Latest / Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger / Thinking about Iran

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Thinking about Iran · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Q&A.
0:03
Our guest is someone we have had on this program often,
0:06
Marina Nemat,
0:08
the dissident from Iran.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Nemat, N-E-M-A-T.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: She was arrested at 16.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: For more than two years,
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SPEAKER_00: she was in Evin Prison,
0:19
SPEAKER_00: one of the worst,
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SPEAKER_00: most horrific places on Earth.
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SPEAKER_00: Marina has referred to it as the high school from hell.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Since 1991,
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SPEAKER_00: she has lived in Canada and is the author of two books,
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SPEAKER_00: Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran,
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SPEAKER_00: A Life Reclaimed.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: This summer, a new book of hers will be coming out.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: It is a historical novel about one of her grandmothers or based on that
0:46
SPEAKER_00: grandmother's life and experience.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: It's available for pre-order now.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: It's Mistress of the Persian Boarding House.
0:55
In recent weeks,
0:56
Iran has been in a revolutionary or counter-revolutionary
0:59
state.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: People are in the streets demanding change.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: The dictatorship has sent thousands of them to the morgue
1:08
SPEAKER_00: I, of course, wanted to talk with Marina Neymat.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: And here she is in her beautiful Canadian setting.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't be more different from Tehran.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: It's just right out of a movie or Canadian setting, Marina.
1:20
And I'm glad you're there,
1:23
but I bet that your thoughts and your heart are elsewhere.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: They definitely are.
1:30
It's been really difficult the past few weeks because in many,
1:34
many ways it is deja vu.
1:37
For me,
1:39
the revolution succeeded,
1:41
the Islamic revolution succeeded 47 years ago when I was 13.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: So I'm 60 right now.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be turning 61 in April.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: And when the revolution happened, I lived in downtown Tehran.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: I lived on Shah Avenue.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: We lived in an apartment on top of shops, the heart of downtown.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: And I watched the Islamic revolution unfold.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: There were hundreds of thousands of people on the street yelling slogans,
2:12
SPEAKER_01: wishing death upon the Shah.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: upon the United States and supporting the Ayatollah.
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SPEAKER_01: And as a 13 year old, I was naive.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: I was as naive as they come.
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SPEAKER_01: But I was also very well read.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: So very curious.
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SPEAKER_01: And my mother always said, you talk too much.
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SPEAKER_01: You ask too many questions.
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SPEAKER_01: And I had questions for the people on the street.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: And many of them were my neighbors.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: They were my friends.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: My parents didn't take part.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: I didn't because we were Christian.
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SPEAKER_01: And when they said an Islamic republic,
2:44
we were kind of not quite sure how a Christian would fit in an
2:49
Islamic republic.
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SPEAKER_01: It was just suspicious.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: And I was curious.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these were my classmates, my friends, my neighbors.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: So I would ask them, I would say, hey, guys, what's an Islamic republic?
3:02
SPEAKER_01: And they said,
3:03
SPEAKER_01: well,
3:04
SPEAKER_01: whatever it is,
3:05
SPEAKER_01: we are not quite sure,
3:06
SPEAKER_01: but the Ayatollah has promised that life will be better,
3:10
SPEAKER_01: that Iran would become a democracy,
3:13
that we will all be equal and the oil money that has been going
3:17
into the deep
3:18
SPEAKER_01: pockets of the Shah and the United States is
3:20
SPEAKER_01: is going to go into the pockets of Iranian people.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: You're going to be delivered a check every month from oil money.
3:28
And we are going to have freedom of speech and all the things
3:31
that have been
3:32
SPEAKER_01: illegal during the time of the show will be legal.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: And I would say, but what's illegal?
3:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was 13 and I was in love with Donny Osmond.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: So for me, I could dance, I could sing.
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SPEAKER_01: My father was a bottom dancing instructor in downtown Tehran.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: My mother was a hairdresser.
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Her job was to make Muslim women look pretty and keep up like
3:55
Muslim women were
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SPEAKER_01: walking down the street,
3:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:57
SPEAKER_01: with nail polish and hairdos and fancy clothes.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: And I could read Jane Austen and Ernest Hemingway.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: I could party.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: I could party.
4:08
Like I would party with my friends at the Caspian Sea every
4:13
summer where we had a
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SPEAKER_01: cottage and we would be dancing together,
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SPEAKER_01: boys and girls on the beach.
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I would be wearing a little bikini and we would be dancing to
4:21
the tunes of the Bee Gees.
