 So I would like to welcome everyone to our third event in the series organized by the SOA's library, Decolonizing Working Group, specifically made up by myself. My name is Angelica Vaskera and my colleague, Farzana Kureishi, Ludi Price and Amapoku. We initiated the series of events and we called it Hidden History, precisely because we seek to highlight stories, hidden stories, stories that are not so much into the mainstream or, you know, so much known. That's why we sort of call it Hidden Histories. And they seek to highlight stories from Africa, Caribbean and Asian community in the UK and beyond and bringing to light a shared vision of the colonizing knowledge production and documenting the unique voices and experiences of diasporas in Britain and across the world. That is the aim of the series. And as I said, today we are very pleased to open our third event. And we are very, very grateful to be able to host our speaker today from the collective of Black Iranians. And the title of the event tonight is Ziad Zivas, which is in Iranian, sorry, I probably mispronounced it completely, I don't speak Iranian. And it means that Black is beautiful. Therefore, the collective invites you tonight for a conversation about the importance of language in identity formation and in seeing ourselves. And I will not say too much about the collective because we have in here tonight also our chairs from the Center of African Studies, the Center for Iranian Studies, they were gonna say more about the collective. But just a few words to say that it is a very interesting, creative and critically conscious initiative proposing an Iranian culture to stand fully at its Black and Africa intersections. I don't wanna, so yeah, I would like to say more but we have, as I said, the very evening. And so I will now pass it on to my colleagues from SOAS. As I said, from the SOAS Center of African Studies, we are very pleased to welcome Dr. Ida Jovayanez. She's the head of the Africa section of the Faculty of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. And then Dr. Farzad Narges Farzad who is a lecturer in Iranian Studies, Persian literature. And also she is the chair of the Center for Iranian Studies that as I said today, together with the Center of African Studies is hosting this event as part of the Hidden History series of the SOAS Decolonizing Working Group. I hope I said everything that, I haven't forgot to mention something, if I did, please correct me. Just one housekeeping information. Basically you will be, as an attendee, you can post your questions in the Q&A box, not in the chat, the chat is not, the chat is disabled. So we would like you to put all your questions, comments, any, you know, things you'd like to say to the panelists in the Q&A chat. And the chairs at the end of the presentation will pick the questions and hopefully we'll be able to answer as many as we can. But as you know, with Zoom and with the time constraint, we probably won't be able to go over all of the questions. You can always email them to us afterwards and stay in touch with us as well in that way. Finally to mention just the next event coming up in the series. My colleague, Ludie, can actually remind me the dates. Ludie, sorry, I should know. I think it's the 23rd of January. 22nd. 22nd, excuse me. 22nd of January. So please watch the space. We have True Heart Theatre coming. It's a Chinese theatre production company. And so it's a Chinese diaspora and that will be the next event in the series. So please keep following us and keep engaging with us through the series which has proven so far to be extremely important and has created a really interesting debate and conversation that we really hope we can take forward as we proceed with the different events and different conversations. But for now, we are so, so pleased. I just can't tell you how happy I am to be able to welcome the collective for Black Iranians outstanding, incredible, incredible group. So welcome again. And I will now pass it on to Ida. Dr. Ida Jovayyan is our first chair of tonight's event. And Ida from the Federal Reconstudies is going to say a few words of welcome. Thank you very much. Hi, thank you very much, Angelica. That was fantastic. I'll just speak for one minute just to introduce myself. So first of all, everybody, welcome to Sia Zibast. I hope I said that okay, I probably got it all wrong as well. Black is beautiful, which is organized by Hidden Histories. Again, Farzana, Angelica, thank you so much for doing these events. They're just really amazing. So I am Ida Haji-Vayanes and I am lecturer of Swahili Studies here at SOAS. And I'm here to represent SOAS Center for African Studies. And it's really amazing to have these kind of cross-regional events like we have today. So, which are looking at Blackness and Iran and Africa. I'm originally from Zanzibar in East Africa. And we have a huge community there of what we call the Washi-Razi. And the Washi-Razi are people who came from Iran and settled and have so many myths and realities about the Washi-Razi. So today is really exciting for me in that I might be able to sort of like learn a lot about my own people by being here. I don't take too much time, but I just wanted to flag up something. We have a new degree, which is BA Africa and Black Diaspora, which kicks off September this year. And this will be the kind of sort of like subjects and discussions that we will have in that degree. So please look it up. And I will now pass the button to my colleague, Narges Farzad, who will say a bit more about her region. Thank you very much. Thank you, Idar-jan. Salam, and welcome, my dear. A warm welcome to all our panelists and to all our audience. Angelica, there is a message. Someone has requested whether we can enable the transcript. I think they need it for... I don't know whether... I don't want to interfere with any setup here. So that was a little bit of a buy-to-buy. My name is Narges Farzad, and I look after matters, Persian studies in terms of language and literature at SOAS. I also co-convene the MA Iranian studies and wear another hat, which is the chair of Iranian studies. And this is such an amazing event. I am delighted to be invited to participate in this because for a while, I have been following a couple of the participants here on their Instagram webpage. And it's such an amazing bonus to actually be able to have them join us. The topic is extraordinary in so many ways because there are so many Iranians of my generation who would not really ever think about the presence of a black diaspora in Iran. And maybe because Iran is incredibly tribal, if you like, you know, we have the Kurdistan or, you know, Baluchis in Baluchistan. And we think of Bousheh, we never... Sadly, when I was growing up, you just adjust. You adjust to the music, to the beats in the city, to the clothing, to the physical features, et cetera. But of course, you know, coming to UK, then I learned so much more thinking there are so many layers of this history and you sort of rather warily with the trepidation, hold the mirror to yourself, to your culture, to your history, to all the things that you perhaps so wrongfully boasted about of being inclusive, being believing equality and, you know, openness to every human being. And you realize that actually quite a few miles away from the truth. So I am delighted to, on behalf of SOAS, along with my colleague, Ida, to welcome this amazing group, the representatives of the Collective for Black Iranians. And with the Siazibost, Black is Beautiful, who will be taking us on this amazing chapter of our history, I imagine. I don't want to guess what you will say and I won't introduce you. I don't want to take a minute more of your time than necessary. So please, Ida, shall I start by inviting Priscilla first to take the lead on the next stage, Ida? Thank you so much for having us. I'm just first checking that everyone can hear me okay. And everyone can see the presentation okay as it will hopefully be taking on the entire screen. Okay, wonderful. Well, good evening, everyone. Salam, Hamegi, Khayli, Khoshu, Madin. You're so welcome wherever you are joining us from. It's an honor to be here tonight. Thank you SOAS for inviting us. Thank you for thinking of the work of the Collective when you think of Iran. My name is Priscilla, I'm the founder of the Collective. I'm also a human rights jurist and a filmmaker. I live in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in West Africa. And I'm really delighted to be in the presence of two of the co-founders, Pardis and Alex Escandarcho and