 Thank you very much. Good evening. I see many familiar faces. And I have come to get addicted to you guys. It's difficult to say this is the last time I will have the great honor to be with you. And thank you to you for inviting me. And since it's the last night, I should also mention that I feel honored to be the person who started this lecture series. I have the highest respect for Professor Yashater. Although I never had the honor to be her students, but he was my mentor. And he continues to be. So today, we are going to wrap up our conversation about Furuf Arosad. Just two minutes of wrapping up everything we have done so far together, we talked about her life. The difficulties she confronted as a young woman, perhaps the physical trauma. We read some of, we did a close reading of some of her poems, some of the letters to ask the question, what was this question? What was this secret that Furuf Arosad wanted us to decipher? In the second session, we discussed some of the major tropes in Arosad's poetry. Love, of course, the proximity to death, and of course, freedom of movement. We said that this freedom is really at the basis of several other kinds of freedom in a sex-segregated society. Yesterday, we watched her master film, master really work of exception, quality, one of the 10 best documentaries considered by many in the world. And we discussed how it indeed is a model for life narratives. And today, I want to discuss with you how Furuf Arosad redefined the very definition of family in Iran and the significance of that in the culture in which family was the unit. And according to her, at least the way I read it, and in my view, it's really a mirror and a reflection of the larger society. So if defying age-old patterns of gender apartheid is the central trope of Arosad's artistic universe, advocating, but more importantly, mirroring the shifting lines of power within the family is its most consequential outcome. Not much has been written about this important aspect of Arosad's poetry. Yet what she has done in redefining the family unit is truly exceptional and pioneering. Obviously, Arosad, who developed by leaps and bounds in the very short 13-year literary career she had, changed her views and her perspectives on family, on motherhood, on gender relations. Let me give you one example. You might remember the poem Wedding Band, Halqe. It's one of her first poems. It was published in the collection Captive at Sea. If you recall the poem, the poem is made of two sections. In the first one, there is a young, vitacious, energetic woman, young girl, very happy, full of questions. She's asking, what's the secret of this band that is around my finger? And in the second part of that same poem, the young woman is now an older woman, and she has come to the sad conclusion that this band is the band of submission, submissiveness, and bondage. Bandye Bardigi talks about Halqye Bardigi's bondage. So I have not come across any Iranian writer of the modern era. That had so fundamentally questioned the very construction of family units in Iran. Now, we know gender relations in Iran is a very complex, very fascinating issue. I want to take a few minutes to talk about some of the expressions we have. For instance, we call the group, the night of his wedding, Shadamat. We call a woman who is a shrew, Salite. And it's no coincidence that Salite and Sultanat, a shrew, and kingship, and Salite dominance come from the exact same root. It is no coincidence that one of our most popular, at least when I was growing up in Iran, proverb was about wedding night, was Ghorbaru Bayat Shabe Hejle Koshd. You kill the cat at the nobchol night or in the nobchol chamber. Does anyone know the story behind this very popular and famous proverb? And yet we use it all the time, right? We still use it. So it took me a long, long time to find the story. So I'm going to just take a few minutes of your precious time to tell you that story, because it's so fascinating. So very similar to the taming of the shrew of Shakespeare. There is this young woman who is a shrew, comes from a good family. And of course, nobody wants to marry her. The father finally comes up with an idea and proposes a good dowry for the daughter. And this man says that I'm going to marry her. And everybody tries to tell her, but you can't do that. You don't want to do that. And he says, don't worry. I can handle her. So he marries her. And when they entered the nobchol chamber, he had arranged ahead of time to have a cat in the nobchol chamber. So as they get in, husband and wife just newly wed, he looks at the cat and he says, go get me a glass of water. Well, the poor cat didn't know what was going on. He got me out and was happy. Two minutes later, he said, didn't you hear me? I said, you go fetch a glass of water from me. I'm thirsty. And the cat didn't again. And the third time, he took his dagger