Reza Baraheni — Shahrvand 1269 — Thursday, February 18, 2010
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| Dr. Reza Baraheni |
Love of the Beloved and this wine, I will not leave behind
Repented a hundred times, but no more myself will bind.
— Hafez of Shiraz
My habit, which is not all that unusual, has generally been to refrain from responding to articles written in support or criticism of my written works and ideas. However, I never ignore them — just as I do not ignore them in my memory. Later, as much as possible, I address them within the discussions of my other writings, maintaining the dignity of the writer and the subject, so as to do justice to the matter. An exception to this personal rule occurs when the writer of a text, despite having good intentions in their words and writing, commits a grave mistake in interpreting my views on a subject. This may arise either from the unclear position of my discourse, or from a misunderstanding or misinterpretation, and leaving the matter unanswered might distort the truth and lead to further misunderstandings about the issue.
Addressing such possible misunderstandings in the realm of social and political matters, particularly in these sensitive times when “the catapult of the heavens rains down stones of sedition,” is absolutely necessary. The pace of discussions in these areas is so swift, especially due to the rapid dissemination of matters through the media, that neglecting to clarify and correct a misunderstanding might lead to a chain of further misunderstandings. If left unanswered, it can transform a minor issue into something enormous, causing confusion and doubt among the public. This may even bring disgrace and trouble not just upon me, an individual — something I could easily overlook — but upon those I have taken steps to defend, or it might damage the significance of the subject itself. It is solely to prevent harm to the subject that I am writing this note in response to "A Word with Dr. Reza Baraheni."It is also necessary to mention that there had been no prior coordination with me regarding speaking at the seminar of the University of Toronto students on Saturday, December 5, 2009. As always, I attended the session out of my own inclination, not with the intention to speak or intervene. Although I accepted the invitation from the session's moderator and said a few words, when a misunderstanding occurred regarding a word or phrase, my subsequent clarification came only in response to the misunderstanding and coincided with the session's end.
Unfortunately, I now see that Mr. "Ali Tizghadam"—and I hope that this beautiful name is his real one and not a pseudonym—has turned a molehill into a mountain based on that event. My second hope is that I do not further escalate his mountain, although he has already escalated it by first publishing his article in Jaras and then seeing it reprinted in Shahrvand. Of course, I have never been in the habit of broadcasting my writings. The writing must find its own way.
In Mr. Tizghadam's article, I do not see the slightest sign of ill intent; otherwise, I would have left it entirely unanswered, just as when a few months before the elections, one of my friends informed me that in a newspaper or site around Washington, it had been claimed that I, along with a number of university professors, had formed a group in Washington to support Dr. Ahmadinejad's candidacy. This was astonishing in every way, as I do not live in Washington, and such a rumor is akin to Kayhan's editor-in-chief, Shariatmadari, claiming on Ahmadinejad's behalf that I had been nominated for an Oscar for erotic films in the former darkrooms and meeting places of 42nd Street and Broadway in New York City.
The chain of errors could have continued to the point where I would have been awarded the prize of free flight to the origin of creation, 346 billion years ago, and upon my return, I would have turned into an amoeba, reproducing hundreds of thousands of votes in the blink of an eye. Oh God, should I continue this focus on historical confusion and say: Sir, Madam, this pen spins as it spins, and in my life of over seventy years, I have never found a government in my country worthy of my vote, and there seems little hope of finding one anytime soon!
But the world spins based on the theory of historical relativity. Even the color green understands its relation to that relativity, and because green is noble and familiar, it hopes that it remains, even if it doesn't take power, for there is nothing better than giving people hope, and nothing worse than dashing that hope after giving it.
I need to say that if I ever have a moment of doubt about a movement, especially a political movement, I would never take a step toward its goals. I am a political person, in my own unique way—and I am not an exception. Most people are political, each in their own way. As has been reported in various media outlets, I, like thousands of others, took a bus to New York. I was very pleased that my great friend Noam Chomsky joined us. I had the honor of saying a few words about him to open the event. I also gave a speech and, like any speaker, shared my personal views. I was interviewed by several journalists and private and public television and radio networks.
During the next event on the Brooklyn Bridge, I felt an incredible energy from witnessing the presence of the youth, and I walked the entire way on foot. The next day, I spoke at the great Harlem Church alongside professors, sociologists, and writers, just like the other speakers. A few weeks later, I participated in a large march in Washington with other Iranians, alongside my son-in-law and daughter. I took part in raising the green flag, following the words of a poet whose name I cannot now remember: "Join the river if the goal is the sea." And this is a form of love, a kind of march toward light.