Pardis and Koyho joining us from Kanadova and the United States, as well as our resident historian, Bita Bahulizade, as well as our residents, artists Gelore and Sahar and Pego Bahaduri joining us from Iran, Tehran. So it's a transnational team at the image of our identities, whether it is on the African side of our intersection, our Blackness, our Iranian identity. For me, siyazibost, meaning Black is beautiful in Persian, has always been words that I needed to say. I was born in France and raised in Tehran by my Iranian mother and family. And I spent my time between Tehran, Esfahan, Mashat, Shulman, and pretty much Central and Northern of Iran. Like a lot of Iranians joining us tonight, I have memories of drives up North, memories of spending summers in Esfahan where my grandfather is from and memories of going to school in Tehran. The only difference being that I'm also Black as well as African and Iranian. So I came with all my differences and I always felt the need within the Iranian community, my community, and within all its diasporic iterations, the need, the urgent need to say siyazibost, Black is beautiful. And it is through that, that's the collective with others like Pariz, Parisa, Pegor, Sahar, some Black, some not Black, some Black Iranians, some Africans, some Iranians who also felt that similar need. And why? Well, because if you think of the question of race and Blackness in my community, I mean the portion that's Iranian of it, that's what it looks like, absence of conversation, silences, hushes. And truly, whatever we want to do or say, as you can all see on the slide, we are here, right? You can see for those who follow the work of the collective khizron at the bottom left of the slide, hopefully. And we were always here, Black folks in the Iranian community, fully part of the community. And that's what we're going to discover this evening or rediscover ourselves for a lot of us. And truth is for us, Black and Iranians, me doing in, it was never an absence. It was never a silence because I always had the reflection of myself. And you hear from other of us from the collective, some of us come from families who are Afro-Iranians and like me who come from parts African and parts Iranian. But all of us share in common, having heard words, reactions to the color of our skin. In Persian, they're written here for the Farsi Zabon who are here and can read it. The most common one being Siach, which is Black. And it takes us to the importance of language and what happens when we are in a space that's void and the only words that we hear are words that actually keep repeating the color of our skin but within a context that doesn't necessarily recognize the fullness of who we are. So it's words like Siach being called out on the streets, my entire childhood in Tehran, as well as while navigating the Iranian diaspora. I have quite a bit of anecdotes in the Iranian-British diaspora in London as it's quite relevant. And also of being hushed when wanting to say Siach, of being told Siach, in Ha'afochia, What is Black? We don't have Black and White. This is all importations from the West. You are bringing this from America. I am not American just so you know, even though I speak English, like many of us on the panel tonight. And it's in this cacophony of words, of asking us, but why are you Black? Is it because of the sun? I was asked pretty much my entire childhood, but also as an adult woman when going to the south of Iran and finally discovering, you know, the Afro-Iranian communities of the south also being called out in Boucher, Siach, in Bandar Abbas, Siach by non-Black folks, and realizing with others this important need to add Z-bust at the end. And as we like it at the collective, we will play you one of the very first, one of the not very first, but one of the many visual productions that we're so privileged to do in collaboration with many artists from the community, from the diaspora and beyond, sitting at the intersection or not. And let's just listen to this very short snippet. Sahar, please if you want to jump in. Hi, yes. Can everyone hear my voice? Is that OK? Yes, we can. Perfect. So this piece is very important and the whole process of making it was very important because whilst I don't experience the community the same way I think Paddy's, Paddy's, Sapega, Prasidi and so on do, I've always felt this, I've always seen the flags, if that makes sense, from the community. And it was like talking to people within the community back home or here that you would kind of see those flags, especially when I would describe stories with my closest friends who are black and see their responses and be very anti-black in the comments they would make. So it was that, you know, those things that I experienced, I was like, OK, there's a problem here. There's something, there's a lot of education that needs to be done. So it's it's so interesting to see and so powerful to see these stories come to life visually as well. Because it's one thing to feel it like for myself, for example, when speaking to people back home or here and seeing it visually come to life, it's very powerful and it has made, I think, it's sort of, C.O.Z. Boss has started to make a massive impact. So and I think just in general with C.O.Z. Boss and creating it was very, very powerful. And you can also find many of the visual representations of black is beautiful C.O.Z. Boss brought by the talented Sahar Waleishi, who just spoke now, who's also Iranian, if she didn't talk about herself, so I'm going to make sure we know who's Iranian from Central and the South, one of the resident artists of the collective who spent a lot of time listening to our stories and our experiences. And it's through this creative collaboration that we bring our stories of belonging, our stories of being standing at this intersection of being black and Iranian. I'll add this if she wants to take it over. Hello, my name is Pardes McCoy. I am a native born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm now living in Brooklyn, New York, one of the five co-founders of the collective and give you a little bit of background on who we are. We are a group of artists and activists and storytellers. And really, you know, the collective was born out of necessity and actually a lot of frustration because there was a lack of seeing and hearing our voices in the stories that we hear about Iran. So the collective brings for the first time really, you know, voices, our voices of black and Afro-Iranians from Iran and the Iranian diaspora, whether it's, you know, in Iran or Canada or the US where I'm at, Germany, the UK, we're all over the place. And our goals to really make sure that the conversations around blackness are held within the Iranian diaspora. These stories of black and Afro-Iranians need to be told from our perspective and told from everybody worldwide. We really want to make sure that conversations around race, around blackness and who we are are really expanded and, you know, allow room for every point of view, a diverse point of views and narratives, including ours. Thank you. So the collective is the creative and critically conscious initiative proposing an Iranian culture that stands at its black and African intersections. My name is Pega. I'm from Mina, Bandar with us. It's a city located just above Persian Gulf and I'm connecting tonight from Iran, Iran. So what we do in the collective is that we create space, language and we on Earth histories that we will discover together later in the series. And we just want to share some light on the fact that we exist in our history and our original stories and the things that we all have to say tonight. Alex, yeah. Hello, everybody. My name is Alex, I'm tuning in from Canada and I'm one of the six co-founders here over at the collective. Our approach is grounded in African history and wisdom. We use African literature. We turn to African literature, thought leadership from not just Africa, but around the world, from the black African diaspora of the U.S., you know, from France, Fanon. This piece here is from Chinera Chebe and it says, until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. And this is a theme that I think has become much more common in the last two years, really about, you know, what perspectives are we getting history from? This art piece here was made by the collective in collaboration with China Dumas, a black American artist in the U.S. And the one on the bottom right is with artist Kimia Fatih, an American, American, Iranian, an Iranian American artist based in the U.S. So in