22/12/24 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie
The Lion Women of Tehran switches perspective from the present day in the United States to 30 years prior in Iran. Homa and Ellie meet in elementary school and instantly bond. Shir Zan a fierce, courageous, and brave woman.
1982 The Ellie is in NY where she has been 4 and a half years and she thinks about the night she betrayed Homa and that affected both their lives. She is 38 and in a Manhattan department Store, she skipped out of a countrie's slide into medieval times. Homa had suddenly flown back into her life.
1950 Ellie's mother tells her that her grandmother had descended from Qajar king (They ruled Iran from 1785 till 1925 they were from a Turkic clan.)Ellies father had died when she was 7 of tuberculosis.
Because her mother wouldn't marry Uncle Mousoud they had to leave the big house and move to a poor neighborhood in Teheran. She went to the local school, where they had a 2 hour lunch break and went home to lunch with her mother.
She met Homa (phoenix a bird from the fables) Homa tells her that her father is a communist against the Shah. Loneliness is the worst of all afflictions. With Homa she learn rope jump skills and cooking Homa's father was headwaiter at the Palace Hotel restaurant. This girl pair got good grades progressed and skipped a class.
Portugal is the word for "orange " in both Arabic and Farsi so were surprised it is a country.
She and Homa bunked school and she was seen in the market by the local gossip. Homa said that she wanted to be a lawyer and then Judge. While Ellie's mother thought a woman working for pay was beneath her. Laws that are stupid, unfair and absurd should be broken.
Her mother did not like her having a friend from the poor neighborhood one that she considered don't mean anything. Her mother claimed to have many uptown friends but they had abandoned her when she was forced to move downtown. "That girl will be the death of you". Mother would not allow Homa into their house.
Saʿdī Shīrāzī; born 1210; died 1291 Ḥāfeẓ, 'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper'; 1325–1390)
These 2 Persian poets the girls had to commit their works to memory.
She peeked at her mother in bed with Uncle Mousod. Mother finally married him as she was worried about Ellie, but Ellie preferred being in the poor area with her friend. Uptown was alien with wealth and glamour.
1960 She went into the Reza Shah Kebir High School for girls a fancy glamourous school with prestigious teachers and the latest fashions from Europe. Here Sousan and Niloo were her good friends she was 17 and popular. They had become secular despite the mothers fear of the evil eye.
August 1953 the democratically elected PM Mossadegh is deposed and the Shahs Pahlavi family took over. The British and American were behind this coup to do with the oil. Her uncle had started working for the oil company.
The met boys from the Alborz High School. She met Mehrdad and her mother liked the idea as he came from a "established" family. Her uncle encouraged her to get an education.
Homa managed to get transferred to the school that Ellie is in as she had good grades. Now Ellies 2 worlds are colliding. Ellie now hears that Homa's father was arrested after the coup of 1953. Ellie was jealous that Homa had a father. Homa's mother started working by sewing dresses for rich women. Homa was working on weekends at the restaurant that her father had worked at.
All inheritance laws skew in the men's favor. At a party Merhdad came in and nothing else mattered. The dance to the music of Neil Sadaka. There were also Christians perhaps Armenians at her school
Niloo was Jewish and excited about a boy she met at synagogue. University was her ticket to a relationship with Merhdad who insisted on marrying a woman with a degree. Homa said I am not getting married and don't need a spouse.
The went for a hike on the Alborz mountains, from where you could get a view of the rooftops of Teheran. Village women in the field wore trousers under their tunics. Here they met at a restaurant and Homa looked into Merhdad eyes and told Ellie he has a good character marry him. They met Abdol who like Homa and also wanted to study law.
Ellie studied languages at Tehran University and became a teacher and translator. The Shah was criticized for taking Iran away from Persian culture and he stifled critics with his SAVAK that imprisoned them. Ellie and Merhdad postponed getting married till they could get a place of their own so as not to have to live with his parents.
Massoud felt that the King was good for them and the country. Abdol had asked Homa to marry him, he asked a second time after his mother died.
