On the Death of Daryoush Homayoun

Daryoush Homayoun died on 28th January at the age of 82. He was a great journalist, politician, thinker, teacher and human being. He left behind hundreds of articles, books, interviews and many devoted friends and students. I met Homayoun a few times and once conducted an interview with him. We kept an on and off correspondence up to the beginning of this year.

What impressed me most about Homayoun was his unwavering sincerity. He never defended anything but what he genuinely thought was right and worth defending and never criticized anything or anyone without clear and justifiable reasons. He abhorred dogma and was one of the rare Iranian thinkers who could view his world impartially and disinterestedly.

This soft-spoken man commanded an unrivalled presence everywhere he went. Everyone sat up and took notice when Daryoush Homayoun spoke. He was an extremely handsome man, even in his eighties. He spoke in an almost languid voice deliberately and slowly but charmingly and poignantly. He chose his words with great precision. He loved and revered the Persian language so much that he ardently guarded it against any careless user. He knew the crucial relationship between the decay of a language and the decline of a civilization.

With a keen eye he was able to see through people but he treated everyone with kindness and respect. To those who had the chance and were willing to listen to him he was a consummate teacher. He impressed upon his listeners the need to rescue Iranian politics out of the dark gullies of the Third World mentality and elevate it to its deserved status of a robust and rational endeavour. “My goal”, he said “from the days I was a mere child has been to take part in the renaissance of Iran; to turn my life into a building block to be built higher upon.”

There were times that he seemed disgusted by the folly and vulgarity of what he encountered in the course of his political and professional life but he never turned red with rage nor did he ever lose his temper. He had this great capacity of walking into a room suffused with the ill intention of political enemies and then walking out looking refreshed by the cool confidence of his logical and mental pre-eminence. In my talk with him he said: “by writing and talking, and acting scrupulously, I am trying to help transform Iranian political culture, to raise the level of political discourse”. He thought that lack of ethical backbone was the Achilles heel of Iranian politics.

Although he had a great number of admirers and many sang his high praises he always remained down to earth. He viewed life with the eyes of a philosopher cognizant of its vicissitude and unmoved by its momentary ups and downs. He used his time both in freedom and as a political prisoner in Iran dynamically; in reading, writing and engaging in political discourse. He had a kind of mindset that was safe from intrusion of both success and misfortune. He never succumbed to the tyranny of external circumstances.

I remember Daryoush Homayoun's speech at the late Houshang Vaziri's memorial service in 2003. The two had worked together as journalists for many years. On that day Homayoun said:

"An intellectual is a person who - thanks to the range of his interests and his education - perceives things in a broader context than is usual. It is someone who attempts to get below the surface, to grasp the deeper meanings, relations, causes and affects, to recognize individual items as part of larger entities. And more than that, an intellectual, conscious of the broader and deeper connections, also derives from this awareness a broader or deeper sense of responsibility for the world.

These words befit Homayoun’s own character perfectly. He was an intellectual par excellence and felt a great sense of responsibility towards his people and his homeland. He said he believed that Iran was not simply a country, a homeland like any other but an “Idea”. For him Iran was a way of life and it entailed a worldview nurtured by the collective experience of an ancient culture and civilization. To be an Iranian for him had nothing to do with sentimental slogans but was part and parcel of a moral and intellectual discipline.

Instead of a mere regime change in Iran, Homayoun advocated the sustainable development of political institutions. He believed that all depends on the strength of democratic values both during our struggle and after the overthrow of the Islamic regime. Either our society is capable of sustaining democratic institutions or continues to surrender to different dictatorships. In either case the name of the regime, royal or republican, would not be that important".

In spite of his age he was thoroughly modern and progressive in his attitude. In my interview with him he said, “I consider myself a product of Persian literature, Greek philosophy, and European Enlightenment – a perfect background for engaging a lifetime with modernity”.

