Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Iran is amazingly and gloriously complex. I was part of the complexity. An American. A Jew. A Midwesterner, even. Married to an Iranian who was a Dutch citizen. If I was possible, anything was possible. When I lived there, I could reconcile the closed and oppressive regime that imposed itself upon a society that included the outspoken and friendly strangers, friends, and family that I encountered daily. I could easily traverse a world that included observant Muslims who served their less observant guests good alcohol, nostalgic shopkeepers who hung paintings of Iran’s supreme leaders on the wall while keeping photos of the former shah hidden under the counter, and non-believers with childhood friends who fought with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. It’s easy to forget how diverse and surprising Iran can be from outside the country. “Even when you are not in the country for just five years there are things you do not understand anymore,” says former Reformist parliamentarian Fatimeh Haghighatjoo.
Repository Citation
Egherman, Tori. "How Iranians Turned Me into an Activist." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 10, no. 3, 2010, pp. 1–9. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol10/iss3/25