1963 White Revolution, under the Shah an aggressive modernization program and continued until 1979. , It took away influence of the land owning classes altered rural economies, and led to rapid urbanization and Westernization. It led to riots supporting Khomeini who was against the reforms.
Ellie's mother kept saying to her "Did it occur to you that Homa wants what you have. Then she though she saw Homa flirting with Merhdad.
Sousan husband the Colonel found her and she told him she was studying English and not French as English is the future. Niloo was studying business administration at Bazagani University. In the talk about women advancing careers she let slip that Homa was the organizer of the demonstration. The Next day Homa was arrested. Sousan told her that her husband the colonel is a SAVAK agent. With the way of divorce laws and child custody laws no women has a chance. She never saw Sousan again but did come to Niloos house to light on the sabbath.
Homa in jail would not tell who helped her translate pamphlets and who else were in the communist party and so she was purposely raped and let out of jail 6 month pregnant. A year after her arrest Ellie visits her she has a baby daughter Behar and she married Abdol who was not able to continue university but became a mechanic. I once fought for human rights I now fight to stay afloat. Homa send Ellie away and does not want to see her again. She said Merdad befriended Abdol as his superiority made Merhdad feel good. A raped women is soiled and spoilt goods but Abdol was prepared to give her shelter, no matter what.
Ellie and Merhdad felt they wanted 5 children but she had very bloody miscarriages and he accepted this.
1977 Merhdad was offered a research position at the Rockefeller University. They knew about America as there were lots of American Companies working in Teheran. They flew to NY on Pan Am. Merhdad works with the brightest scientist some from Germany , China , Brazil. he has a post doctoral position.
Abdol got promoted to manage the garage and Homa could not return to University but studied and got a teaching certificate. As a teacher she was told never to say anything against the Shah.
1977 Jimmy Carter visits Teheran and raises a glass of Champaign with the Shah that Iran is" an island of stability ." However friendships rupture beyond beleif.
Homa tell Behar that a woman should have her own source of income. Abdol goes to a wedding of his relatives in Abadan in the Khuzestan Province. On the phone he tell her he is going with his cousin to the cinema that night. The cinema was set alight by fundamentalists' Shahs opponents, as it was a thing of western values and hundreds are killed.
Ellie meets the spouses of the scientist and has friends and then get a job at the cosmetics counter in Bloomingdales.
1979 Jan they are jubilant that the Shah has left Iran and died in 1980 of cancer in Egypt. February the Ayatollah arrives on an Air France plane. The communists had made an alliance with the fundamentalists to topple the Shah. The Shah's political prisoner are freed. Homa's father is freed. Women can go to work but must wear the veil. Women can no longer be judges. In the street because she has no veil Behar is called a prostitute and Homa beats the man up. Niloo and other Jews are going to Israel, Sousan and her children have landed in LA but the colonel never got out and with many of the Shahs forces is executed. Women have t wear the hijab and morality police are set up. Homa starts an organization for women's rights.
1979 Nov US embassy, in Teheran hostages taken and kept for 444 day. Released the day Reagan was inorgarated as 40th US in president 1981 Jan. As Iranians in the US they were made to feel uncomfortable.
1980 Sadam Hussein invades Iran, First Gulf War ended in 1988. Homa get Ellies address from her mother. Ellies mother visits NY and in conversation tells Ellie that her father was a philanderer and cheated on her and hit his wife. Ellie had believed her father was a paragon of duty.
1982 Behar arrived in NY 13 years after Ellie had visited Homa the last time. "the new regime can't last much longer." There is an irony that more girls go to university now. In NY Behar is enrolled into high school so she can go to collage. Ellie shared stories of her childhood with Homa to Behar.
Behar's best friend was Madison who Ellie knew would be trouble. Behar had studied hard and got into Queen Collage. She has to keep studying to be able to renew her visa.