our approach to create our space and take our space and say C.R.Z. Boss, we do that through collaboration. Hi, everyone. A lot of the work of the collective addresses the sort of erasures that have excluded and denied and rejected black Iranian histories. And actually there are as old as we have references to Iran, we have references to black Iranians as well. And so this is just a map. It's a 10th century map done by Astakhi. I teach it. I've printed out in front of me in my office right now. But I love this map because it really shows how our understanding of the region was so different historically. And the fact that we see Iran and Africa as so divorced from each other as so far away from each other is really a reflection of worldviews and geographies that have really changed in the past few centuries. So if we could go to the next slide, I've labeled this map, it's a multidirectional map. And what it's done is it's compressed the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean into one sort of body of water so that Iran is actually facing East Africa. It's facing Zanzibar. And it's included on the same page. This is not something that we'd see usually in a map of the Indian Ocean today. They're usually like away from each other. And this is the sort of worldview that we are keeping in mind that this is a long history of exchange and not just migration, but also belonging on both coasts. Yeah, Fikon, you want to start? Yes, thank you. So a lot of us, we thought about why we're here and why we look the way we look. The question is that for many of us, we think that why we're black? Is it because of the sun? Is it because we stayed in the sun too long? And of course we don't believe it's because of the sun, but believe me when I tell you that a lot of the people around us, a lot of our family members, people we meet every day on the streets, they believe we're black because we stayed in the sun for too long. And of course this is not the story. Yeah, and I think Fikon, John, what you're pointing towards with the sun is also one of the direct impacts of the absence of dialogue, right? Of the absence of conversation is that it gives room to so much ignorance. And when it comes to, you know, our community and questions of race and blackness, this is where we stand in incomplete ignorance because of this absence of language. And yet these two pieces that you see, one is produced by the collective with resident artist Minot, Jafar as you can see, and the other one is a photograph. And obviously we're not always keen to show visual representation of our ancestors standing at the intersection because sometimes, unfortunately, it is the portrayal of situations of enslavement, like on this particular photograph. But because we're in this, as the work of Vita Bahru-Lizadeh, who's also assistant professor at Bucknell has shown is the erasure of the effort of the abolition of enslavement in Iran only in 1929. And what all that has caused through the erasure of these conversations. And we really invite you to dig into the work of the collective, into the work of our resident historian and others to, you know, find out more about what it is that was erased. But it led us in a community, including in its diaspora, where race that includes, and conversations about race that includes blackness just don't exist, right? And yet you have the history of Khizran that exists. This piece that you see here is actually telling the story of Nargis and Hodjian Oni, but we also told the story, who are also black women who were enslaved from Africa into Iran. So stories of migration that are forced, but also stories of migration that are chosen, stories of belonging, of coming from Iran and already being in Iran and being black as well. All these stories are the stories that we bring with the collective. Of course, making them available in a format that's hopefully digestible for all, but always with the urgency of saying that we were there, we are here, and we will always be here, and that's Siyar Zibaust. Black is beautiful. As we touched on at the beginning of the presentation, the collective was founded out of the necessity to see ourselves in Iranian history. And often that means having to rewrite ourselves into the history and put ourselves in focus. I just want to take it away. Yeah, I think the collective was really started because we saw this need. We saw a lack of our own stories and needed to rewrite the history. Black history in all of the Iranian diaspora, including Iranian American and Iranian British community was lacking in black stories. You can see in the photo on the left that there's one man of color and we took this, we rewrote it and made the focus him. This is really representative of what we do at the collective. We want to make sure that discussions on the Iranian identity include blackness because blackness and Iranian-ness are not separable. And also what's perhaps interesting to note, having navigated our diasporas for all of us is that we've seen this painting being shown. We've seen some of these photographs being described and discussed in academia, by Iranian scholars, but never, never was there a mention of the eunuch present on the photo, the African eunuch present on the photo, meaning a young black African boy who was enslaved from Africa during the time of enslavement who was castrated and put into the herrings to act as the eunuch, the guardian of the herring, taking care of the administrative affairs of the herring. During Khadjar era, how can we show this painting and ignore that history? And what does it feel when you're standing at this intersection, like I am, like Pegor is like Kandis is, like Alex is, like so many of us are, when you are in these spaces, and this never mentioned. In the same way that visual representation of blackness is minimal or non-existent, the representation of black folks in Iranian literature has also been almost exclusively from the pen of non-black folks. And I say almost exclusively because to leave a margin, anything is possible, but most Iranians in and outside of Iran really don't have the opportunity to read narratives about the black Iranian experience. The same way that we're raised in other aspects of Iranian consciousness, we're also raised in literature. So read with the collective, hashtag read with the collective of the series that we brought to introduce audiences to black Iranian literature. These books feature writers that are black Iranian, Afro-Iranian, African-Iranian, and we really showcase their work to show narratives that give us agency through nuanced stories about us and for us. So last year we dove into Nigerian-British novelist Victoria Princewell's book In the Palace of Flowers. It's set in the Golustan Palace of the Qajar Dynasty in Iran and it centers around the narrative of two enslaved peoples, Jamila and Abelamek who are African, of African descent. And it's the first time that I personally have heard stories like the story of Jamila. It's an imagined story, but it's also inspired by historical events. It shows that black people have been and are a part of the Iranian history. Stories like this and the stories that we talked about earlier like Lizaran and Hajin An-Nan, Nargis, these are black Iranian women whose stories are just not put in the center. So we center them at the collective to make sure that they're no longer discarded or erased. Yeah, and then we followed up that read with also seeing race, which is because of dissertation to give context in the Palace of Flowers. And then we followed that up with a black book by Mateo Askari-Four who pens the world of 22 year old Darren, aka Buck, who begins working in white corporate America and becomes a token black guy at a tech startup. It's a great book, fascinating read. And we produced some interviews with Mateo whose father is Iranian and mother is Jamaican. He speaks Farsi and stands at this intersection being a native of Brooklyn, New York. And at the collective, we wanna show these stories from someone that looks like Mateo, that looks like us at the collective, that people that look like us can think about and write about these experiences, whether they're in corporate America or whether they're in Iran, wherever they are. And what can we learn from them as a community that he is a part of, that he represents? He's also working on a second novel and in February, we will be hosting an event around Black Book. And during the process, we try to make everything from book available, whether there's excerpts, whether there's three copies that we had given away