A light that, personally, I do not expect to see during the rest of my life. But I have been waiting for it since my youth, and in times when its market has been in recession, I have banged my head and shoulders against the wall in pursuit of it. With this certainty, especially now, after all these years, that the kind of freedom I seek—and that millions of others also desire—will not be granted to me or us. But, as I said, it is a form of love, a love for freedom that has set my feet on this path, yet has not brought me to my knees. And I hope that even until my grave, this pursuit of freedom will stay with me. Even though some might disagree with my interpretation of freedom, and I may disagree with theirs, just as I have never committed to agreeing with everything about the Green Movement or any other movement. It is this free and unrestricted expression that I agree with, though I may disagree with many things that are freely expressed.
It is the right of anyone to agree or disagree with my concept of freedom. I carefully consider every side of an issue—if I agree with it and it is worth stating, I say it; if it’s not worth saying, I remain silent. The truth lies neither with me nor with anyone else; the truth is in the free discussion that we bring forth. It is this free flow of discussion in search of truth that drives me to pursue the light of day from behind the darkness that overshadows our time.
Before the revolution, when Ayatollah Taleghani and Ayatollah Montazeri were in prison, I, as a member of PEN America, alongside Arthur Miller and other great writers of that country, wrote a letter to Carter, the U.S. president at the time, asking him to request their release from the Shah’s prison. I didn’t personally know these two clerics, and I never saw them afterward. Just as I stood alongside the great writers of the world, asking for the release of Saeed Soltanpour and other political prisoners in Iran. My activities after the revolution, particularly in the Iranian Writers' Association, and later in Canada, especially during my time as president of PEN Canada, are so well-known that there is no need to mention them.
Friends may recall that when I stood with Canadian poets and writers calling for the release of the Berlin speakers from the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran, some people shouted that Akbar Ganji was part of the regime, an agent, and that he shouldn’t be defended. Ironically, those same people who criticized my defense back then sat in silence at his speech when Ganji later came to Canada—after his brave resistance against the Islamic Republic regime. Yes, those same critics were in the audience, dumb and silent*, listening to his words, and not a single one of them dared to criticize him. Rightfully so, not only should they not have criticized him, but they should have praised his courage and determination.
As I was writing this note, the news of Ayatollah Montazeri's sudden death spread around the world. A noble man who, in defense of human freedom, chose honor over the opportunity to become Ayatollah Khomeini's successor. He stood up for political prisoners during Khomeini’s era, for prisoners of other periods, and even recently, he defended the suppressed languages of the country. In contemporary Iranian history, he has earned a unique status among his peers, a status unprecedented in the entire history of the clergy at that level.
Throughout my life, I have learned not to agree 100% with anyone, nor to disagree 100% with anyone. We oppose the devil, in whatever form he appears, but there is one thing we do not oppose about him: the devil is charming, and we do not deny that he is highly intelligent. But despite his charm and intelligence, we are not willing to follow him. Hamlet's hesitation ultimately leads him both to kill and to be killed.
What I mean is that I have never promised anyone to agree with them entirely, and I have never demanded that anyone agree with me completely. I live in a world of relative agreements and disagreements; otherwise, I would have remained in the ignorance of my early years. I would not be writing this note at this age to help someone move beyond their relative ignorance about my stance. It is my duty to explain my views to others, and I am perfectly clear about my own position.
I have been interrogated by two regimes about the issue of languages in Iran: once under the Shah, and later under the Islamic Republic of Iran. Under the Shah, it was in connection with my article "The Dominant Culture and the Subjugated Culture," which was first published in Ettelaat newspaper alongside articles by other writers and poets, and later in the complete edition of Male History. This interrogation was conducted by Parviz Sabeti, the security official, with two notorious torturers, Hosseinzadeh and Ozhdi, sitting at his sides. From a single Turkish word in that article, Sabeti concluded that I wanted to become "Pishevari." That word was "Qapdi Qashdi," which Azerbaijanis use to refer to a "minibus," and it means something like "grab and go." From this one word, he inferred that I was a separatist.