Homa visited NY with a short term visa and Ellie took her around the city. She wanted to see the NY Public Library which has 2 lions at the entrance that were named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox the founders of the library. Later during the depression the mayor named the Patience and Fortitude. Homa said that after she got out of prison it was books she read and read that saved her from depression. They also went to the Pierpont Morgan Library started by the financier and railway magnet. These places of substance are covered with Persian rugs made by the hands of women.
After the graduation party Behar goes to the party at Madison's house where she get stoned with booze and drugs she was naïve to what she was given. She is saved by them calling a ambulance and treated in hospital for alcoholic poisonings. At the hospital they ask who is the mother and Ellie steps in and says I am the legal guardian.
2022 Battle Green is the place where the 1775 revolution started that led to the war and the revolution. Tourist that come to Lexington Massachusetts come to the Persian Restaurant. Here Leily with her mother Behar and father Steven Murphy celebrate her 18th birthday. The Irish also experienced their share of revolutions and fighting oppressions.
Homa wanted to apply for a residence visa for America but when she got back to Teheran was arrested and spent 4 more years in jail and denied exit from Iran. Merhdad got a position in the Northeastern University. Behar got a degree in Public health and started working in hospital administration of Mass General.
Ellie always missed Homa and thought and regretted all the years that they could have been together.
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Things I've Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi 2008 314 pg 16/4/2025
by the author of Reading Lolita in Teheran 2003
In Iranian culture you never discuss private family matter, yet this is airing the laundry of her parents in public. There are stories of the times between the birth of her grandmother at the beginning of the 20C and her daughter at the end of the 20C in which time 2 revolution shaped Iran. Initially there were no schools for girls only the rich got tutors for them.
1905 to 1911 the Constitutional Revolution was the first of its kind in the Middle East and Persian women made great progress from then. In 1936 Reza Shah Pahlavi banned traditional clothing for men but this wa rescinded in 1941. However by the 1950s and 60s women were in all walks of life MPs and government ministers. These laws were repealed in 1979 Islamic Revolution.
1794 to 1925 the Qajar dynasty but this was replaced by the Pahlavis 1925 to 1979.
1941 The allies namely Britain and Russia occupied the country and forced Reza Shah to abdicate be exiled to Johannesburg. He was succeeded by his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Her father constantly struggled on what it was to be Iranian while her mother had no problem, while Azar avoided this friction by reading fiction. She read Ferdowsi 940 to 1025 He wrote about from creation till the Arab conquest and defeat of the Persian Empire and Zororastrians replaced by Islam. The prophet Omar ordered all books in Persia to be burned as all the people needed was the Koran. Much of Iranian nationalism was based on anti Arabism.
Teheran Naderi Street the shopkeepers were Armenian who were forcibly removed to there in the 16C there were also Azeris. There were Jews as well as some from Russia after the revolution and even Poland who came with WW2. Zororastrians and Bahai's were also treated as unclean. Not all the bad can be blamed on the Islamic republic which brought this all into the open.
Her father advanced in the civil service from head of the Finance dept, to office of planning. Later he became the Mayor of Teheran and in 1963 for 4 years he was in Jail. She mentions sexual deprivation in Iran, especially amongst young men that ultimately leads to pedophilia.
Estefan was the capital of the Safavids and Shah Abbas 1587 to 1629 build magnificent monument mosques, bridges and leafy avenues. The Safavids in the 16C changed Iran's official religion from Sunny to Shia. In the 18C the Qegar dynasty founder under Agha Mohammed Kahn 1789 to 1797 who made Teheran his capital but only in the 20C under the Pahlavi's did it develop.
Don't let strangers touch you. But her experience was that it was people close to the family including the chauffer , music teacher, the photographer and the pious man of God that her parents trusted, but she later heard that the pious man was worse with boys. Most lunacies are rooted in sexual deprivation. Marrying 9 year old's was once accepted.
1921 there was movement towards Westernization and women's emancipation. In her grandmother days there were no schools and girls were only educated in rich families by tutors, boys were taught by low ranking clerics in maktabs one rooms small classes of all ages.
