Becoming a Green Girl

"Mom, don't go. I'm worried."

My son R.J. knows exactly where I am headed -- and he is nervous.

"Honey, there's nothing to worry about," I reply. "People do this all the time in America."

Earlier, I had told him and my American husband that I planned to skip the Alexandria Little League picnic and instead attend a peaceful rally in downtown Washington. The demonstration had been organized in support of the protesters in Iran who were disputing the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

As a multicultural woman of Iranian parentage and British birth, I immigrated to America in 1985 after graduating from Oxford. I have been here since. Though I look the part (olive skin, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes), I rarely feel Iranian as I go about my daily life as a mother, writer and wife in Northern Virginia.

I also spent some childhood years in Tehran, where I attended The British School with the offspring of UK diplomats. When I was a kid, I identified more with my English peers, than with my fellow Iranians.

Today, however, I found myself uncharacteristically weeping over a YouTube video showing various clips of Iranian women protesting on the streets of Tehran. I did not expect to feel such kinship. But I was compelled to support them, even from a world away.

Before I leave home, I reassure my 10-year-old, whose head is full of CNN snippets of demonstrators under assault by Iranian authorities, that I will be fine. "The cops help us here, R.J., they clear the route."

The last demonstration I attended about Iran was in 1979, when I was a teenager living in England. Two of my Iranian cousins -- outspoken women in their twenties -- had recently fled to London, seeking political asylum after the Islamic Revolution. They took me to the Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park, where the event's organizers placed us front and center to lead the march.
A few days later, photographs of the rally ran in the Iran-based magazine Zan-e Rooz -- Today's Woman. In almost every picture, a female member of my family looked back at me, including myself. The magazine had labeled us SAVAK sluts and foreign agents.

"I guess we're not going back," laughed one cousin, pointing at her image, mouth agape.
"Not unless we check-in at the Hotel Evin," cracked the other. Evin Prison is the notorious detention center in Tehran, housing political prisoners since the early 70's. It has a special section for women.

Now 30 years later, I dress for the D.C. protest. I defiantly slip on a scoop neck, sleeveless shirt in green (the color of the reformist movement), blow-dry my hair, which I will never cover, and put on the tightest jeans I can find in my closet. I slash fuchsia lipstick across my lips. I want to make a mullah sweat under his turban, blush beneath his beard, point his wagging finger at me.
At the meeting spot in Georgetown, I join the swelling ranks of green. Most of the women are Iranian-Americans or Iranians with temporary visas. They cross generations -- a baby girl in a green onesie with polka dots, an Audrey Hepburn look-alike, an elderly woman in sensible shoes surrounded by her middle-aged daughters. Despite the rain, we set out down Wisconsin Avenue.

On the way from M Street to the White House, I join the chants but walk alone. I feel both at home and not: my mixed-up background makes part of me an insider and part of me an outsider. But the women ground me. There is a fellowship in sisterhood that knows no borders.
I see a little girl with hazel eyes in a green dress holding her mother's hand. Born here to an American father, as her mother divulges, the child reminds me of my son, a mutt. Not long ago, my family ate at Moby Dick's House of Kabob in Arlington; R.J., who loves their food, suddenly said, "Let's go to Iran sometime."

"Sure," I replied, but privately wondered how welcome my American family would be under the present regime. I realize as I continue to march that I want my boy to know Iran. I notice the sun has come out.

When the rally ends, I talk to an Iranian woman in her early thirties who moved to our area three years ago. "It's horrible being a woman in Iran," she says. "The government allows you no dignity. They don't count you, no matter how many years you study, no matter what background you have." I feel her outrage. I also know I would never have lasted there as long as she did.
I resolve to march again soon. Because I can. Because I want Iranian women to be able to do so safely. Because I want to take my American son to Iran one day. And when we arrive at the airport in Tehran, I hope to run my fingers through my long hair -- not obscured by a compulsory headscarf -- and walk freely into a country I once called home.

This story originally ran in The Washington Post Magazine on 7/19/09

Follow Charlotte Safavi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/charlottesafavi

Comments

[Stephanie Cantizano]

Keep up the GOOD FIGHT everyone.

[leutenizer]

It would have been shocking to read that the minimal age to wed a girl in Iran was set at 9 by the authorities in the 1980s. Then gradually increased to 11, 13 and finally set at 15 years of age. Many journalist such as Ms Safavi, would intrepret that as evidence of backwardness. When in fact, during the Shahs era, the laws were set arbitrarily and most girls in rural Iran were blessed into marriage at 9 anyways. Today, when a father in rural Iran wants to marry his 9 yr old girl, the local Mullah would remind him that the law as set by the Islamic State is 15. Unlike the period prior to the revolution, these increases of age did not occur in a vacuum, but rather by persistent pressure of a vast, well funded women's right movement from Shirin Ebadi to Khomeini's own daughter who lobby the Majlis.

To wish for a secular democracy in Iran is the easy part. To understand Iran's people, religion, and reflect those understandings in ones writing is a completely different task. The poet Sa'adi said God gave us two ears and one mouth, so that we listen twice and speak once. It is time for her to loosen those jeans, learn about Iran's culture, before writing about her.

Iran will change to a secular state by swelling number of sofisticated and powerful women inside Iran who don't share Ms Safavi's lipstick non-Iraninan emotional outburst. Their march is inevitable!

[Ezzati]

As a woman born in Iran, I too feel a similar kind of kinship for the women there, who have and continue to fight for rights that many of us take for granted every day.

As supporters of the Shah, my parents left Iran when I was a year old, in August 1979, with my older sister and me in tow. We left our homeland and most family behind and have been back once, after 20 years, in 1999. In fact, next month will be our 30th anniversary in the U.S.
The world should know that I have the best parents anyone could wish for. They have made significant and substantial sacrifices for us to be here, be happy and have a life without revolution. To them, I’m forever grateful and indebted. It did not come without one small bump in the road, however.
Growing up in the US and being Iranian made for a small identity crisis for many years. I was too Iranian for the Americans, and too American for the Iranians, which often left me with the sense of being on the ‘outside’ of two different cultures and never quite belonging to either one. These days, a little older and a wiser, I embrace the bond I have to both countries. My only wish is to re-connect with other Iranians who grew up here or in other countries, who can relate to the multicultural spark that makes us uniquely wonderful.

[Charlotte Safavi - Huffpost Blogger]

What a heartfelt comment. I completely understand where you are coming from. The first blog I did for the Huffington Post started "I'm a child of nowhere." It's called 'Green is the Color of Growth' if you want to check it out. One thing I've found over the years is that there are many people like us out there and that's why I'm giving us a voice. The plus side to being from nowhere is being from everywhere.
Charlotte

[JenEvansGardner]

Thanks for putting a personal face on this, Charlotte -- you are a wonderful writer. More importantly, your son is lucky to have such a courageous, caring and passionate mother. Bravo!

[Charlotte Safavi - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks! Today I watched a YouTube of people showing solidarity on the streets of Dubai...being able to support the people of Iran from wherever you are is so doable.

[Sharon Tanenhaus]

Charlotte, every piece you write from your personal perspective touches my heart in a way the news stories can't. Your voice is important. Keep writing.

[Charlotte Safavi - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks, Sharon. I think personal essays put a different spin on hard news stories, while touching the same ground.