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SPEAKER_01: What is illegal?
4:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't understand you.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And they explained to me that, well, you cannot criticize the government.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: You cannot read certain literature.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: Like for example, Marxism.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: is illegal.
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And well,
4:39
they would give me these reasons why we should get rid of the
4:43
shot.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, I was curious.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: And well, fast forward, revolution succeeds.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: And actually,
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SPEAKER_01: I have to mention that one of my very close friends,
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SPEAKER_01: maybe you can call it my first boyfriend,
4:55
SPEAKER_01: was killed at the age of 18 at a protest rally.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: He was a supporter of the revolution, of the Ayatollah.
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SPEAKER_01: And he was murdered by soldiers at a protest rally.
5:10
And we didn't even know exactly what had happened,
5:13
but we discovered it later.
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SPEAKER_01: But we didn't know where he was.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: We never found out where he was buried.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: He was just killed.
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SPEAKER_01: And that's all we could gather.
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SPEAKER_01: So there was that.
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SPEAKER_01: It was a very sore and painful spot at that point.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: But I was still suspicious of this Ayatollah.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: And the ISIL came to power.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: And it took a little more than a year.
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SPEAKER_01: But a lot of the things that I had grown up in my life,
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SPEAKER_01: like wearing bikinis and wearing whatever you wanted,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
5:51
SPEAKER_01: blue jeans and a T-shirt.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean, it didn't have to be a bikini.
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SPEAKER_01: But,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: wearing nail polish and dancing to the VGs and reading Jane Austen,
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SPEAKER_01: all of the above became illegal.
6:02
So imagine now a 14-year-old who's grown up with all of the
6:07
above and now it's all illegal.
6:11
Angry is not enough to describe how I felt and many of my
6:16
classmates did because
6:18
SPEAKER_01: what we had,
6:19
SPEAKER_01: what we took for granted entirely was now gone.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: So we went to protest rallies.
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SPEAKER_01: You know,
6:28
SPEAKER_01: now you can see these protests,
6:30
SPEAKER_01: everybody has a cell phone and it's being recorded,
6:34
SPEAKER_01: even though internet has been cut in Iran.
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SPEAKER_01: But still, people have ways of getting it out.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people have Starlink.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: But back then, there was no such thing.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: There were no cell phones.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Everybody didn't have a camera.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: But we were there as early as 1980.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: We were there.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: We were there for women's rights.
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SPEAKER_01: We were there for the freedoms we had lost.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: We were there for the BGs.
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SPEAKER_01: We were there for much greater than that.
7:00
We were there for democracy,
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even though I think I wasn't quite sure what democracy was.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: But it sounded really good.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: It sounded like it was pro-BGs.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: So we protested.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: I remember clearly dodging bullets at those rallies.
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SPEAKER_01: So friends would always say, listen, don't forget running shoes.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: And try to wear clothes that would camouflage you.
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SPEAKER_01: Don't wear anything bright that would make you stand out.
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SPEAKER_01: And if the Revolutionary Guard attacks and you hear gunshots, hide.
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SPEAKER_01: Hide.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Garbage can, definitely.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: Go in it.
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SPEAKER_01: Go behind it.
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SPEAKER_01: Knock on doors.
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SPEAKER_01: Shopkeepers,
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SPEAKER_01: they will close their,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: they had these barriers that they would put down,
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SPEAKER_01: but knock and they would open it for you.
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SPEAKER_01: They would let you in.
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SPEAKER_01: They would protect you.
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SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times I had to do it.
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SPEAKER_01: My friends had to do it.
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And there's something about being 14 and 15 and you think
7:59
you're invincible.
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SPEAKER_01: Other people would get hit by bullets.
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SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't.
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SPEAKER_01: That's your mentality.
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And finally,
8:08
though,
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in 1982,
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I was arrested,
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not at a protest rally at home.
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SPEAKER_01: That was the order of the day.
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SPEAKER_01: They would come to your home.
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SPEAKER_01: Our principal,
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SPEAKER_01: who was a member of the Revolutionary Guard herself,
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SPEAKER_01: this young woman,
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SPEAKER_01: she had given our names,
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SPEAKER_01: the troublemakers of the school,
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SPEAKER_01: to the Revolutionary Guard.
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SPEAKER_01: So they came to our homes, one after the other.
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SPEAKER_01: And they arrested us and took us away.
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SPEAKER_01: So now, you know, 47 years later, um, again, it's deja vu.
