Voice of Iran : Tehran Tango

So, here we are, the time has come when it is worth attacking dozens of girls schools with

chemical weapons, and it is worth using AI technology, and street cameras and confiscating convenience store security footage, just so that a piece of cloth stays put, on the heads of Iranian girls and women.

This time has come, and yet, while those who go through all this trouble to keep Iranian women’s dignity safe from the horror of strange men seeing the color of their hair, while those people finally realized how important and effective women’s hair can be, the men and women of the free world still don't seem to get it.

They just don’t see what world they are living in.

One might argue that there are a lot of things also going wrong with a lot of places in this world. And yes, it is true. There are places where people sleep hungry. There are places where people don’t sleep at all. There are places too, where people have no access to the internet, or even to the tools to even hope to access internet. But it is also a fact that today, there are only two places in the world where, when women have to be hungry, they have to be hungry with their hair covered, and when women have no internet, when they don’t have access to information, well, they have to deal with it while being afraid of being poisoned, in their very classrooms, all the while being afraid to be beaten to death, like Mahsa Amini was, because their hair is showing. Now, let me explain something first, before I add anything else. More than 150 girls schools have been attacked with unknown poisonous gasses (translator's note: the actual number is higher. People in Iran don't have access to all the information that reaches western media about their very own country, because of the strict control exerted by the government on all means of communication). The Government of Iran has failed to even catch one credible perpetrator, who might be responsible for it, while they are powerful enough, to kidnap Iranian dissidents from foreign countries, and bring them back to Iran, to be hanged after a sham trial for espionage. It is difficult to imagine that any particular civilian, or even “terrorist” would be able to make a gas that has these properties. It is difficult to imagine that any entity other than a fairly developed country, who has access to advanced labs and technology, or is capable of buying chemical weapons from foreign powers would be capable of hitting so many schools, on such a vast scale, and still get away with it, undetected. Ever since the first attacks started, many schools had assigned people to guard the premises from the outside or watch it remotely, and many had cameras and in some cases the parents themselves decided to guard their children’s schools, and yet, they failed to either prevent the attacks or identify the attackers. The attacks keep occurring, they only stopped during the Nowrooz holidays. The attacks continue, no matter what, and there are only rumors to hear. There are only two countries in the world that have this king of mandatory Hejab law imposed on all women nowadays : Iran and Afghanistan, under the Taliban rule. Women’s experience of life in both countries is basically, that life is, well, a life sentence. Except for those women of course, who help suppress the other women. Except those women, who come to tell their students to "shut up, or else..." . Those who call themselves teachers, and tell their students that they will be confronting serious repercussions, if they would call their parents to say, “My school has been attacked”. There are those women too. And you can find many of them in Iranian schools these days. And there is only one hope for these girls in life. Their only hope is to get an educational degree, from the same system that is literally poisoning them with either bad food, or toxic gas, or burning them in accidental fires, or drowning them, also in accidents, or crashing their buses, when they are taken on mandatory field trips. If they survive this – if they survive school, then they have to go through the higher education system, and if they make it out of that too, without having been killed, raped, beaten, mind-fucked beyond repair, then maybe, just maybe, they can work, and make some money, and then they can maybe tell their oppressive fathers or brothers, to shut up, and maybe they won’t have to be a husband’s slave, for the rest of their lives. So, it is under these conditions that Iranian women, have decided to accept many risks, and walk the streets in the Cities and villages of Iran, without their hejab. And it is simple logic, when you think about it. What have they got to lose? Isn't it better to die, than to be oppressed like this? And yet, the “Free world” still fails to acknowledge this. Even in North Korea, if you are supposed to go to labor camp, you can do it without that piece of cloth on your head! Even in Tibet, women, aren’t supposed to live in bags. I know. Nobody dares anymore, to say “Tibet”. But there! I said it. And right next to it I say “Iranian Woman” – “Afghan Woman”. This won’t last. If everything has to come down to my hair, to my sister’s hair, to my mother’s hair, to my daughter's hair – if my hair is the center of the world now, and it is what will decide the fate of the oil industry or the war in Ukraine or the nuclear deal or the Chinese agenda, yes, if it is my hair that has to decide about world economy, then so be it.

The world economy will crash soon, because my hair will not stay under this veil. It just won’t! Today we see that the cameras are watching us. We see that we are threatened to lose access to our bank accounts and we may be fined, which is funny, because how can we pay our fines, if we don’t have our bank accounts anymore? We also see those other women, those who come to us, feeling so secure and fine, and self righteous, to tell us to shut up, and to cover our hair. We see them. And we see those who just watch and say nothing. And we see those who pretend not to see us. We are not going to remain “Iranian Women” much longer. We are going to be just “Women” very soon, despite world economy and the oil industry and the will of those nations who maintain their silence. We are “woman”. Get this through your skulls, if you haven’t got this yet. We will keep walking, and it is time to ask this question maybe: “how many miles, must a woman walk, before you call her a woman?” And we won’t just walk. We will ride motorcycles, and fly and jump and ski, and climb and kick and sing and dance too. Who was it that said, “Dancing is walking without aim”?

No dance can ever be un-danced, and this tango isn’t over.