His manner of death was consistent with the way he lived. He went downstairs in his Geneva house to get some books and carrying them in his hand he slipped on the stairs and hit his head on the step. Daryoush Homayoun lived and died with books. With his death Iran lost a great asset. The intellectual investment he left behind however will be an enduring heritage for the young and future generations of Iranian political thinkers.

Goli Taraghi at Village Voice in Paris

by Reza Bayegan


The evening of Thursday 25 February in Paris was wet and windy. From metro Mabillon I turned left and found myself in the rue Princesse and in front of Village Voice, the Anglo-American bookshop where Goli Taraghi, the Iranian novelist was going to give a talk. This well-known Parisian bookstore organizes lectures by many international writers.

I got there over half an hour early. Next door I spotted an eating establishment with plenty of empty chairs. I went in and discovered that it was a fancy hamburger joint with Sri Lankan cooks sporting Saddam Hussein moustaches and French waiters dishing out pseudo-American burgers in pseudo-American accents. I ran into a rather ample middle-aged woman coming out of the restroom and for a second we locked glances in that usual air of tribal recognition Iranians have when they spot a co-member. A faint smile crossed her face and then passing me by, this short lady went and perched on a rather high stool at the counter. Was she Goli Taraghi? I half thought so, but could not tell for sure. She was carrying a handbag, but no books or notebooks to indicate that she belonged to the writing profession. Moreover, on this rainy evening, drinking a cup of coffee on her own, she looked a bit forlorn for an author who was about to give a talk. If that was her, where then were her admirers and entourage?

I turned back towards my own table, which was under a picture of Barack Obama presenting the camera with a big smile and baring a perfect set of teeth. At six thirty-five the lady at the counter got up and left. She turned right towards the bookstore, her chignon keeping an even keel against the persistent wind. I got up, paid the bill and left.

Inside the bookstore I saw the same lady and was now sure that it was her, Goli Taraghi. She looked different from my remembrance of the photo on the back of her books I had at home. She seemed a bit darker and with a broader nose. It was however her congenital nose, a rarity nowadays amongst Iranian women. We again looked at each other. I greeted her in Persian expressing my happiness to see her. She seemed pleasant and unassuming. The meeting with the author was on the first floor. So I climbed up the stairs. Fold-up chairs with seats as small as dessert plates were filled by a sizeable crowd of Europeans, Americans and Iranians. At the top of the spiral stairway was a table displaying Goli Taraghi’s latest book translated into English, A Mansion in the Sky

Mrs Taraghi came upstairs and sat down. She said the chairs with the tiny uncomfortable seats reminded her of a story. She used this story as a preamble to her lecture. It went like this: according to an Indian legend a famous musician in retirement agreed to play his instrument once more for the king, the queen and all the royal court on one condition, that if anyone during the performance shook his or her head from side to side they should be beheaded. This seemed like a very lethal stipulation since Indians are accustomed to shaking their heads a great deal when they speak, or when they are transported by hearing a piece of delightful music. Nevertheless the king acquiesced. Not surprisingly, as soon as the audience heard the splendid music everyone started shaking their heads including the king and the queen. After the performance the musician relieved everyone’s fear by letting them know that he had only set that condition to see how much the audience was in love with his art and what price they were willing to pay for their enjoyment. The point of telling this story was that the uncomfortable chairs of the bookstore, like the threat of impending decapitation, were the test of the audience’s love for literature and the sacrifice they were willing to make on its behalf.