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SPEAKER_01: It's,
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I have post-traumatic stress disorder and I cannot begin to
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tell you how difficult
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SPEAKER_01: this is.
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No matter how tranquil where I live is,
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uh,
8:54
yes,
8:54
it's there,
8:55
but there's this duality about me.
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SPEAKER_01: It's like, I have these two different souls, two different hearts.
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SPEAKER_01: And one of them is stuck in Iran in prison in, in,
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SPEAKER_01: that bloodshed and that situation.
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SPEAKER_01: And then another one is here and I have difficulty combining the two.
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SPEAKER_01: So it's beyond heartbreaking.
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It's beyond difficult to watch what's going on because this
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might be the end of the
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SPEAKER_01: Islamic Republic,
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SPEAKER_01: but it might not.
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SPEAKER_01: Are they going to be done this year or next?
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SPEAKER_01: Or are they going to last another 10, 20, 50 years?
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SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
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Do you find yourself guarding against getting your hopes up
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because you've seen
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SPEAKER_00: uprisings before?
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SPEAKER_01: I think so.
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I think by nature,
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the life that I have lived,
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I'm always suspicious of everything.
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SPEAKER_01: So you name it.
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SPEAKER_01: I never take anything at face of value.
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SPEAKER_01: I have wanted desperately for the Islamic Republic to fall for 47 years.
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SPEAKER_01: Of course, for half a century almost, I have carried this weight.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm a Christian.
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SPEAKER_01: So I say I have carried this cross on my back and I'm tired.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of carrying it.
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SPEAKER_01: But there's this thing about hope.
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SPEAKER_01: Hope, I believe, is actually rather cruel sometimes.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't let you put it down.
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SPEAKER_01: You just can't put it down.
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SPEAKER_01: You just think,
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SPEAKER_01: if I just take one more step,
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SPEAKER_01: if I just turn one more corner,
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SPEAKER_01: maybe salvation is there.
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SPEAKER_01: Maybe I just have to just hang on to it just a little bit longer.
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And it is that little bird of hope that sings in the gale that
10:52
makes me say,
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SPEAKER_01: maybe this time,
10:55
SPEAKER_01: actually,
10:56
talking with my grandmother because she escaped the Russian
10:59
Revolution in 1917.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: She died when I was seven.
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SPEAKER_01: So this is 53 years ago.
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SPEAKER_01: I remember before her death,
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SPEAKER_01: before she got sick,
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SPEAKER_01: she always said,
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SPEAKER_01: the communist murderers will be gone and I will go home one day.
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SPEAKER_01: And she never did.
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SPEAKER_01: She was buried in Tehran.
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SPEAKER_01: She is buried in Tehran.
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SPEAKER_01: And that dream never came true.
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SPEAKER_01: And today I look at Russia.
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SPEAKER_01: Yes, the communism fell.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: But when I look at Putin, I do not see salvation.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: I do not see a friend.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: I see an enemy.
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SPEAKER_01: So I have not set foot in Russia.
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SPEAKER_01: And she didn't.
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SPEAKER_01: So,
11:44
SPEAKER_01: but that hope,
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SPEAKER_01: that hope is always there because I have always believed that evil,
11:51
SPEAKER_01: no matter how long it lasts,
11:53
SPEAKER_01: it has an expiry date.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: I just don't know it.
11:58
I'll just tell our audience that if you're wondering why this
12:03
beautiful Iranian
12:04
SPEAKER_00: woman is called Marina,
12:07
SPEAKER_00: it's because her family,
12:08
SPEAKER_00: I think both sides,
12:09
SPEAKER_00: did go from Russia to Iran.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why she's Marina.
12:17
And I guess we can't say whether you'll ever be in Iran again
12:23
to look around.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Maybe so.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: Maybe so.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: I am heartbroken for what has been going on in the past 47 years.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: Now, I was never a political person.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: I was always just curious, just asking questions, just asking.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: wanting life to be better,
12:52
wanting people to be happy and free and dance to whatever they
12:57
want to dance,
12:57
SPEAKER_01: to sing,
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SPEAKER_01: to whatever they want to sing to.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: And
13:02
SPEAKER_01: I think this is what young people in Iran,
13:04
SPEAKER_01: the same way that my generation wanted these freedoms.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: To me, to be very honest with you, Jay, I didn't know what democracy was.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: Political freedom was irrelevant to me at that age.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: Now it's not, but back then.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: And when I look at like, there is video footage coming out of Iran.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: And when I look at their faces, I see myself at that young age.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: just wanting to be happy,
13:32
SPEAKER_01: just wanting to be left alone to wear what I want to wear,
13:36
SPEAKER_01: to do what I want to do.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: And political freedom was very secondary to me.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't to everybody, but to many people.