in a contest over at our social media pages. And in this case, sometimes we translated in Persian, which is pretty often. Can I take it away? Sure. Hello. My name is Gelare Hoshkozaran. And along with my colleagues, Morris Sheen, Alohiari, and Nimo Behravon, I've been working with the collective to do the translation work and make sure that the wonderful work that they're doing is also accessible to folks in Iran and the larger prison speaking community. So, I mean, through the process, it was all around a learning process. It is still a learning process. So from the get go, we decided to start a glossary of words that either didn't have a common translation or revisiting some of the words that have been translated with a different lens and seeing what would be the alternatives and how the interpretations and how the connotations would shift if we change one thing to another. So for instance, one of the first words was to translate anti-blackness, seosities, seosities, or revisiting words such as racist or racism that has been translated to Nezod Parasti. And we thought that because it has such a strong kind of punch to it, Iranian community, would need a more subtle verb, a subtle word of understanding how racism is not exactly always in its extremist forms that have been identified in history and but looking more closely into how their biases are formed around how different folks have been racialized through history. So we shifted, for instance, the word, sorry, Nezod Parasti, Nezod Zadeh. So someone who's been, you know, who has biases against race more than someone who praises a certain race, which is, you know, white supremacy. And also the other challenges or some of the interesting questions were, you know, there were videos and voices from home where, you know, there's a person who identifies as black and there's another person or their mother is not black. And we were thinking, you know, when we acknowledge black Iranians also how to not feed this perpetual myth of whiteness of the rest of the Iranians, speaking of, you know, decolonization of the mind and all these years and, you know, centuries of identifying more with the white race and how not to perpetuate that as well. Because believing that, you know, the more that we see closely, we realize how much closer we are culturally to the cultures of Africa and black folks more than, you know, the white. So, but also like what was interesting to me was growing, you know, being born and raised in Iran, you know, my introduction to a lot of, even, you know, as Priscilla mentioned, you know, there was either no language or if it existed, it was anti-black. But even the positive relations to Africa in terms of the production of knowledge and culture through the global black resistance movement in among the Iranian left, it was always thought of as this thing that existed elsewhere. And it was the plight of the black folk that the left in Iran identified with, but it was less of seeing that how the two are converged and, you know, and seeing, you know, how it could be left and black in Iran. But there was no room for that kind of imagination. It was always this kind of distant source of solidarity and inspiration. So, you know, being introduced to Langston Hughes or Toni Morrison or Fanon, you know, those were folks that I was introduced to first in Farsi or Persian, then in English. But that connection was not quite made that there's also black Iranians that could be part of the same worldview or struggle or thought. And the collective, for me and people like me, made that connection. And I think, you know, we've language, when we've language that the interesting experience also is how language is alive and how language can actually evolve and change and take into consideration new points of view or perhaps points of view that were overlooked, ignored, silenced. So how do we, it's not so much, if there is no language, because there is an absence of conversation or because the only language available, as we saw earlier in the presentations, either one that praises colorblindness, Makhissiosi, Fidna Adorim. We don't have these things. These things are from somewhere far in New York or language that's anti, and for a lot of us colorblindness is anti-blackness in many ways because it erases who you are and your experiences, you know. It's very difficult to imagine, you know, it's not so difficult because this is how I grew up, like Pegor, like I know many other black Iranian kids, but to go through experiences as a child and not have the language to say, mom and June, they've been in Pesadenturi, mom and I have that, the way this kid talks to me, it was not just making fun of the way I look because I look that way, it felt that it was a bit deeper. And I remember Crystal Clear having this conversation with my white Iranian mother, you know, and she would look at me and she would have, but she, she's against, because in her reality it didn't exist, therefore it probably didn't exist in her daughter's reality because we're so focused on saying that we're all the same, that we erase people's differences because yes, we're all the same, but it's okay to have differences that, you know, we can create language on so that then we can be different and the same together. And that's what, let's talk about blackness is about, you know, what happens when there are conversations about who we are, instead of being silenced and ignoring it for whatever intellectual calories or dishonesty we're going through. And Pegor, if she wants to take it away for this one, muted. I think you said don't say me or that's not muted. Thank you, it's fixed. And yeah, people say sia or black to us when they see us somewhere. And it's the main thing that I've been called throughout my life, but when I look at myself and like I see myself, I see that I'm sia and also sabze, which means mixed and Iranian of course, and black and Minabi and Southern from Southern parts of Iran and woman and et cetera. And I'm a lot more than the word that people are calling me with most of the times. I mean, at least three times a day, I hear that when I'm walking down a random street in any city of Iran. And this is what's important, right? It's to what happens when we break those silences and we share our experiences. What kind of point of views are we gonna form? And so Pegor, go ahead. I see you're ready with the family. Thank you. This is what happens when we do that and when we break the silence and we try to talk about it and when we have difficult conversations about our experiences and through those conversations we can understand each other better because there's this lack of information. There's this lack of understanding between us and other people. They just view us as black. But they're like siaedige and they don't try to understand our grounds and what we think of ourselves. And so again, we try to have this difficult conversations but it's working. We can perhaps, for some of you have seen some of these pieces but I think what's important is in our work at The Collective, we stay also very aware of our diasporic identities. We know very well what it means to be Iranian. Look at this panel, even from so-as. You know, we're from London, different African cities, Iran, the US. So in the same way, black African identities are also diasporic. So we bring, you know, the wealth of cinema, of literature that exists, that is black, that is African from different parts of the world, whether it is with this piece by the incredible Usman Samben, a Senegalese filmmaker who's considered I don't like to say the father of African cinema but he's considered one of the main of the African cinema and, you know, we translate these pieces. Asan, if you see the title of these pieces, Dordar-i-Siyor, which, you know, just like Pegal, I was called out Siyor all the time, every day, every day. And to this day, as an older woman who goes to Iran, whether it's the south or the north, I am still called out. So what is the story of Dordar-i-Siyor, who goes to Paris in this particular situation? What does the sound of a woman of African descent who lives in Capo Verde, what does she have to say in her story of belonging, of being Afro-Portuguese, of African descent living in Capo Verde and sharing a narrative similar to, you know, that of some of us on this panel and many others in Iran and it's diaspora. And so, you know, we keep saying, deal with it, it's a diverse, diverse world. Who wants to listen to Cesare Ivorra? A beautiful piece and so many of us can relate and I can assure you I do not speak Portuguese