out and he beheaded the innocent cat. And with the bloody dagger in his hand, looked at the bride and said, you see that? I'm thirsty. Please go get me a glass of water. And the wife, of course, did. And the pattern was set because in most relationship in the first few minutes of that relationship, a pattern is set for the relationship. So a neighbor heard the story and said, my god, why didn't I think of such a simple thing? So he got, they had a pet, a cat. He went and he got himself a nice big dagger. They went to the bedroom and he looked at the cat and he said, go get me a glass of water. Nobody said anything. He repeated it. But the third time, the wife looked at him. He said, the one who killed the cat was in the nobchol chamber, not 20 years into the marriage. You want a glass of water? You go get yourself one. And by the way, get me one, too. So, but to get you a glass of water. You don't want any chances. You're not taking chances. Not, not chances. Lent your water, no cats. So in other words, if we call our brides, king bride, on the day of their wedding, it's not for no reason. It's not coincidental. Fouro Farrokhzad revised that gender relation. I'm not claiming she's the first one who did that. We know that many had already started doing that in their families. I say that as a Muslim woman. I know that, for instance, in the Bobby fate, especially in the Bahá'í fate, gender relation was of utmost importance. But when it comes to our literary production, I don't know of any poem, of any novel, of any short story, like the one I will read for you. I can't read the whole thing because I've promised a few of you told me you didn't get enough time for Q&A. I would like to leave a lot of room for Q&A today. I think many of you are familiar with the poem. I will read a few lines of it so you have a sense of the music of it, of course, in English and with my inefficient translation. But I will perhaps read a few lines of the Persian too. It's one of Furul's most anthologized poems, for sure. And I think one of the most radical. So in Persian, it is. So the crow that flew over us, and sunk in the anxious thoughts of a vagrant cloud, its cry crossing the horizon like a short spear will carry Artea to the city. Everyone knows, everyone knows that you and I caught sight of the garden through that cold, grim opening. Everyone knows, everyone knows that we picked the apple from that say distant branch. Everyone fears, everyone fears. But you and I merged with the lamp, the water, and the mirror, and we did not fear. It's not a matter of two names grafted feebly to each other on the old pages of a registry. What matters are our kisses, puppy flowers, singed, and my tresses full of bliss. What matters is the intimacy between our naked bodies, rolled, glittering, like fish scales in the water. So you know the rest of the story. It's a man and a woman. They see the apple inside the garden, and they enter the garden. And then it's after they enter the garden that with their hands, with holding their hands together, they make a bridge overnight. And at the end, Farrokh Zod tells us that it's not a matter of whispers in the dark. It's a matter of daylight. It's a matter of telling it as it is. So at the time, Farrokh Zod was a divorced woman with a child. She was denied even sporadic visitation rights with that child. And the man for whom this poem was written, we know it because she says it in the book. E.G. Ibrahim E. Golestan was the man who had hired her, as we talked about it, when she was 24 years old. So in this story, in order to change gender relations in Iran, Farrokh Zod goes to the beginning of creation. The garden she enters is the garden of Eden, of course. And the man and the woman are at the man eve. And in fact, in one of the letters published in the book, she says it specifically, that you are my Adam and I am the Eve. So we know for a fact that this poem is indeed more than only autobiographical. There is a connection between the poet and the woman inside the poem. But the story of creation is completely revived in this story, in this poem. If picking of the apple caused the downfall of Adam and Eve, if the children of Eve were denied immortality, because what is the characteristic relationship of all paradises that we know? Death dies in paradise. There is no death. And it was after, in many versions of the story, when Eve picked up the apple and suggested it to Adam, that the children of Eve, all of us, were kicked out of paradise and doomed to mortality, not in this poem. In this poem, Adam and Eve see the apple, enter the garden. The temptation, the tree of knowledge, leads to their paradise. In fact, they reach eternity by picking the apple, by accepting knowledge. That's one thing that is fantastic. That's an acknowledgement of love and sexuality as a passport to paradise, rather than as a kicking out of it. But in most