13:45
And the Shah,
13:47
he was a dictator,
13:50
but he granted the people of Iran personal freedoms.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: And the Iranian currency was strong and
13:59
SPEAKER_01: It was trading at the end, close to the end of the time of the show.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: It was one to seven.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: So you could pay.
14:05
one Iranian toman and,
14:07
sorry,
14:08
seven Iranian tomans and get one American dollar.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: And now it's like, I don't even know.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: The numbers are like unfathomable.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's crazy how it is weak right now, the Iranian currency.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: So people have difficulty putting food on the table today.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: Yes, Deshaal was a dictator, but the economy was pretty strong.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: And people could put food on the table.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, of course, we had poor, rich, all of that.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: But today,
14:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
14:41
SPEAKER_01: looking at,
14:43
and I remember the demonstrations during the time of the show
14:47
against him.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes, the soldiers did attack demonstrators, but my understanding and
14:53
SPEAKER_01: Please,
14:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm not an expert,
14:56
SPEAKER_01: but from personal experience I'm speaking,
15:00
the brutality of the soldiers of the Shah on the streets of
15:04
Tehran was nothing
15:07
SPEAKER_01: compared to the Revolutionary Guard and the supporters,
15:11
SPEAKER_01: whoever they are,
15:12
SPEAKER_01: the militia.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: of the Islamic revolution attacking demonstrators.
15:15
The numbers we are seeing now,
15:17
you know,
15:18
in a few days,
15:19
20,000,
15:19
30,000,
15:19
God knows,
15:21
dead.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: It's difficult to imagine this brutality.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where this is going.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: There doesn't seem to be a real leader, a figure.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Iranians, from what I know, love their lead.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, they love to have this one figure,
15:44
SPEAKER_01: like even in our old literature,
15:46
SPEAKER_01: there's always the hero,
15:48
the one who steps up and save the day and battles evil and
15:54
brings about the good.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: We just love that sort of thing.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: We adore our strong-willed, powerful leaders who just save the day.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: And there doesn't seem to be such a figure.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: And when I go online and I look at
16:11
SPEAKER_01: The discussions, a lot of my friends are Iranian, Persian in diaspora.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: And I look at them and there is so much division.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: There are all these different ideologies or these different beliefs.
16:25
And there's,
16:26
you know,
16:27
after 47 years of such a brutal dictatorship,
16:30
there's so much hate.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: There's so much hate.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: There's so much division.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: And without a clear leader who can unite all of this one way or another,
16:42
SPEAKER_01: I worry about this movement and this might be its shortcoming,
16:48
that it just doesn't have that leadership to unite people and
16:54
get them out of this
16:56
SPEAKER_01: mess.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Marina,
16:59
do you think that the participation or the visibility of the
17:02
Shah's son is helpful
17:05
SPEAKER_00: or unhelpful?
17:07
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Jay, I wish I knew.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I wish I don't know.
17:12
But listen,
17:13
one thing I know,
17:14
again,
17:14
he,
17:15
I think,
17:15
is like three or four years older than me.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: So the problem is that he carries this.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: This burden of history with him, the burden of his father.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean he's like his father.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean at all.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: He might be better than his father.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: He might be worse than his father.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: We just don't know.
17:41
And what I know is that what I'm seeing online in discussion
17:48
forums between
17:49
SPEAKER_01: Iranians in the country,
17:51
SPEAKER_01: outside the country,
17:53
SPEAKER_01: is that people either love him
17:56
SPEAKER_01: and they think he's basically almost the Messiah for Iran,
18:00
SPEAKER_01: or they hate him,
18:01
SPEAKER_01: like he is the devil incarnate.
18:04
So it's like,
18:05
you know,
18:05
I have a feeling,
18:06
like it's impossible to have a census.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't have the numbers, nobody does.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: But to me,
18:12
SPEAKER_01: it feels like half of the country thinks he's the savior,
18:16
SPEAKER_01: half of the country thinks he's the devil.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: The thing is that, I'm gonna put all of that aside.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: I have this other way of looking at it.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say that we do not have to agree, right?
