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As the rainy season comes drizzling into Southern California, I wonder what happened to the summer of '09 for us Iranian Americans. It feels that the elections in Iran that swept our emotions away like a cheesy but catchy pop song were both yesterday and some long time ago in our fading memories.
Days before the September elections I emailed my cousin and he told me the streets were packed, the youth were already celebrating, and that the Green Movement felt more like a revolution than a partisan movement. And just as quickly as Mousavi captured the Iranian psyche with promises to open the economy, establish better relations with the West, and relax mandated social restrictions, Khamenei slapped reality back into the faces of Reformers and their like. It was a cold blow, no doubt. It was a reminder to a newer more hopeful generation that the old Iranian birth-given cynicism that all decisions are made behind the scenes is actually the most reliable postulate to live one’s life by.
It did not take long for youth of Iran to take their anger out on the streets, and the youth here in America, for the first time, found something to support back home. Instead of hiding from an embarrassing president, we celebrated our defiant generation back home. We called them brothers and sisters. We felt united and it was us who took to the streets here, though the irony was clear from day one. While back home they were met with batons and guns, the most violence we witnessed here was mostly when Shah supporters and Green Movement supporters engaged in chest-beating shoving matches. The message was simple: even in freedom we cannot coexist peacefully. One side has to be wrong and one side has to be right.
We did not stop going to the protests however. After all, how could we? We were angry too and we had to do something, however useless it may have ultimately been. Also, if anything, we knew we’d run into old friends and exchange phone numbers and Facebook information. As one friend who refused to go to the protests said to me, “I’m not going to a protest where in between chanting ‘Death to the dictator,’ they’re making plans about which nightclub to go to.” And I couldn’t blame him. The Green Movement in Iran was becoming a Green Dance Party in America. Facebook accounts were changed to ‘Irani’ and ‘Azadi,’ and every five minutes someone was posting the latest CNN article update about Iran. It was a frenzy for us Iranian Americans and we let our emotions carry us through these disturbing times as videos of young Iranians being killed popped up on our internet screens. Then Michael Jackson took into his bloodstream one too many drips of pain killers.
Some of us stayed faithful to the Green Movement while the rest of us changed our profile pictures on Facebook to honor the King of Pop. And instead of protests we attended Jackson memorials. We were united again, somewhat, but this time behind a talented musician who played part-time pedophile. And it’s not entirely our fault. The Green Movement was a powerful spark of righteousness (supposedly) and comparisons to Eastern European color revolutions were inescapable. But the leaders of the movement were not fighting foreigners, as in the Eastern Europeans, and in the end, whether mercy or practicality prevailed, the Green Movement leaders took a softer stance as the death toll rose. They fought and those that could ran away.
Sitting in my house on this rainy October day getting nostalgic about the emotionally tumultuous summer of '09 I cannot help but be bitter. Not for us who forgot about the Green Movement as quickly as we heard about it, but for the millions strong who thought their vote meant something. Who thought that by taking to the streets their voices would be heard, that cooler heads would prevail once the powers of the country had seen what they had done. I haven’t even bothered emailing my cousin since just before the elections. I have no words to soothe his emotions. I can now only passively sit back and be cautiously hopeful that Obama appears to be taking a rational approach about all that is going on in Iran, and endlessly grateful that this didn’t happen under the presidency of George "The Destroyer" Bush.
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