This master of torturers—whom I’ve heard is now a professor at some American university, albeit under a pseudonym—also asked me another question, but this time indirectly. He said I had relationships with female students at the University of Tehran. I asked him to name them. He motioned to one of the two butchers from SAVAK, and one of them—most likely Hosseinzadeh—reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and said the name: "Sanaz Sahati." I told Sabeti, "That is correct!" I said, "Yes, I confess." He asked, "So easily?" I said, "Yes, so easily. And let me add something more: this woman is pregnant." He said, "Even worse!" I replied, "Worse than that! She is my wife." He turned to those two brutes and said, "Why didn't you do proper research?" I said, "My being a separatist is just as accurate as this, and so is Pishevari's supposed separatism." I had heard both in the West and from the people of Baku that Pishevari had been practically and physically dismembered over there. I later heard this from Professor Zehtabi as well, that Pishevari’s assassination was orchestrated by Bagirov and other Stalinist agents in Soviet Azerbaijan.
It is common practice to metaphorically behead an independent person twice—once in celebration and again in mourning. Wouldn’t it be better to understand that we were not the only ones who sought freedom and democracy in our country? There were others before us who brought democracy and gender equality to a region, and who taught the children of a large part of our country in their mother tongue—without opposing the Persian language. Is it not wrong for someone to freely understand a thousand things in this world, yet be incapable of properly grasping the history of a part of their own country or show stubbornness and obstinacy in understanding it? And with that stubbornness, lead the country toward fragmentation! Or fear democracy, and if someone rightly defends it, call them a "separatist and traitor" based on their incomplete understanding of democracy?
A separatist is someone who believes their mother tongue is so superior to the mother tongue of their fellow countrymen that if another speaks their own language, they are labeled a "separatist." It is also someone who asks others to trample the rights of millions of fellow citizens, even though those individuals, due to the oppression they have faced, may have used another mother tongue and, as you say, have become experts in it.
A separatist is someone who opposes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the name of defending the superiority of one language over others in a unified country, knowing that depriving people of fully utilizing their language is the worst violation of the bond between mother and child. It is a blatant disregard for the fundamental right of human communication: the right of a mother to her child, the mother’s primary bond, which is being violated for millions of Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and Turkmens in our country, right before everyone’s eyes.
When someone brings up this issue, they are asked to rise up against separatism. Yet, no one asks a respected cleric to refrain from mocking Turks and Rashtis in his private gatherings, nor does anyone ever question why, despite being renowned as a defender of human rights worldwide, during his presidency, he didn’t defend the rights of all Iranians. Why, in a country as vast and diverse as ours, is the language of just over a third of the total population elevated above the mother tongue of the other two-thirds? Doesn’t this very behavior pave the way for the eventual disintegration of the country?
A separatist is one who facilitates the division of a nation through dictatorship, not me, who explicitly says we must address the issue before it’s too late. I say it’s too late for me, and for those like me; to think about the future of the country. I’m astonished that some people live in a multilingual country like Canada, with dozens of magazines published in Persian, attending countless gatherings, defending and attacking anything and everything. Yet they are terrified at the thought of a shop sign in Tabriz being in the mother tongue of its people, and that millions of Turks, Kurds, Turkmens, Baluchis, and Arabs are denied the right to learn their mother tongues in schools and universities. And ultimately, isn’t a country that exerts such pressure on its people already potentially fractured? I say don’t let that potential become reality.
It’s neither my fault nor yours that Iran is linguistically divided, though not in terms of borders. It is your responsibility to eliminate this linguistic division, and that doesn’t mean cutting out people’s mother tongues. It means creating provisions to compensate for centuries of losses, particularly the present-day loss where the ability to learn one's mother tongue is essential to preserving the mental well-being of vast populations in our country. People have been burdened with countless psychological issues and complexes due to a lack of understanding of ethnic and linguistic matters, preferring their own mother tongue over those of others.
They never once consider that by proclaiming Persian as the language for all, they are betraying even their own mother. Because if you were born of a Turk, Kurd, Turkmen, or Baluchi mother, you would taste the bitterness of betrayal—especially if you had to endure a historical humiliation where someone from another language group advises you to fight against separatism!