and I'm sure many of us don't, but can still relate to this piece and that's still the power of language when we are seen. Oh, sorry, this is playing again. No, why not? All right, which take us to voices from home. Cesare as Khorne, as Vatan, as Taha-e-de-le-moon. Truly, Hasan Voran, Cesare as Taha-e-de-le-moon, but we can't translate this into English. By the way, we do translations on both ends and sometimes we're stuck, we don't find the English translation of Taha-e-de-le-moon. You're welcome for suggestions in the comments on that one and this takes us to voices from home and I'm so honored to start with Pegla's story who's our resident storyteller at The Collective and brings a story of Nub, of Bandar Abbas, of the South of everywhere and of ways of being Iranian that should be centered, have to be centered, that we know we center at The Collective. Let's listen to her. I'm realizing this version, I have the translation or doesn't, I couldn't see it. But you can find the piece on all our socials and it's the celebration. I mean, Pegla, you're right here. I feel like you should be. Yeah, thank you. So one of our models at The Collective is your experience is your expertise and your experience is your expertise, is yours to tell, is yours to share and find eco in this world. So I will let you do that and listen to some of the pieces we made from The Voices from Home series and we can travel from Bandar Boucher to Canada, to Los Angeles, to Abadan which is the city in the southern parts of Iran and the point of this series is once again to say that we are here not only through our Bandari entertainment which is the music from the southern parts of Iran or through our exotic backgrounds as some people tell it but through our stories and what we have to say. So let's listen to some of these pieces. HEDATUNI NESSABGHE DARI BAHANEDAMINE GAIDAM SABGHE KARI TUNE YA SUKOTAM KAFI AUSEDE DELLARI MIMONEGI A KHAILI HATU FASTELE DARI NAMAN NEMITAR SAMEZ ALAZIM BALAN ESBET DAKUFNAM BOKHARE BAHAMATUN DARTAM DURASE CHAMDAK NABUDAM FURAM BALI KHABARE SIDE PAYSARAM ZAWON DAROMADAHAN BEGY PASKARAN NINJE GLEHA INAKE LEVEL SHONI DARADE LEVEL MA ASAK CHI BIDONAN AZAB KARDAN DEPARTMENT MEH NECROASIM, RAPTERIPE SELAM MAH NECROASIM, RAPTERIPE ASABODAN It's not necessary to tell anyone that you can talk to your sister about it. I am proud of myself for being black. I am proud of myself for being black. The situation is very strange. The city is taking a negative lesson. But the school is happy. I remember the first days of school when they gave us books. But I was in football twice. Because I was a teacher. I was more passionate about football until I was in school. At first, I was like that. I was playing football. I was thinking that I would be like that in my 10-year career in the world. Every football game has its own meaning. I always thought that I can't be black in football. Until one day I was in the office of the youth team. Every time I was in the office, I became an old man. That man was black. He was in the air. I asked him who he was playing football with. He said that he was black. He was black. He was playing football. I never thought that I would become black. I asked him why he was black. I was like that. I was in whatever school I was in. There was no point in looking at him. I was not interested in life. After some years, I was in the 55th grade. I was in the field of football for some time. I was at the school next to our team. We had a meeting here in Zabi. It was a good news for me, unfortunately. One day, I was in a hurry. I thought I would like to be my friend. I went to the same place. I saw that there was a field, a vegetable field, that many people like to be with me. Maybe I would like to be my friend, so that I can always listen to them. But I understood that I have a field, a vegetable field, a good field, a good field. So I thought that I would like to have a child, so that if I could spend a day with him, I would remember him. And that's how it happened. Every time I felt uncomfortable, I thought that from everything else that they say, they say that I am really, really, my own vegetable field. And that's how it happened. I am really, really, my own vegetable field. So every time I felt that my own vegetable field, I accepted it. It was black. One day, when I was in school, I thought I would like to be my friend. We had all our other pieces produced by The Collective in collaboration with Different Voices. We also present films that were made, and that's the few films that are made at the Center Black and Afro-Iranian stories in ways that, you know, keeps their agencies. This is from a film, because we're always asked. It's from a film named POP. As you can see, written in Farsi for those who can read in Farsi. And we'll be happy to share any information on these pieces, just to note that the Afro-Iranian gentleman is the father of Sara Farajzadeh, who's one of the resident storyteller and who's film we've watched earlier. This takes us to Siozibos, the very last segment of our presentation with you guys. And let's just play this piece, produced by the collective, with Sahar Wolishi. We're lucky enough to have with us tonight. And let's see who in the audience remembers this song. And please, let us know in the chat. I'm not reading it, but I'm hoping somebody will. I could play it. I actually played a lot for my children, FYI, so. We have three little ones, and they're obsessed with this. And it's the kind of visual representations that may seem like, Right? Meaning, what is this? It's just children sitting doing that. No, it's actually really powerful visual. It was my first time seeing the song with hands that look like mine when I was younger. It was my first time, and I'm in my 30s. And I know I'm not the only one. I know it's the reality for all of us. There is no visual representation of Blackness that's positive, that's saying that we are here, that we're a part of the community. When conversations about Blackness in the Iranian community take place, but also in its region, but we're not here to talk about the entire region. It's a conversation that concerns the West. That's not something that concerns, you know, Iranian. Yes, if you look at the Western, the beauty, we look at my slip, but the beauty standard in our Jameh, they're very Western centric, right? Let's get the softest, I mean, anyone please unmute yourselves and take part in this, because I think we've all heard different versions and very harmful of Western, white, centric beauty criteria within our community with the obsession of operating our noses and looking very white. And of course, we've also heard within the diaspora, you know, folks complaining about it because you're on the fire line. That's the word. I mean, we clearly have that because in the Southern parts of Iran, when people try to get married, it's like it's still not common for a whiter folks to marry Black people. And when my parents wanted to get married, they couldn't do it for like 10 years because my mother was from a whiter family and my father was Black, so they had like conflicts and they were like, no, my daughter is not married, which means we will not let our daughter marry this guy. And it's still like that today, like people bleach their skin with heavy chemicals just to look lighter or use filters because everyone is like, if you're whiter, then you're prettier. That Iran. And that's fair is beautiful and all this is very toxic and harmful. Society behaviors that are not just true to our community, but unfortunately a reality that concerns many, many societies around the world. And that's what truly the collective is about is to say these words, C-A-Z-Boston. This is a visual representation of some of the work that we have been doing at the collective, where we also use fabric, a Hormazalan fashion. You see the Iranian carpets on the floor. You see the on-care fabric. You see the Western African boo-boo, which is an African garment, where in mainly Western African countries, you see the Russaris and everyone in these photos are standing at this intersection. We also have Nadez standing with his mother, his father being Jamaican and being wrapped with the on-care fabric, which in and in itself is not African fabric. That would be another panel, but is representative of what African fabric looks like. And it's wanting to shift those narratives, parties. I can see we're on the last slide. So whoever wants to jump in. Absolutely, and as much of everything that we've talked about today is so important in highlighting how people are