check out the theater and facilitate. It’s always simple to know who is pro-government or not. Once, this man came in and he slowly crept up and was watching everything that was happening from the benches where I was sitting. You could tell he was a conservative pro Islamic Republic figure with his hair combed to the side, clean shaven with a mustache, a bit of goatee, and a thick unibrow. He had a very serious look on his face as if he was trying to look for something wrong to report back to his people. When the class finished the man began to speak with the head of the class. He asked questions about if the boys and girls were touching one another during exercises. He was interested in knowing what they do during their meetings. It was as if he were a policeman interrogating an alleged suspect. 

    It pained me to see how people who want to do something positive for the youth have a government hovering over them who are more concerned about why two opposite genders are in the same room. Instead of promoting the idea of two different genders learning from one another they encourage separatism. Iran to me is the best kept secret in the world. There are so many bright thinkers, artists, and writers but unfortunately they are trapped by the evil powers of tyranny. Its frustrating when higher powers tell you what you can write about or what you can sing about or how you can dance. This is a country being dictated on how to think, how to feel, and what to believe in. Instead of promoting freedom they act like police officers directing traffic. They tell the people when they can go when they should stop.    

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