Goli Taraghi’s opening anecdote was followed by many other stories. It was natural for her to illustrate everything she wanted to say through a story, be it the state of censorship in Iran or the capricious and inconsistent despotism of the Iranian political and administrative system. Although the stories themselves were charming, their import only confirmed what the audience already knew about Iran. As noted by Kenneth Galbraith the late Canadian scholar, the hallmark of conventional wisdom is acceptability. It has the approval of those to whom it is addressed. Conventional wisdom as defined by Gabraith refers to those views that are taken for granted and “accommodate themselves not to the world that they are meant to interpret, but to the audience’s view of the world.”1 Goli Taraghi was doing a wonderful job corroborating the audience’s already formed conclusions about Iran. The crowd wanted to hear ingenious variations on the woebegone theme of our Jekyll and Hyde country. A country where on the green side all women are strong, all men are good looking and all children are above average and on the other side they are the exact opposite. Mrs Taraghi was very obliging in living up to this expectation. She also let everyone know that she would soon be going to Stanford on a three month teaching contract.

Although at the outset she declared that she was not a politician, and she would only speak as a writer, Goli Taraghi went on to talk almost about nothing else but politics. Even when she spoke about her craft, she depicted the kind of juggling an Iranian writer has to do to bypass state censorship. She talked about the predicament of the Iranian writer in general, and the female writer in particular, pointing out how an Iranian artist has to bend down to procrustean rules of a backward political establishment. In her competent English she sketched the moronic antics of authorities that are the embodiment of absurdity.

At question time, when I ventured to ask her what writers she used to read in her formative years, and particularly what Iranian writers influenced her, she altogether ignored my question about her possible indebtedness to Iranian writers and only quipped that she was her own influence. Had authors such as Jamalzadeh, Hedayat, Al-Ahmad, Simin Daneshvar, Golshiri or Pezeshkzad contributed to her literary upbringing? She did not tell. Instead she mentioned Nabokov and commented on how much she loves reading him. Her words on Nabokov however were encouraging. She said she is not after extracting any particular philosophy out of his work, but is interested in his craft as a storyteller. She made an apt distinction between the job of a philosopher and that of a storyteller. She also mentioned Salman Rushdie and how she hoped one day to be able to emulate the subtleties and intricacies Rushdie has accomplished in his novels. I thought this kind of openness to other influences is good and fine and what else could we expect from an international writer. On the other hand, the ultimate test of a novelist is the ability to create a vivid and powerful portrayal of life and not regurgitate techniques of this or that fashionable author like Salman Rushdie.

It would have been nice to hear her read one or two extracts from the translation of her book into English so the audience could have witnessed her writing skills and the breadth and scope of her imagination. When someone made approving noises about the English translation of her books, Mrs Taraghi said that some people were unhappy with it, complaining that the sense of humour loses something of its force in translation.

Odile Hellier the bookstore’s owner asked Mrs Taraghi if living thirty years outside her native country had put a damper on her inspiration as an Iranian writer and how credible really was her understanding of Iranian life and society after such a long absence? Mrs Taraghi replied that she visits Iran regularly and insisted that living as an expatriate has presented no obstacles to her writing. She remarked that Persian is the life material of her artistic expression because it is the language she loves and knows how to knead and fashion for the telling of her stories. Her answer however did not come across as very convincing. There is no denying that writing away from the living centre of a culture and that organic community in which the real pulse and palpitation of a language can be felt poses a major drawback. She was also not very persuasive in responding to a question about the possibility of publishing outside Iran where the censorship of the Islamic Republic has no sway. If nothing else, writing in Paris at least has the advantage of providing her with freedom of expression. She mentioned how all her books - barring one have been allowed publication in Iran. She cited practical reasons such as low print runs and limited readership for not publishing her books outside the country. Practical considerations of course are very important, but a writer who has something to say will manage to say it come hell or high water.