looking at blackness or talking about blackness or thinking about blackness. It's also important for us to celebrate, to really just show the beauty, to show the happiness, to show the positives and not always focus on the injustices and the inequality and the racism that we may face in the Iranian community. So we're always trying to find different ways to write ourselves, to see ourselves and to really be the culture and not just something that's to the side of the culture. We want everyone in the community to really just appreciate that black is beautiful, black is here, see Azibahs. And we have beautiful photographs by Hena Koskinen as well as here, we have some more art pieces produced by the collective of Sahar John, this species called Mohaya Zibat. And this is a scene that a lot of us have been in when our mother are doing our hair. It doesn't necessarily always happen in this beautiful way. So that's why we wanted to represent it in this beautiful way for the world to see the harmonious possibility of standing at this intersection. Alex Michoy Alpardis, the exhibit. Yeah, we had in September of 2021, our first in-person event through the collective. We had showcased some of our art at 12 Gates Gallery in Philadelphia. And it was a wonderful turnout in the midst of pandemic to have everybody come out and just see the work that we've been producing in collaboration with all these wonderful artists in real life. So these photos are from the event and it was really, I can't put into words the feeling. We also had a lot of the stories that you saw where projecting on the monitor. I didn't get to be there because I live in Freetown and a lot of us didn't get to be there, but it shows the diasporic nature of our identities. We brought art from Bandara bus for the first time. I mean, folks from the community have never seen different types of women wear and different ways of looking Iranian. Yeah, it's even from afar from where I was, it was a beautiful experience. I'm sure for Pego too, and for those who are not able to be here, but, you know, this is who we are and the importance of saying, we hope that's for all of you joining tonight. If you're joining because you felt the urgent need to say it that that need has been fulfilled and will continue to be sustained. But if you were not so convinced, we hope that now you see just by seeing faces like mine, like Alex's, Paz's and Pego, the importance of centering blackness in our community and saying, see, Ozibost, black is beautiful. Thank you, everyone. Khelima. Amazing, amazing. What a fantastic display. I don't really want it to end. I've got into this, you know, lull of your voices. It just, it's really sort of sent me trying to recollect so many anecdotes and things from my mother's family, particularly because, you know, my mom is 94, and but her father was worked for Iranian customs and excise, you know, Gungruk, Edari Gungruk. And therefore they were forever dotted around the country. So this is, you know, this is we're talking over, well over a hundred years ago when she was a little girl or an adolescent, when they got down to the Persian Gulf coast and they would be either in Bandar Lingge or Boushehr, et cetera. And I was just thinking, wondering whether there was a time when, you know, the horrendous story of slave trade and the idea that, you know, this was a sign of you having made it if you had black slaves. And this is sort of starting, early Gajah are probably predominantly, and then the abolition. And then I wonder if there was a lull, say in my mother's generation, where they didn't see if they were exposed to us because she had lived, she'd spent maybe, I don't know, four or five years there and she has such fond memories, the clothes, she has some cloth that I've now, you know, inherited. She'd learned the music that she was allowed, you know, it was a very traditional, it was a very Muslim environment, predominantly, Sunni probably, but there were little girls, they could make things, they could dance. And so that was fine for, and of course, then they moved to, you know, borders of Afghanistan and, you know, West Iran, Kurdistan. And I wondered if something went wrong and then we forgot about this absolute multicolored patchwork that it is Iran, that it is, you know, so much of West Asia, South Asia, maybe less so Central Asia. And I wouldn't, before I turn to so many questions that we have, do you feel that them, I'm not talking about the young generation in Iran, although I'm very interested to hear it from Pegar, outside, do you feel that your own generation of Iranians, and I don't mean the parents' generation, your age group, have come round again to understand that, you know, this is Ziyah Zibas, and if, you know, Baluchi Zibas, Kurd Zibas, you know, and it, or not, because I do have some horror stories of racism that is not, there's no awareness of it, this utter ignorance of people who've come so much worse in parts of Central Asia, that is unbelievable that you think that such ignorance, before it even becomes an upwind racism exists, is it, do you find your, you know, Alex or Priscilla or Gelore or Pardis or, you know, is it less so amongst your age group or no? They've just learned to paraphrase it. I would say no. I would say that's why Ziyah Zibas is so important, because it's still happening in younger children's cases. You know, I have a seven-year-old and I have twins who are five, and one of the reasons I don't take them to Iran is because I don't want them to experience a lot of the anti-blackness. I still experience when I go to these day from people, random people in the streets, at the supermarket, anywhere. And it's, yeah, the thing with my generation or perhaps younger generation is the possibility of a conversation, but there is still a need for a conversation. Because it's never too late. Yes. By all the questions that's, so there's still a need and to see that, you know, I was astonished that when there was this, you know, the George Floyd story that Iranian media jumped at it and it was the front page and on the news, but it really was to say this, you know, getting at the US and to say that, look, and this is, and we're suffering the sanctions and let look what else they're capable of, but this never percolated down to, can we just pause and look at our own black communities? And Iran translates books. I mean, there are so many books of obviously, you know, Maya Angel is absolutely on top there. And there was another book I was trying to find, where is it? Is it Amir, he's passed away now, the American poet, Amir back, I'll find the book. All this is transitive, but yeah, exactly, absolutely. And it is Amir Yes, and this is, but it's almost as if it's another world that, you know, it's very much, you know, we're with it, we translate all this book and we celebrate and we mark various birthdays, but somehow it's still another story and our own community. That's what I was going to say in my experience, it seems like the younger generations are more willing and open and ready to maybe have the conversation, but when it comes to Iranian-ness, when it comes to being Persian, you know, blackness is something that just is not associated with, you know, even within the younger generations, which is why the conversations are so important. Which is fair. So anyway, I'll ask, I'm just gonna look through the many questions we have, but I'll ask Ido-jun, if you would like to add something while I scours through the many questions. First of all, I have to say, thank you so much. I mean, for me, it's been eye-opening. We have, is it like Washi-razi, the Iranians in Zanzibar, but they're very central in everything that's done. So for example, the Revolutionary Party, that sort of like liberated Zanzibar, is the Afro-Shirazi Party. Exactly. So I mean, go on. We know that the collective, we are aware of that at the collective. We're ready to bring this knowledge to our community. It's probably here in this first time. Completely. I mean, they were very, very central. And so then to hear this, to hear the theme of colorism from that angle and the erasure of blackness that's happening, it's really surprising. You have opened my eyes to a whole other world. And I think you, I mean, one of the things you should do and you must do is you must come to Zanzibar, to Kizim Kazi. It's like one of the oldest sort of like mosques and everything that's built by the Shirazi. And these are the black Iranians. So I think, yeah, I mean, it's really important you do that. I just had to say that I'm happy that you know about all