Isn't this very remark of yours encouraging separatism? What makes you so overly defensive about your language? Are you not ashamed that I’ve written fifty books in your mother tongue, and yet you command me not to write even one in my own? Especially when you haven’t only failed to crown your mother tongue but haven’t even laid down a tattered shoe at the feet of the afflicted speakers of the native languages of Iran’s oppressed peoples? All this verbosity, ablaze with prejudice, stems from which heap of racism? Firstly, what laurels have you brought to your own language that the metaphorical laurels my pen has laid upon your head become a thorn in your eye when it comes to my mother tongue? Where in the world have you seen a nation birthed by a language for centuries, only for the official language to suddenly be one of another people?
Kurdistan's official language is Kurdish. Azerbaijan's official language is Turkish. Go back and read your history. Shah Ismail Safavi wrote poetry in his mother tongue while fighting the Ottomans. Persian is the official language of Persian speakers, not the whole of Iran. Persian has been the common academic language since modern education was introduced. The millions of native speakers of major languages like Turkish, Kurdish, and others in Iran should have been formally educated in their native languages and recognized them as official in their regions. Only then, after having the right to express and learn in their mother tongues, should they have chosen Persian as a common or official language. Anyone who recognizes Persian as the official language of Iran, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is condemned. Persian is the official language of Persian speakers in Iran.
I, personally, have immense respect for this language and its literature. Except for one doctoral thesis and a few books in English, all my works are in this language. When the Russians invaded Azerbaijan several times, not a single non-Azerbijani soldier was present. The valiant Abbas Mirza—a Turk—defended Iranian soil. Sultan Mahmoud himself was a Turk, who conquered India for you. Nader Shah, from the Afshar tribe (which is Turk), also conquered India for you. Even though Agha Mohammad Khan was cruel, he expelled many foreign forces from Iran and expanded the borders of the country, though Fath-Ali Shah, another Turk, foolishly lost it all. The Turks of Azerbaijan defended their country during the Safavid era against the Ottoman Turks. In recent years—and this is fresh in living memory—Azerbaijani youth filled the trenches during the Iran-Iraq war. Did you or I teach them how to sacrifice for their country?
So why shouldn’t their children have the right to learn their mother tongue as an official language? The cemeteries of Iran, especially those in Azerbaijan, are sacred grounds filled with the bodies of young men who died in the cities of Khuzestan. Saddam's bombs rained down on the people of Tabriz in the early days of the war. So why shouldn’t their children have the right to be educated in their mother tongue? Do you think they were taught how to defend their country in the sweet Persian language, or in the same Turkish language, which you claim—God forbid, if the Turks of Iran learned and used it in written form—would lead to the country's disintegration?
Would your children be willing to be educated in their mother tongue if you expect the children of others to learn Persian, while forgetting that they have a mother tongue themselves? Are you the separatist, or am I, who defends the right of mothers to communicate with their children throughout Iran? The bulk of that right is for a child to relate to the world around them in their mother tongue. The racist insult “stupid Turk” was coined a hundred years ago by a minister because Turks couldn’t speak Persian, the native language of Persians, as beautifully as they did. And this happened at the exact time when the Turkish constitutionalists of Azerbaijan rose up against Turkish kings and ultimately forced them to issue the constitutional decree. Is this separatism?
And where was Sattar Khan killed? In Tehran. And what had Sattar Khan done? He personally lowered the Russian flag in Tabriz. The question is: Why do you consider the betrayal of maternal love as law? Why do you bring mothers to their knees by cutting off the tongues of their children? Don’t you claim to defend democracy?
For centuries, the language of the military in Iran was Turkish, and so was the language of the royal court at times. When did the Turkish kings cut off the tongues of Persian speakers? They were always promoting the Persian language. Although at first, Mahmud of Ghazni didn’t appreciate Ferdowsi, and his grand reward reached Ferdowsi when the poet was already departing this world, the lack of Mahmud's gifts would have erased the Khurasani school that was established in poetry.
Iran's history has always been a composite one, and at times, its course has followed a path filled with contradictions. Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh portrays the greatest enemy of Iran as Turan, the land of the Turks. By the millennium of Ferdowsi, Turks had already been ruling Iran for about a thousand years. If the Turkish kings had banned Persian, you would have no Persian literature today. The reason they didn’t ban it wasn’t out of love for humanity—certainly not. Persian and Arabic were the two languages of education and upbringing for the elite during that millennium. The number of those elites involved in education and learning was less than one in a thousand, or maybe even fewer.