Although Mrs Taraghi remarked that she was averse to using symbols in her writing, at the end of her talk she told a symbolic story to illustrate the dichotomy of the Iranian psyche. The story went like this: she was trying to bring a bar-axe, which is used by Iranian Dervishes out of the country for her son. On the blade there was an inscription from The Koran. The customs officer at the airport examining the axe told her that she couldn’t take the axe out of Iran because it was an ancient artefact belonging to the Sassanid period. Mrs Taraghi shot back that it could not possibly belong to the Sassanid era if it had Islamic writing on it. The customs officer who did not want to lose face told her that the handle belonged to the Sassanid period, but the blade was Islamic and she would only be able to take the latter half out of the country. For Mrs Taraghi, this story became a symbol of the divided soul of the Iranian nation: Iranians, she argued, belong to their ancient Zoroastrian civilization from the neck down, and from neck up they are given to Islamic culture. Nevertheless, what Mrs Taraghi overlooked was that the bar-axe she was trying to bring out of the country was going to end up on the wall of a Parisian apartment as a mere ornament and bereft of its real purpose and significance.

When at the end of the meeting I was getting ready to leave, I was again thinking of the teaching chair at Stanford that Mrs Taraghi was soon going to occupy. Is this Iranian writer also going to become a mere ornament perched on a prestigious academic height, but bereft of her real purpose and significance? Will she articulate to her listeners what they already believe in, but want to hear confirmed by a famous Iranian writer, or will she defy established platitudes and complacencies? The dark days Iranians are going through right now are due to the triumph of conventional wisdom and failure of the creative imagination not only in Tehran, but also in Washington, London and Paris. Mrs Taraghi is a talented author and immensely likeable as a person. She belongs to a profession that can break through the formidable wall of ignorance and greed by humanizing us and holding a mirror to our collective conscience. What can we do but hope that she will live up to her high vocation and wish her luck.

1 -- The Affluent Society p. 20

Alvand, Hamadan

Changing Our Approach to Regime Change in Iran

By: Reza Bayegan

It is not only the Israeli government or the hapless Neocons in the United States who dream of a regime change in Iran. Every honest, intelligent Iranian wants the same thing but feels unable to bring it about. There are a multitude of individuals, organizations and think tanks outside Iran whose business is supposed to be finding a way of dislodging the Iranian regime. Nevertheless many of these entities are happy holding court where they are in Washington, Los Angeles, Paris and so forth. They are addicted to pocketing the benefits and enjoying the privileges of a virtual kingdom outside the country. Returning one day to a free Iran where they would have to learn the ropes anew and work hard to prove themselves to the local population will defeat their purpose. My words here are not directed to these political impostures and mountebanks.

I am rather addressing the leaders of those political campaigns who sincerely seek to find a way out for millions of desperate Iranians plagued by the double whammy of oppression from inside and the threat of military strike from outside. To these leaders I would like in all humility to offer a few suggestions. Let me make it clear that I have not discovered any political breakthrough or any ingenious military tactics to recommend to these individuals, but rather am offering them a change of attitude that I think might be helpful.

First of all my dear campaign leader for regime change in Iran, please give poor Machiavelli a break and beware of applying his ideas to your activities. ‘The Prince’ is not a recipe book for concocting fast political food. Instead of looking for some self-serving quick fix, invest in the loyalty of the people you are working with. Earn their respect and rely on the kindness and sympathy of those you are trying to liberate. Remember that the art of leadership does not consist of setting man against man. If you think of people as numbers, pawns and vehicles, this attitude sooner or later becomes evident in the conduct of your campaign and the way you organize and direct your regime change activities. Instead of bringing people together you then have the opposite effect of tearing them asunder and making yourself despised by everyone.

Learn to take personal responsibility for failures in your campaign and generously distribute amongst your team members the credit you receive for victories. Your struggle against a regime that has dug its claws deep into the lives and consciousness of Iranian society will face many hard battles. You have to learn to tackle a multitude of obstacles with a great deal of wisdom and grace. Fight with courage and fight with what you have instead of waiting for what you ought to have. No great leader whose country has been under attack has ever tarried for the alignment of all favourable circumstances before marching on to face the foe.

Keep in mind the words of Colin Powell who said, “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” The way you deal with everyday problems of your regime changing campaign is a pattern and microcosm of what you have to offer the whole country. In other words your approach, your attitude, and the daily performance of your duties is part and parcel of the ultimate victory you are trying to secure. Remember that actions speak louder than words.