that already. I love the map that sort of like had Zanzibar and India was just fantastic. I mean, that's sort of like what's important. I'm happy that you have a voice and I'm happy that you're being heard. And I think this is very, very important. So thank you very much. Really a Santeni Sanna. There are so many questions. You're looking great. So we have many, many grateful thanks. And A, they found it visually so amazing, the artwork that's gone in there, the presentations. And that, I mean, I'm sure you can all see the chat though. And in the final one is Amen, Black is Beautiful, the Mokhan Zibas. And some question is, one asks that, you know, what is your take on Haji Firuz? So while I'll scour through the other, so I let whoever would like to answer that. I don't know if either or if our non-Iranian audience are aware of what Haji Firuz is. So if you wouldn't mind just briefly explaining what it is. And the questioner asks that, what are your take on that? Who's going to do it? Anyone could be a part of this. Pigeon, Priscilla, Alex, whoever, Peter. I think it's a very racist tradition. It's rooted in a violent history. I think that, you know, as an Iranian community, we have a hard time with the idea of, you know, we double down on things that are wrong sometimes. And I think there hasn't been much discourse about it until we have come and shed light on the origins of it. And, you know, you can attribute it to a lot of ignorance, but now there's a conversation about it. Now there's historical, you know, facts behind, you know, where this tradition comes from. And frankly, as Black people, I'm kind of tired of talking about Black base. And it's just one of those things I think we need to just, we can reinvent how we celebrate those, you know, we can read, there's other traditions that- We heard Pigeon's celebration of Nouruz, which was one of the voices from home we shared Pigeon, and not everybody in the Iranian community does Blackface Haji Firuz. And by the way, just to give a little bit of context and I know Pigeon, you want to then jump in and say something, but perhaps just to explain to the audience who doesn't know, you know, Alex, who and what this is about. I mean, I'm assuming not everybody is Iranian. It's, we have Nouruz, not just in Iran, but also in Tanzania and other parts of the region. And it's March 21st for Iran and different dates for different parts of the world. So that's number one. Nouruz is not celebrated only by Iranians. So that question doesn't only concern Iranians. Yeah, the Druids do, the Druids in Stonehenge do. It's the vernal equinox, is when the earth goes through vernal equinox. The version celebrated, the version celebrated by many Iranians, not all, but by many includes Haji Firuz, which is a character who dons a Blackface and dresses red with a tambourine and dances and chants for his master that he refers to, oh my master, what can I do? And he dances and he chants and it's a white character. It's a white person, non-Black person that puts Blackface for it, color on his face and calm and dances. I think for me personally, the question is not on the origins of Haji Firuz, but it's on the harm that Blackface performances can cause and does cause to Black folks, not just in Iran, but all over the world. So for me as a person, as a human being, if somebody comes to me and says, Blackface performances, which is the act of putting Black makeup on your face when you're not Black, I don't usulodar Biori of speaking a certain way and talking to the master, Black folks will be offended. And that's why my tradition stops if I'm harmful to anyone, I reconsider. And in that case, I'm harmful to myself for standing at the intersection. So I won't be doing Blackface Haji Firuz with my children on the 21st. No, no, no, that's true. Ida-jan, you tell me, if I'm not being very good at this, is there... But I think I wanted to say something. Oh, yeah, of course. I'm sorry. Ida-jan, go for it. Thank you. I just want to say a little something that we in Southern parts of Iran, we didn't and don't associate nose with Haji Firuz. And the first time I ever came across this character was when we had this homework to do for during the holidays. And it was the little notebook and it had pictures of how people celebrate noruz. And there was Haji Firuz in that and there was like this poem that he sings. And I asked my mom about this character and I was like, can you explain this to me? Like, who is this? I don't know him. So yeah, my mom said that it's a character, it sings in the streets. You've probably seen it when you were younger, when we were traveling in Iran. And she sang the poem for me. And as soon as I heard my master, like, I was like, I don't feel good about this. And I was like seven. So yeah, it felt like... It felt like I was saying those words kind of. And it was the time when all of my classmates at school, they kept telling me that, well, you look like Africans. We don't want to talk to you. And I felt this massive hatred towards black people. And I was like, OK, Mom, I'm seven. Why should I be scared of people like calling me black? And then there's this character, OK, he's scary. Yeah, but I don't, until today, I don't associate who's with Haji Firuz internally. And that's so important. It's so important because in America, in the diaspora, we are constantly asked about Haji Firuz. And it's by a certain portion of the Iranian community that perhaps really enjoys that particular aspect of our presentation, but it doesn't reflect the diversity of our country. So the question in itself is exclusionary. Yeah, for them. There are lots of links that I'm sure that I will save all of these links for them. There are lots of links to sort of Black Lives Matters demonstrations in the Arab world. There is someone who wonderfully put a link about Dennis Walker, the first Black person who played for Manchester United, their football team. His father was Iranian and of African origin. So I didn't know that. I didn't know that it's Walker was that. So there is a link there. There are a couple of Iranians who've said that they're rather taken aback having grown up in Tehran, never thinking that this community was Nezat Paras was a racist community. And now they think that it's so important what you do to educate, to really tell people. And someone, the questions about, we can answer them separately about links that are requested, people who'd like to do research on this. And they say an incredible collection of material, language as resistance is a powerful affirmation. On an intersectional narrative, we hold many identities that should be acknowledged and embraced as Audre Lorde referenced Afro-Germans. I've learned so much. My heritage is Indo-Caribbean. So it can relate to the themes around colorism. And another response, the endless thank yous, endless thank yous saying, this has been such an amazing eye-opener. And someone has referenced this to, when you read about the Ottoman history that this resonates with this participant, this member of audience who looks at the more, Anatolia history. And someone wonders whether this obsession with the Aryan origin of Iranians, which always makes me laugh that they were just standing in front of the mirror, whatever the ideal of an Aryan panacea is. Doesn't quite fit with Iranians. But they say, is this preoccupation that has perhaps been effed by the nationalism that comes through the poetry, whether that could be held? And there are various, I'm just trying to see if exactly the same thing happens in Istanbul, and with the same words, Siyah and sometimes Qara, which is the Turkic for black. I don't know, Idojan, anything that catches your eye. That's very, very quickly. I was going to say, like, I think it was Okapardis who said that there's a representation of black Iranians is almost exclusively sort of through the lens of the non-black. So the, I mean, can you just tell us a bit more about that? So just to hear a bit more of that, if you don't mind. Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, if you were to search black Iranian before our collective on Google, there are a certain amount of things that would have come up, none of which not only were not written or produced by black or Afro-Iranians, but don't have any input from them whatsoever. It's something that made me feel obviously growing up in Salt Lake City, you know, not a part of, you know, fully a part of a Persian community. It made me feel very disconnected, right? I think Chinua Cebe, we have the quote about telling our stories, telling our own stories because if we don't, it will be told by others and it will be told incorrectly. And those inconsistencies in what our story actually is and what is being told are the things that are gonna further perpetuate the misconceptions or, you know, disparaging comments towards black people in general. And there's also been writings, as Patty's had mentioned earlier when talking about the collective, but just about the black Iranian literature, but not when penned by non-black Iranians, like the work of Simin Dane Shfa, for example, that some Iranians perhaps attending have read. Simin Dane Shfa, whose Iranian novel is considered feminist and so forth, when she pens the story of black women, she doesn't give us any agency, you know? And I don't need to get a PhD in literature. I read the book and I'm a black Iranian woman. I'm referred to a black maid in, I think it's in a sort of, I can't remember which book where at some points the black woman in the story doesn't even have a name. The entire book, whether it's in the Farsi language or in this translation is referred to as a Connie's or a black maid. And just, you know, I can't remember exactly the Persian word that she uses, but just to no agency, no narrative, no points of view, no, as if we were this one, as women, as Iranian women, we were this one big block of one person, right? It's not differences. Begodjou Begou, no. I prefer it. I know what you said, thank you. Go on, Pega, go on. Is that Pega? Like, I didn't hear. Yeah, it's Pega. We didn't hear it. Pega, John, say it again. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm whatever Priscilla said. There were just so one point. That's true. I wonder, I think maybe Muniru Ravanipura moved on a little bit because I think she, maybe because she is Southern herself, a bit more, but it's very true. A person who has really put his photographs on the map and looking at it from, I think, not even so much, you know, depictions in film, anthropological perspective is Pedram Khosronejad. I don't know if you've looked at, he's done a lot of... Yes, we have, and I think in the same lane of what Padis was saying, is that it's all penned by non-black folks. Exactly, no, no, I was just saying, but maybe... It's more confirming towards this direction. Absolutely. More from the Iranians showing photos of black folks. But I think Khosronejad, Pedram, rather, who is moved to United States now, was that one of the things he was saying that it would discourage, can we have a, you know, like what you have done. So this conversation goes back many years ago when Pedram was at Oxford and in St. Andrews, that it was that, you know, why we want to encourage, you know, the voices from the communities to be heard and stories that we narrate the stories of the black presence in the Rajar's life, for example. But how about the descendants who might take the stage, which is what you have done, but this conversation is much older. The other... There's just one question before, I know there's like time is going, is it Mahrunush, I'm really saying they're wrong, completely wrong. Mahrunush, yes. Mahrunush. She's talking about marriage. So she says, you've talked about her colorism is still very much a social prejudice within Iran. So marriage is discouraged between black Iranians and light-skinned Iranians. Are you also finding systemic racism, for example, black Iranians within the education, employment, housing, entertainment, other fields? So even marriage is still a problem. Yes, please. All great questions at the collective. We're really focused on social, like we find anti-black experiences wherever there are people, I think that's what we need to take away. When you have people, you have the potential of having an anti-black experience. And I think we have to stop pretending that if you go to one part of the world magically, all the biases are... Because now, all of them are mis-absorbing, we're eating all mis-absorbing and that makes us non-anti-black. No, and it's everywhere. It's whether, it doesn't matter where you are, just like anywhere else in the world, it can be. And I think it's even more so in our community because of this absence and because of this erasure and all these beliefs that, as a result, have been fabricated and are extremely harmful, which is because you were in the sun. There's no such thing as being black Iranian. There's no such thing as... And you mentioned the work of Pedram earlier in his book and I think it lacked context. Having just photographs of African folks who are enslaved without any context is also damaging when you're black and Iranian and you're looking at all these photos and you don't know why all these photos of units are being... But the backlash, even something like that... We stepped in. That's why we stepped in as a collective. Oh, absolutely. There is a need now to lead on these conversations in ways that are not harmful. It's truly the only standard we're trying to bring in the community. No, I couldn't agree. I don't want to speak for him, but I think he's in Oklahoma now, I'm not quite sure. It was the sort of saying, how could you publish things? I mean, even such as the fact that the denial that there is this quite big sense that, no, Iranians were certainly not racist. And that is... I can't... I mean, I'm sure you will see it. I'll come back to that. I'm sure you will see it. I'll copy this and send it to you. Or there are so many wonderful comments about how wonderful this has been. It is... You know, it's everyone who is leaving a message, just like others. I want to thank you very much for such a wonderful and informative session. I don't think he does. And I've left any... I'm not going to read through all these reams of... And I think we have wonderful... Thanks. So maybe we could probably ask you guys to give the final sort of like statement word before we go. But I mean, it has been one of the most exciting events I've been to since 2022. For us too. And I've just absolutely loved it. Thank you so much. Please give us the last word before we go. I think it will be great. See you as it was. But it was absolutely, absolutely. It has been amazing. And I think, you know, doing so much more of this. And actually, you know, I really want this to go on our Centre for Iranian Studies website and really to start this conversation. And with Iranian diaspora of whatever age group they are. And it is, you know, such a beautiful website as well. I think we would love to have more and more and more. I wanted to ask something very quickly. What do you think of Saeed Shambezadeh? Is that it was here for that? That's a musician. Yes, he's a great musician. Yes, a great musician for that thing. OK, well, I think perhaps through music and art, certainly that will open many more doors. Fantastic. Well, I don't know, Angelique John, do you want to do the final word? I mean, I could just quickly run. Gelore John, Alex John, Pegor John, Pardis John, Sarah John, Peter John, Priscilla John. Absolutely the head. I hope I haven't left anyone and really been a very, very. I will be watching this again, the recording. I want to pause and think and reflect on all the things you've said and will get all my students to definitely click on this. But Angelica, would you like to say? Just to add a big thank you. Thank you so much. It's been a fantastic event, as everybody said. And so, yes, so hope to more event like this very soon. Angelica, thank you so much because you've done. You've noticed us. You brought us here. And sometimes we're noticed by those outside of the community and it makes a difference that you can bring up there. So really, truly grateful for SOAS and for bringing our voices to the center of Iran and the diaspora and to all the different organizations and spaces that exist. Absolutely, thank you. I want to see your Z-boss. It is beautiful. And your website, Z-boss, and your Instagram. I've been a follower of your Instagram for a while and now a very, very well done. So please support, you know, we're all self-funded. We all have our own jobs on top of being moms, women, men, whatever we are. So if you want to show support, share our word, follow us on our socials, your donations, support voices that you've never heard. Absolutely, absolutely. Yes, well, we'll certainly put all the links on our respective web pages and encourages and promote it, absolutely. Absolutely. Anyway, thank you so much. You're going to be fantastic. So thank you and thank you very much to all the attendees as well. Thank you for joining us and keep following us. And we'll see you very soon.