The Women’s Resistance Orchestra

Women have surrounded Iran’s security apparatus. These women are not armed or guerilla fighters but have challenged the government through peaceful means. They work only through cultural tools: they write scenarios, act in theatrical plays, share their opinions on weblogs, use the Internet to pursue their interests, and do not back down from their demands. The Iranian security system is surrounded by women both inside and outside of the country. Marjan Satrapi makes a movie about the life of Marjaneh, who witnessed the demise of the Shah’s regime and the birth of the Islamic Republic at age 8. She recorded images on her youthful mind and has been screening them for years. It has gotten to a point where the Iranian government has to negotiate with European governments in a bid to prevent the screening of Marjaneh’s movie.

Azar Nafisi is another female writer who challenges the regime’s censorship policies in Reading Lolita in Tehran. The unexpected sales of this book across the globe has amazed many and turned Nafisi into an influential figure. And acting like a harmonious unit of an orchestra, Iranian women are using the arts, music, literature, passive disobedience, and peaceful participation to pursue one goal: the improvement the conditions of women and Iran.

Zeinab Peighambarzadeh refuses to appear in court because she has been summoned over the phone, which is an illegal method of serving a defendant. In response to her civil disobedience, Iran’s security regime keeps her in temporary detention for a longer time and refuses to accept a bail for her. Zeinab lost her mother in childhood, but has forgotten about her pain by immersing herself in the fight for women’s rights. Zeinab, however, continues to speak out after her release. She laments the unsanitary conditions of women’s detention centers. She exposes the fact that as soon as vulnerable women enter these centers they get drowned in an ocean of other social ills.

Haleh Esfandiary is a 67 year-old woman who spent her youth under the Shah’s regime in Iran and has been living in the United States for years. She is arrested on charges of conspiring to instigate a velvet revolution in Iran. Haleh is a capable woman who has used her abilities to soften the United States’ harsh and confrontationist policies towards Iran. She has portrayed a positive image of Iran to Americans. Now Haleh has taken over Iran’s security regime like an unstoppable ivy plant, and they keep on adding to her charges. They do not want to believe that Iranian women, from all ages and social backgrounds, have gathered their determination to change the political fate of their nation: sometimes with their presence, sometimes with their pain, and sometimes by using resources available in other countries. They have all formed a united line. An unwritten mission leads them all.

Even if Iran’s security agencies refrain from negotiating and compromising with the United States, they are bound to negotiate and compromise with Iranian women. Women will not leave them alone. They will aid the large orchestra of resistance with their cultural weapons and without recourse to any military means. This orchestra will not run out of breath. Even injured women will add to its might. Do you know why? Because they view themselves as victims of Iran’s sexist regime.

The case of Iranian women is finally becoming one of interest to the regime. Iranian women have realized that the only way to influence the internal discourse of the government under the ruling hand of the Islamic Republic is to make officials understand that the dissatisfaction of half of the population conflicts with the interests of the regime.