18:34
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to agree at all if he is the future of Iran,
18:37
SPEAKER_01: because honestly,
18:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't believe he is.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: I think the Pahlavi dynasty,
18:42
SPEAKER_01: and I have great respect,
18:44
SPEAKER_01: not for the Shah who was deposed in 79,
18:49
SPEAKER_01: but I have great respect for his father who reigned from 1925 to 41.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: At the end of his reign,
18:57
he had become paranoid and he made a lot of mistakes and he
19:01
became a dictator.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: But he started off really strong.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: He modernized Iran.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: He pushed it ahead.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: Too harsh, but he pushed it ahead.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: And he did so much for the country and he loved Iran.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: So I have great respect for him.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: The thing is that I don't think we can go back to the Pahlavi dynasty.
19:24
I think that belongs in the past of Iran because there's just
19:27
so much political and
19:29
other kind of luggage there that would cause issues if they
19:33
were to come into
19:34
SPEAKER_01: favor.
19:35
But that being said,
19:37
I think after 47 years of dictatorship or 50 or 60 or 80,
19:41
I don't know,
19:43
Iran cannot just,
19:44
you know,
19:45
pull a rabbit out of a hat and become democracy.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh,
19:49
SPEAKER_01: look,
19:49
democracy cannot be packaged with a nice ribbon on top and be
19:55
handed to a country
19:57
SPEAKER_01: that was in a deep,
19:59
SPEAKER_01: dark,
20:00
SPEAKER_01: violent dictatorship for half a century.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: We will need a transition period.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: And
20:10
SPEAKER_01: If the Islamic Republic falls,
20:11
SPEAKER_01: when the Islamic Republic falls,
20:14
SPEAKER_01: we need a transitional government.
20:18
And this transitional government,
20:20
honestly,
20:20
I don't care who leads it,
20:23
whoever.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: It can be the son of the king.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: It can be whoever.
20:28
It's just that Khomeini made promises that he never kept
20:32
because everything that he
20:33
SPEAKER_01: promised was vague.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: This time we should not make that mistake.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: There has to be framework.
20:41
There has to be a clear mandate for a transitional government,
20:47
not a monarchy.
20:49
It cannot be called a democracy because it won't be immediately
20:53
after the fall of
20:53
SPEAKER_01: the Islamic Republic.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: It's just impossible.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: We need like five, six, seven, eight years of transition to deal.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: Let people bury their dead.
21:03
Let people come to terms because there's so much that has
21:08
happened in the country
21:09
SPEAKER_01: in the past half a century.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: We don't even know.
21:13
Let the truth come up and let not justice be mistaken with
21:18
revenge because that's
21:20
SPEAKER_01: what the Islamic Republic did.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: They came into power and they just massacred government officials,
21:25
SPEAKER_01: show trials and just shoot them down.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: We can't do that.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: There has to be some form of truth and reconciliation in Iran.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: There has to be this period.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: Now, if it's the son of the Shah, I don't know the man.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to blame him for his father's mistakes.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: But what I know is that Iran does not need to become another monarchy.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: We don't need a king.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: We don't need a queen.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: What we need is for the people to have a say.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: And whatever people decide,
22:07
not that democracy is perfect because people might decide the
22:10
wrong thing.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: People decided that the Islamic Republic was a good thing.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: The majority of people around did, but it wasn't.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: But this is why we need that transition.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: We need cool heads to prevail.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: We cannot let hatred and anger to decide what the future of Iran will be.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: Because hatred and anger usually lead to violence that goes nowhere good.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: Marina, in your opinion, what should outsiders do or not do?
22:38
SPEAKER_00: What should free world governments,
22:41
SPEAKER_00: particularly that of the United States,
22:44
SPEAKER_00: do or not do to help the Iranian people?
22:50
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's really hard to say.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the answer.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: That's the answer.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to say.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to say.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: I would just say that if you want to look at history and learn from it,
23:02
SPEAKER_01: let's say history is our guide here.