Enlist the help of intelligent, stable people and don’t waste your resources and the valuable campaign time with prima donnas and nincompoops. No one of course expects you to surround yourself with geniuses. Geniuses are few and far between in any nation’s human stock. Nor should you worry about finding doctors or holders of honorary degrees. Iranian people have seen enough of characters like Dr Ahmadinejad, Dr Kordan etc to last them a lifetime. Only remember that after thirty years of being dished out heavy-duty balderdash Iranians have trained noses to smell baloney from a mile away. So raise the standard high for what you are offering them.

It is not sinful to receive help from the international community as long as you don’t forget who your constituency is. You want international help to fight a campaign for the liberation of your country and not the other way around. Remember that Bush and Blair shall pass away but the support of your own countrymen is what ultimately determines your success or failure. So when you go behind the microphone remember that the real audience that matters to you are in Shiraz, Tabriz, Dezfoul and Savojbolagh and not in Paris, London or New York. Learn from Charles de Gaulle and his fight for a free France. He was able to work with the Allied Powers and at the same time convince his countrymen that he was not an American or English puppet, but first and foremost a French patriot.

Once and for all stop the vicious circle of tribalism and factionalism that has wreaked havoc in your country since time immemorial. Don’t give in to the ingrained habit of dividing your compatriots into those who are with us and those who are against us. The tendency to compel people to conform to one’s image of what an Iranian should be is a dangerous moral disease of tyrants. Don’t hyphenate your people as nationalist Iranians, religious Iranians, communist Iranians and so on, but love and respect them as daughters and sons of the same land, all entitled to the same equal rights and privileges.

Take heart in Barack Obama’s election, or if you can’t, at least don’t eat your heart out. Even Shimon Perez the Israeli president thinks his election is a positive event for the whole of the Middle East. Don’t worry about the American government sitting down with Ahmadinejad or his puppeteers around the same table. Are you worried they might fall in love and the Americans will waltz with the mullahs into a new horizon and forget about you? Let’s hope they do. For the day the Americans pull the plug from the Iranian opposition, will be the day the Iranian people will have the opportunity to see who is able to stand on his own two feet and who can not. And if you still can stand up and fight after such an event, your countrymen will respect you and love you for it. Something they have been unable to do in the past three decades.

So believe in yourself and in the rightness of your stand. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and fight a good fight with all your might. Good luck.

Babak Zamanian

Around the Clock is a special page of the Ekbatan Observer devoted to monitoring and analysing the human rights situation in Iran.


Babak Zamanian is a 23 year old mining student and spokesman of the Muslim Students Association at Tehran polytechnic Amir Kabir university. He was amongst students who heckled Ahmadinejad when he visited the Amir Kabir university in December 2006 and shouted "Death to dictatorship and dictator go away". In April 2007 he was arrested for demonstrating in a small group in front of the university dormitories. He was thrown in Evin prison and kept in isolation in the notorious section 209 (reserved for political prisoners) and tortured. He was subsequently freed on bail (after 40 days I think). During his freedom he has talked to some foreign radios and given interviews to the international media. This has made the case against him even harder. He has even been accused of having contact with a member of Dick Cheney's family.

The government is trying to stifle any opposition voices especially anti-Ahmadinejad's voices within universities and therefore the judiciary has passed a two year sentence against Zamanian and re-arrested him. There are numerous other students who suffer from the same fate. His situation is particularly worrisome and needs special attention.

Reflections on Iranian-American Dialogue

By: Reza Bayegan

An Iranian friend was saying that every time he has had the opportunity of meeting with American politicians, he has been impressed by their courtesy, humanity and their concern for taking the right and honourable path in relation to our country. Contrary to the rhetoric dished out to the Iranian public by their rulers, Americans are not after destroying Iran. In meeting with various Iranians they try hard to find out what to do with a country whose fanatical rulers by no means represent its forward looking and peaceful population.