versions of the creation story, it's Eve who is held responsible for tempting Adam in the Judeo-Christian version and in the popular versions in my country of birth, which I love, Iran. It's still Eve who is held responsible for the temptation and for deceiving and therefore being the cause of all that. I have to add, parentetically here, that not so in the Quran. In the Quran, it was not Eve who tempted and who deceived Adam. But even some of our best theologians have disregarded that in favor of the Eve who is the temptress. In this poem, every time a decision has to be made, if they have to enter the garden, if they have to pick the apple, she never uses the pronoun we. It's you and I. Manu to. The two pronouns are repeated several times in that poem. So this Eve is completely a different Eve. She's not the temptress. She's not the cause of our fall. And she is proud of doing what she does. But she is also blessed with a companion who doesn't need a scapegoat. She is blessed with a companion who is not going to hold her responsible for tempting him. And she also acknowledges that. And at the end, she tells us it is with this kind of a gender relation. It's with this kind of a man and a woman that we can create paradise. And we can bridge and build light over darkness. And indeed, as we know, she has created this poem, which is considered by many one of the masterpieces of Persian modern literature. So quite clearly, the rapture of tradition, especially when it comes to this redefinition of family life, of gender relation, has been the most difficult for a group of more traditional minded people to accept in Iran. What I find fascinating and what I have believed in and have consistently argued for. And I do that as a feminist, and I'm proud to be one. I say, it's not only the changes that women brought about. Men were also instrumental. That's why I call it a gender revolution. I don't believe in us or them. I believe in us and them, as did Furukh Farrokhzad. Now, you can cherry pick a poem here, a message there in which Farrokhzad is upset about a relationship. But generally speaking, what she has done to gender relations in Iran is unique. Now, this was about gender relations. I want to take a few minutes of your time to talk about what she has done is considered dangerous in Iran, even of today, 60, 70 years later. In a minute, I will talk about Farrokhzad with her biological son. This is Kamiyar Shahpur. The reason I want to start with that is because later on, I will tell you that for the last 10, 11 years of her short life, there is not a single picture of this mother with her only biological child. And we need to discuss these issues. We need to request a change in our laws, in our custodial rights that make not only the mother suffer, but also the child suffer. So I was, this, you know, is, I'm very grateful to Khanumeh Sorayosh Akibayi, who kindly gave me all these pictures that I don't think we had access to. This is Farrokhzad in the leprosarium. And you remember that when she went to make that masterpiece of a film, the house is black. She's the woman sitting there. And you see out of respect for the population there, she's wearing a scarf. And you remember that we talked about the reason that film is a masterpiece partly is because of the relationship she could establish with the inhabitants of this ostracized group of people. And here is another one, Farrokhzad, and the five men who accompanied her to the leprosarium. Oh, I went to the back. And this is, if you remember, the scene in the film, in the classroom. And the son she adopted is the second son, sitting right there. So for the last 11, 10 years of her life, missing any picture of this mother who became an ex-mother because motherhood is not a right in Iran. Motherhood is a privilege. A mother can be denied her right of motherhood. And indeed, she was. So these are some of the pictures in the last five, six years of her life after she adopted Hossein. Hossein Emansuri is there. She's here. And this is Farrokhzad, one of her very happy moments playing guitar with a broom. And the woman next to her is her mother, Turand Khanum Farrokhzad, who was a most delightful person. This is Farrokhzad and her adoptive son, another picture. And you see all the family pictures are also with Hossein. And you never see Kamyard in any of them. This is the woman in green is Farrokhzad. And that's the father. And the woman sitting next to her is Gloria. And the young man is the younger brother who unfortunately passed away. I wanted to tell you about how things have changed in Iran and how threatening these changes are for the other Iran. I think we really can say that Iran is a land of paradoxes and that there are two Iran's. I'm hoping there will be more and more communication between the two. And surely there is. It has started. But we still have a long way to go. Four books in the