23:06
I don't think invading Iran is the best answer because these
23:14
kinds of invasion have
23:17
SPEAKER_01: gone wrong many times before.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: We have seen Afghanistan.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: We saw Iraq, for example.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: These are in recent memory.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: Again, democracy is not something that can just be given to a country.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: It has to be achieved.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: And when foreign powers go into a country,
23:34
SPEAKER_01: they are not really,
23:35
SPEAKER_01: really looking for the well-being of the people of that country.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: They are usually in there to get something for themselves.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: You can't blame that.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: They want natural resources, for example.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: They want access to free waters.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: They want something.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: So if,
23:53
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
23:54
SPEAKER_01: the United States goes in,
23:56
SPEAKER_01: yes,
23:57
SPEAKER_01: it will probably help the people of Iran in the short term.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: because they will be rid of the Islamic Republic.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: And at least for a while, I think things will look much, much better.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: But is that going to hold in the long term?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
24:14
Because again,
24:15
let's study the history of the past century even and see how
24:19
things went then.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: And
24:21
SPEAKER_01: that will tell us that it's usually a bad idea.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: But that's just my opinion.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, I would say, I really don't know.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: What Iranians really need,
24:31
SPEAKER_01: I think,
24:31
SPEAKER_01: that can never hurt is moral support,
24:34
SPEAKER_01: just to know that they are not forgotten,
24:37
SPEAKER_01: just to know that the world is looking,
24:39
SPEAKER_01: is listening,
24:40
SPEAKER_01: and is caring,
24:43
SPEAKER_01: hopefully without dropping bombs on them.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Well,
24:49
SPEAKER_00: ladies and gentlemen,
24:50
SPEAKER_00: we have been listening to Marina Neymat,
24:53
SPEAKER_00: the author of Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran,
24:57
SPEAKER_00: A Life Reclaimed,
24:59
SPEAKER_00: and the forthcoming historical novel,
25:01
SPEAKER_00: Mistress of the Persian Boarding House.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Marina, before we go, say whatever you like, personal, political.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Give us a final word, a final thought, if you like, and take your time.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: I know exactly what I'm going to say.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: What writing my new book taught me,
25:24
SPEAKER_01: well,
25:24
SPEAKER_01: it taught me a lot about history of Iran,
25:26
SPEAKER_01: because I had to really study to be able to write this book.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: So I learned a lot about a country that I thought I knew very well.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: But also from my grandmother, what I learned from her was that she lost
25:40
SPEAKER_01: everything, everything.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Her home, her family, her loved ones, her husband.
25:46
And she landed in a country where she was like an alien from
25:52
another planet.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: She didn't speak the language.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: She didn't understand the culture.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: She didn't understand the religion.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: Women were terribly discriminated against when she landed there.
26:02
Women couldn't appear in public without the chaperone and they
26:05
had to be covered
26:06
SPEAKER_01: head to toe,
26:06
SPEAKER_01: even defaced.
26:08
And yet she ran this boarding house,
26:13
which became a home for women who had nowhere to go.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: And most of them were Russian, but some were Iranian.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: And these women who had lost everything, they banded together.
26:26
And at one point,
26:28
one of them asks the others,
26:31
she says,
26:32
what is a family?
26:35
SPEAKER_01: And then another one says,
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, you are my family, aren't you?
26:42
SPEAKER_01: You supported me when I had no support,
26:45
SPEAKER_01: when I had nowhere to go,
26:45
SPEAKER_01: when I was on the street,
26:47
SPEAKER_01: when I was almost dead.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: You brought me back up.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: You are my family.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: And I think that made me think of how we need to band together.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: We are in a dark point in history.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are so many bad things happening worldwide.
27:05
And we keep sticking with these traditional meanings of family
27:11
and tribe and
27:12
SPEAKER_01: country when we need to think bigger.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: We need to connect with each other.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: We live on this planet that is in danger,
27:23
that there is global climate change and pollution and anger and
27:28
hatred and war and
27:30
SPEAKER_01: all of this.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: And we need to just pause and say, that's enough.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: We are the human family and we live on this planet.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: This is our spaceship.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: And if we don't get along, if we don't fix this very quickly,
27:46
SPEAKER_01: We are going to be sucked into a void of space.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: And we just cannot do that.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: This is a decisive point,
27:54
SPEAKER_01: I think,
27:55
SPEAKER_01: in the history of mankind,
27:56
SPEAKER_01: not just the United States or Iran or Venezuela or Iraq or France.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: This is we have the means.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: We have enough wealth on this planet.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: We have enough resources on this planet to do great things.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: But yet, look at us.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: We are just squabbling.
28:14
And making pollution and making garbage and just making sure
28:17
that this planet is
28:18
SPEAKER_01: not going to last very long,
28:20
SPEAKER_01: that we are not going to last very long.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: And that breaks my heart.
28:25
And yet I know that we are capable of becoming the human family
28:33
that we were,
28:34
SPEAKER_01: I think,
28:34
SPEAKER_01: destined to be.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: We just lost our way.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, I have loved Marina Neymat for 20, 25 years, whatever it's been.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say thank you for being yourself.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for going forward.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Marina.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Jay.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: It was a pleasure to see you again.