Razieh and Mahtab had forged a bond in prison over their love of literature. Razieh would talk about Henry James; Mahtab would talk about F. Scott Fitzgerald. At a certain point in her telling, Mahtab paused. “You know, Razieh was executed.” I can still see her. Even in prison, even while waiting for her execution, Razieh chose life. She reached far beyond her prison cell through literature. Her bond with the novels and stories of Henry James transcended death and reaffirmed life.
When I lived in Iran my father would tell me that this country is very ancient and was invaded many times. What gives us identity and continuity, he would say, is our poetry stretching back hundreds of years to Ferdowsi, Hafiz, Jami, and Saadi. When this regime came to power, they did more than arrest and kill poets and writers.
They tried to erase our cultural memory. They tried to destroy the statue of Ferdowsi, our epic poet, and rename the street honoring Omar Khayyam, our poet, astronomer, and philosopher. But Iranian women stood in front of that street sign and would not let them change it. It was one small victory among countless defeats. The regime would call our cultural traditions pagan, but Iranians still make pilgrimages to the shrines of our poets.
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