As far as the official position of the Iranian government is concerned, meeting with Americans is heretical. American politicians are branded as evil and to dialogue with them is to betray our national interests. Nevertheless, in order to save their own skins, Iran’s dictators have in the past talked covertly to the Americans and even had secret dealings with their arch enemy Israel during the Iran-Iraq war. Accordingly their refusal to talk to Americans like the rest of their positions is a matter of expedience and not principal.

For the sake of argument however, let us assume that there are hardliners within the Islamic Republic who sincerely (not expediently) believe that talking to Americans is harmful to Iran’s earthly interests (And here of course I am not addressing those people who think that talking to the "great Satan " will contaminate them and bar them from entering into the kingdom of heaven).

Such hardliners are ignorant of the fact that international relations are not about demonizing or romanticizing various countries. International negotiations are governed by well-defined rules and well-established ethics. Within those rules one has to be able to manoeuvre and strike a profitable bargain for the country one represents. One also has to start from the premise that one’s counterpart or counterparts are after protecting their own interests and securing their own objectives.

The intellectually indolent Iranian fundamentalist who is averse to clear thinking finds it convenient to refer to all Americans as imperialists and shuns the idea of any contact with them. He has lived in an atmosphere where decisions are made by edicts and not through discussions and debates. Dictatorship has eroded his capacity for dialogue and any meaningful exchange of ideas.

‘Dialogue Among Civilizations’ was an idea proposed to the United Nations by Mr Khatami, the former president of the Islamic Republic. Ironically it was during the watch of this same president that a score of Iranian intellectuals were slaughtered and a number of dissenting university students were murdered and thrown out of their dormitory windows. In spite of all his smooth talking what he understood and meant by dialogue was that we talk and everyone else sits at the bottom of the pulpit and listens.

The psychology of an Iranian fanatic (like any other fanatic) is the psychology of fear, and exclusion. Exclusion of those possibilities of life, which require judgment and moral courage. An Iranian fanatic not only is afraid of Americans, he is also in a state of consternation about anything that entails making a choice one way or the other. He cannot trust himself to look at any girl beyond the age of puberty without a dirty motive so he makes it a law that forces all females to cover themselves up and refuses to shake hands with a woman for fear of being corrupted. He cannot trust himself to hold his own vis-à-vis an American or British official and therefore pigeonholes them all as evil and considers any meaningful contact with them reprehensible.

A healthy courageous mind has nothing to fear from encounters and engagements. A self-confident Iranian understands that when we meet Americans and people of any other nationalities with trust in our own abilities to talk to them on an equal footing and endeavour first and foremost to protect our own country's interests, there is nothing to be frightened of.

Some well-meaning Iranians who argue that we should go it alone and that we don’t need to talk or consult with anyone in bringing about liberty and democracy to our country also suffer from a variation of the same malady. They can be compared to a person who is trying to learn how to ride a bicycle and by stubbornly refusing everyone’s instruction invites all sorts of dangers. Imagine what would have happened if the Americans had refused the helping hands of foreigners like Thomas Paine or General Lafayette in securing their independence. The truth of the matter is that the cause of justice and liberty enlists all men in a universal effort and no one is asked to produce a passport in helping his or her fellow-human beings to rid themselves of oppression and tyranny anywhere in the world.

Finally, how do we answer the oft-asked question of some Americans regarding whether or not they should talk to the Islamic Republic? The reality of it is that Iranian rulers are clever enough to know that talking to Americans and the representatives of the free world would only expose their own moral and intellectual flaws and would deprive them of their best excuse to keep the country closed and isolated. The moment they let down that guard, there goes their raison d'être as missionaries of anti-Americanism and their role as the godfather of international terrorism. They would lose their control over a population impatient for democracy meritocracy and change.

Around the Clock is a special page of Ekbatan Observer devoted to monitoring and analysing the human rights situation in Iran.