But when education first entered the country in its modern form through the gates of the Constitutional Revolution, educational reformers and modernists proposed bilingual schools and implemented their proposals, as recorded in Iran’s modern history. It was the Constitutional Revolution that brought the issue of linguistic diversity in Iran to light, just as during the Renaissance in the West, Latin and Greek—languages of private education—eventually gave way to national languages. For example, the Bible was translated into English, and this opened a new space that coincided with the works of Shakespeare, establishing the national language in a real sense, despite its previous centuries of history.
We know this same development occurred in Germany and France, with a little earlier or later than in the Anglo-Saxon world. Our Constitutional Revolution was a form of cultural renaissance, and in this regard, the early educators of the Constitutional era proposed bilingual schools in Persian and Turkish. A large part of the roots of the people’s yearning for freedom comes from that great movement, whose foundation rested on the teachings of the French Revolution and, before that, on the spiritual revival of the Renaissance.
In this case, the matter is not about Turks or Persians. The man who was assassinated in the bathhouse of Fin, Kashan, is for us not only a thousand times dearer than kings, but our eternal curse is upon the Turkish king who ordered that vein-cutting. The lexicon of freedom has no foundation in race or lineage, nor in the pursuit of fame and glory. It also does not rest on hollow goodwill toward oppressed ethnicities while shaking hands with oppressors who constantly fabricate cases against the world’s oppressed.
When a Kurdish person mourns at the grave of their executed father, do they lament in Persian? Language serves a purpose here. When that child grows up with resentment, when they narrate their father’s death, even if they tell it in Persian, do they not protest? Will not a Kurdish novel, filled with both pain and love, emerge from this slaughterhouse and in the language of Kurdistan? Will this harm Persian? Well, “if you can do better, take it and do better!” The literature of the oppressed ethnicities in Iran has, in our time, been poured into Persian. We have had no other choice.
Why do you perceive us as separatists, or insist that we must combat separatism, while you remain inactive and fail to defend the rights of millions of Turks, Kurds, Baluchs, Arabs, and Turkmens? Don’t you claim they are your fellow citizens? Aren't you an advocate of democracy? There is no better test than to take a step forward and, instead of blaming the victim, direct some of your reproach toward the butcher, the butcher whose maliciousness, despite your apparent goodwill, has taken residence deep within your very core. That butcher frightens you with a nightmare that does not exist outside of yourself.
Look at how far that nightmare has brought you: to the point where you, for whom I have written fifty books in your native language, demand that I exonerate myself from the charge of separatism. I don’t deserve to see you more exposed than this in front of the people. I also have no mission to expel demons.
But if you live here in Canada, and it seems you’ve been blessed with much courage and determination, then just once, in a Canadian newspaper, ask the French speakers of this country to abandon their French language and recognize English exclusively as the official language and to write and speak everything in English. See how both linguistic groups expel that nightmare from within you.
Now, what difference is there between Iran and Canada? What difference is there between you and a Canadian? And what difference is there between the rules governing your mind and those governing the mind of a Canadian? I don’t need to explain further, but I know that if you proposed what you’re suggesting to Canadians, especially if you insisted on implementing it, they would either classify you as insane or expel you from the country. This disease has only one cure: driving that nightmare out of your being.
Don’t push things to the point where the Turks, Kurds, and Arabs start shouting, “We regret being gilded with gold! Please, turn us into copper!” Even if absolute lawlessness governs our country today, rest assured that one day the flag of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” will be raised throughout Iran, and by then, when children are executed, when the virginity of girls is handed over to executioners before they are killed, when homosexuals are hanged, when people are executed for defending their mother tongue under the accusation of separatism, when so much oppression is inflicted upon workers and peasants, and when history is falsified by a few against the countless many to maintain their power, the civilized world of that time will rise up against these crimes in unison.
A free person, no matter what calamity befalls them, remains free. It is Mossadegh who has a halo of light around his head. It is Gandhi, gaunt and skeletal, who shines with a Christlike radiance. It is the face of "Neda" that will become the future flag of Iran. History may take time, but it does not burn away or disappear. A person must take the right stand at the right time.
In an invitation I had to Ankara and Istanbul among poets and writers of Iran, during my speech, I declared that if Turkey ever attacked Iran, I would take up arms in defence of my country. I leave no room for misunderstanding. Even in Baku, when I received an honorary doctorate, I and my participating friends closed the door on any potential misunderstandings.