last few months, few years, have been published in Iran with these amazing titles. You know, Zanzalil, the other one, Nasir Eddinshah, Zanzalil, Penn Hechtman, what do you say? Penn Hechtman, as Arnold Schwarzenegger would say, a girly man. And even Nasir Eddinshah, the epitome, the king who ruled Iran for 50 years, he is now considered Zanzalil. And then these are the pictures. These are the covers of these books. They are fascinating to read. It is really about the fear of this rampant matriarchy that is going to deprive Iran of its culture, that is going to make men prisoners of the home. You know, if in a few years four books that I know can be published with the title Zanzalil, Penn Hechtman in it, we should understand then why Fouroh Farrokhzad was one of the first poets to be banned after the Revolution. And now that finally her poem, because people love her, because she has become an icon, because she's considered a cultural hero, her books are published, but in a most mutilated form. And if you compare the published books in recent decades in Iran, in the last decade in Iran, with the original ones, you will discover something fascinating, that the poems that have been excised, that have been cut, have disappeared from the face of the page, are generally speaking in one form or another about family relationships. You know, we talked about how there has been about 82 or 3 letters of Farrokhzad that have been published so far. We don't know who has censored them. There are exceptionally few, if any, that have not been censored. So I have a few of the original letters that I also have the censored for, published and available in Iran. So I compared them line by line, word for word. Even in the letters, the sections that are cut relate to family. So does it surprise us then that even before the ratification of the constitution, even before the Islamic... the Republic of Iran had turned into the Islamic Republic of Iran, the one law that was immediately resented was the family law. And it's not like they completely overhauled everything. They gave some custodial rights to the mother. They banned polygamy. Divorce was no longer a unilateral right. That, more than the law regarding the veil, was the first one. The Islamic Republic of Iran knew very well, or at least thought very well, that to build an Islamic country you have to revise the family structure. Hence the family law was completely... was the first one to be resented. I find this quite a telling phenomenon. Now, how much more time I have, OK, doctor? You know, I also wanted to talk a little bit about... because it's such an important issue to me about the issue of adoption. Farooq Farooqzad went to a leprosarium at a time when it was thought leprosy is a contagious disease, and she adopted a son from that leprosarium, brought him home, and stayed with him. Took care of him at times when he was traveling. He stayed with the mother. You know, Farooq had a very busy life, and she suffered all her life in her attempt to reconcile the life of a mother with that of a poet. She never quite succeeded. We know why. It's not an easy thing to do. You need leisure. You need economic independence. You need what Virginia Woolf said, a room of your own. And I love Virginia Woolf. Her work has really had an impact on me, and I want to add to a room of one's own that, yes, you need a room of your own to be able to become a writer. But more importantly, you also need the permission to leave that room and to enter it at will. Otherwise, that room is going to turn into a cell, or a prison cell. That's a definition, another definition of sex segregation to me. It denies you that freedom to leave at will. That's central to Farooq's poetry. When Farooq's adopted Hossein-e-Manseurie and to this day, we do not still have a Persian word for adoption. The words we have are derogatory. And they're not a single word, they're a phrase, bachay sar-e-rahi. A child picked up by the road. How insulting can that be? Or Farzand Khande, a Swadizan, a child only by name. Adoption was not. An option. When Farooq's adopted Hossein-e-Manseurie and we know for a fact that she did talk to Mr. and Mrs. Manseurie and it was with their permission that she adopted Hossein-e-Manseurie. It's true that five years after the adoption of Hossein after Farrokhzad passed away, that's pre-revolutionary time, for a few years they changed the law of adoption. If a husband and wife could not have a child for five years, they could apply for adoption. But even then, a single parent could not adopt a child. And Furuq Farrokhzad adopted Hossein-e-Manseurie as a single parent. So, I want to stay within my time limit and end with what I think is the other side of the coin of what Farrokhzad wanted to do with the family. As you might recall, I said one of the most endearing things to me about Farrokhzad was a number of things. The two that