Women were deprived of so much that in women's literature Jane Austen, Emily Bronte that they became subversive in literature. She arrived to school Lancashire, England with her mother for the first 3 months and they had a good relationship. She had high points in English but found the teachers and even the bus conductor incomprehensible.
1953 Mossadegh the PM was one of the most popular political figures but the British instigated a coup against him to strengthen the Shah.
1963 Ayatolla Khomeini linked the mandatory unveiling of women with foreign domination of the Shahs lifestyle. The Shah nightclub lifestyle and keeping of dogs as house pets(unclean in Islam) They railed against films , music and the idea of individual rights. The White Revolution of modernizing ideas, redistribution of land to peasants and allowing women the vote and to enter parliament. Established literary corps for remote villages. This gained the support of President Kennedy. There were violent protests by the clerics in the religious city of Qom and these in tern resulted in the seminars being closed. Don't ever trust the clerics their livelihood depend on deceit.
After 4 years in jail her father was exonerated , he considered them his 4 most productive years. He kept a diary, read many books, learned new languages and painted, pondered history and shed 20 pounds. Azar visited him every week.
1971She was studying in the US and saw on TV the lavish 2500 celebration in Persepolis which Alexander has set on fire with his 33BC conquest of Persia. This celebration included all the crowned royalty of the world and was a sumptuous extravaganza in a tented city with food imported from France. The Shah decided to set the date not from the flight from Mecca to Medina but from Cyrus's establishment of the Persian empire.
1975 the Shah did away with the 2 party system in parliament and this was very unpopular.
Supported by secular forces Khomeini published his book calling for a theocratic state ruled by a represented of God. That women's suffrage was a form of prostitution.
The Shah visited the White House and was in the garden next to Carter, tear gas wafted in from the street demonstrations. Nobody knew the Shah was suffering from cancer at the time.
1978 cinema Rex in Abidjan was set on fire and 400 died as a result this was during Ramadan and the Shah denied involvement in it. later it emerged that this was done by the religious opposition.
Khomeini was expelled from Iraq to improve relations with the Shah but he now went from obscurity to the world stage. You see a picture of him sitting under an apple tree in Neauphe-le-Chateau with Iranian secularists, nationalist and radicals all made a pilgrimage to him. Once the Shah could not get support of the Americans under Jimmy Carter he did not want to use more violence to crack down on the protests
1979 Jan 16 the Shah left Iran but appointed the liberal Shahpoor Bakhtiar an ally of Mossadegh as PM. Some thought that the public would gather behind Bakhtiar.
1979 Feb 1st Khomeini made a triumphant return.
1980 to 1988 Iran Iraq War. This Khomeini considered a blessing. Now the country could be united and any dissent would be crushed. Each side lost about 500,000 with Iran loosing more than Iraq.
Classical Persian writing says a lot on adultery which is not a Western construct but covered thoughrily in Anna Karenina and Madam Bovary.
1981 Universities were closed down. Public life had been closed down or banned, so people took to having friends over and making their homes into restaurants. bars, movie houses , concert halls. There were raids to convicted alcohol banned books and videos. In 1986 Azar's brother and family left for England leaving her with the obligation of their mother. They hear reports of the ritual stoning of men and women in public and public hangings. Islamic vigilantes burned down a bookshop. There is a list of Iranians assassinated abroad.
Her husband was stopped by the police and accused of drinking and spent the night in a cell with crimanals till a policeman took him out he paid a bribe and was released.
She criticized enlighten men saying that women should not make a issue of the hijab, or taking advantage and going in for polygamy or divorcing their wives without their consent. Also the concept that women who get an education become informed start to think and become shameless. She would write a book called Shameless Women.
They were sorry to leave their parents but their parents understood that it was better for them to leave they went to the USA where she was able to work in Academia in English literature.
In the end she realized that her mother had been successful in that she had wanted to be a doctor and never had the chance but her daughter Azar had succeeded as a women and Azar had a daughter that became a doctor.
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