The original document is a text written here in Toronto titled "A Preface to a Necessity," written as a preface for the establishment of the "Foundation for the Language and Culture of Azerbaijan in Iran." Dr. Reza Moridi, Dr. Gharajehlou, and I were among the founding board members and members of the first secretariat. It was a great honor for me to sit among the young men and women who sought equal rights for all the people of Iran and the owners of its various languages and cultures.
In my opinion, the administration of Iran should recognize that the Constitutional Revolution was the first great revolution in Asia, accompanied by the enlightenment of its founders. I believe that this revolution stemmed from the Age of Enlightenment, and its greatest advantage in terms of legislation was that it reduced the concentration of power in the center and laid the foundation for a democratic system through provincial and local assemblies. Upon careful review, it was not dissimilar to the system of the United States, except for the acceptance of monarchy. The provincial and local assemblies could democratically manage the affairs of the country, considering the needs of each region and collaborating with an elected central government.
However, the rise of Reza Shah to power, and the education he received from some racists like Dr. Afshar and his associates, turned the parliament and elections into political toys of the court first during Reza Shah's rule and later during his son's reign. The treacherous advisors constantly whispered in the ears of the tyrannical king that only by abolishing the constitutional regime and trivializing democracy and parliament could an Iran akin to the ancient Persian Empire be established. The first action of the tyrannical kings was to turn the provincial and local assemblies into a kind of local toy.
One of the main problems was the issue of languages. I have no doubt that Persian is an important and significant language. However, the nationwide teaching of it from the beginning in all the schools of the country disregards democracy and denies the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I firmly believe that the humiliation of the languages of ethnic groups, or better, the nationalities of Iran, is a humiliation of the mother; no matter how beautiful the Persian language is, it cannot fill the place of the language and the relationship of a mother with her child in a language other than Persian.
The relationship between infancy and language is so close and continuous that depriving a child at later ages of their mother tongue and growing up in the shadow of that language severely harms them psychologically. I see the humiliation of this relationship in Mr. Tizkadam's writing, the humiliation of the mother-child relationship, at the cost of claiming that Persian is a beautiful language. In fact, the distance created by imposing one language over another is a distance from self-alienation to one’s roots. The government’s policy, whatever it may be, or the greatness of another language, even if it is the most beautiful one, is in any case a consequence of a complete violation of the mother-child relationship.
I fully believe that an Iranian politician today, if they want to genuinely act according to the criteria of democracy and equal rights, must recognize the languages of various regions. In Azerbaijan, Turkish is the official language because all the people speak it, with exceptions to Persian. In Kurdistan, Kurdish is the official language. In Isfahan and Shiraz, Persian is the official language. Imposing Persian as the official language for all the peoples of Iran is unjust. Persian can only be recognized historically as a "common language" for Persian speakers in Iran, based on its historical significance. Naturally, alongside that, learning a global language should also be deemed essential for every individual, which today, overall, is English.
I believe that anyone or any group, any assembly, government, or parliament that can place this bell around the cat's neck, and remove this major obstacle of the imposed preference for one language—namely Persian—over people whose mother tongue is not Persian will be immortalized in Iranian history as a liberating, realistic freedom fighter. If you want real power for the people of your country, do not see national unity in contradiction with linguistic diversity; rather, view national unity in the equal rights of all the peoples of the country.
Otherwise, the warning of history, in my opinion, is this: as the consciousness of the oppressed nationalities of Iran rises and falls in the ups and downs of future events, if the fundamental racism of imposing one language upon the speakers of other mother tongues continues as it is today—under any title and for any reason—the shadows of the national separatisms of the oppressed nationalities and the speakers of suppressed languages will come closer. Stronger repressions than today, bloodier conspiracies rising in the future, regional and global crises, the incompetence of governments and authorities, and internal blind prejudices will all come together, and then a country whose people deserve democracy, wisdom, freedom, and progress will drown in border and civil wars and will disintegrate.
Let us open our eyes, consign racism to the dustbin of history, and, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reconstruct the future of our country, Iran, based on the complete equal rights of the ethnicities and nationalities living under the sky of Iran and within the borders of today’s country.
In my honor, do not suspect me of being a drunkard;
I am clothed in garments of purity. (Hafez)
Toronto - February 2009
*The severed language sits silently in a corner, better than one who has no language in his judgment. (Saadi)
*The phrase "صُم بکم" is derived from the Quran (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:18) and means "deaf, dumb, and blind," implying a complete lack of awareness or understanding.
Link to the original text in Farsi: https://shahrvand.com/archives/4228