we discussed in the last three sessions was one that she knew telling the truth is her obligation but she didn't stop there. She also argued that hearing the truth is her right. And in a culture that for over thousands of years our motto has been to tell the truth, of Doreniq. That's not a small deed. And I'm not saying she never lied, but Furuq herself has said repeatedly in her letters that Furuq is not infallible. She might have, but her ideal was to be as honest as she can be. And I think most of the time she succeeds. The second thing, and we talked about the role of Farrokhzad in modernity, in Iranian modernity, her fight and struggle from early childhood, in fact, for freedom, all kinds of freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of movement. And we talked about to have a voice, to own her body, to fall in love. But even there she didn't stop there. She always argued that with freedom comes responsibility. You cannot ask for freedom and not accept the responsibilities that come with it. You remember the first poem she published was a poem beginning with I sent. That was after the coup d'etat of 1953. All the fingers were pointing at someone else. It was the American government. It was the Tudeh party. It was this, it was that. And here's a woman, just barely 20. She comes and breaks that discourse by screaming and saying, but I am the one who sent. And she always did that. She accepted responsibility for the freedom she sought. She did the same with family. And I want to end with one of the poems that is anthologized over and over again. But I want to look at it from a different perspective. It's the poem, I feel sorry for the garden. De la m'barreau, je bords je me sous elle. So you know it's a woman, it's a poet who sees the garden that she loves. That obviously is a metaphor for the country. Is dying. And she holds every member of her family responsible for that death of the garden. First, let me read a few lines of this poem to you that was published in the 1960. I think the first time this poem was published was in 1963 or 64. I want to suggest this is the first and the most prescient acknowledgement of an upcoming revolution in Iran. I don't know of anybody else. In prose or in poetry, who acknowledged death and destruction. Let me just read a few lines of it. I hope you will read the whole poem. It's really an amazing poem. All day long, the sound of blasts and explosions can be heard. Instead of flowers, instead of flowers, our neighbors plant mortars and machine guns in their garden. They store gunpowder in their covered pools. The kids in our neighborhood, the kids in our neighborhood fill their backpacks with little bombs. And then after this prediction of bloodshed, of death and destruction, she talks about the father who is reading Nasekh-e-Tawarikh and Shahnameh Ferdozi, old glories of Iran. Books about Iran in its glorious days and is not feeling responsible for the death of the garden. She talks about the mother who is constantly at her prayer rug, praying and blowing to flowers and to trees and to everything that is dying. And the flower, the brother, the intellectual, she tells us her anguish and her despair is so small that every night he can go to a bar and drink it away. And the sister, the sister every time she comes to our house is pregnant and she covers herself with perfume so that the poverty of the garden doesn't touch her skirt. But again, she doesn't stop there. And she says, I know this garden can be taken to a hospital. And she insists three times, me donna, me donna, me donna. I know it. I know it can be cured. I know it. I often wonder what would have happened to our history, to all of us, had our politicians listen a bit more carefully than what was written in this poem. And others like it. This is the first one that I've come across and this is the one I absolutely love. So I want to end with a happy note. I have argued for the last 12, 13 years because we constantly talk about two revolutions in the modern Iran. The constitutional revolution of 1905, 1911, the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But in fact, a more important revolution has also happened in Iran. A gender revolution. A bloodless revolution. Surely it does not match the traditional definitions of revolutions. But if our other two revolutions only managed to replace one tyrant for another, one tyrant who was educated in a house in which democracy did not rule, in this revolution we are changing the structure of power, not in the halls of power, but in every single home, in every kitchen and in every bedroom. That's how I think Iran is changing. That's the hope for our future of Iran. And I hope that we will all see that happy day where equality and justice rules at home and in the country because you cannot have democracy and justice in a country if there is no democracy and justice at home. Thank you.