Culture calls, Milan and Italy respond. Even before the start (at 20.30) of the main event, many have decided to participate in the solidarity marathon Woman Life Freedom in favor of Iranian women and the Iranian people, promoted by Franco Parenti Theatrewhich is hosting the initiative, with Republic e Linkiesta on the occasion of World Human Rights Day.
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Many intellectuals, artists and representatives of the Iranian community in Milan who have decided to share their reflections, from the hosts, Andree Ruth Shammah, Maurice Molinari e Christian Roccaa Massimo Recalcati, Antonio Scurati, Stefano Boeria Luca Guadagnino with the reading of an appeal by the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. And then Ornella Vanoni, Concita De Gregorio e Azar Nafis, the author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran”.
The Iranian writer herself underlines a fundamental aspect of the umpteenth revolution underway in Iran, the one that could truly change history. “Women have discovered their power and are using it against the regime on the streets of Tehran. They have found that when they take to the streets of Tehran and take off their hijab they are making a statement. They are saying to the regime, ‘You don’t own me . You can’t define me. I’m a woman in my own way’. That’s why we hope for this revolt”, says Nafisi in a video message, which also evokes a personal memory. When the writer left Iran to go to the United States in 1997, her mother kept repeating to her: “Tell it to the West. Tell us how much they are repressing us in Iran. Talk about the rights we have lost”, about discrimination and violence that comes from afar. “Iran should be treated as South Africa has been treated by the rest of the world because what is happening in Iran is gender apartheid. The segregation that Iranian women are fighting is very similar to the segregation that black people in South Africa they lived,” concludes the writer.
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A gender apartheid that arises, as he points out Shammah, from the fear that women still have. “This mobilization serves not only to make the Iranian people heard. It was time for culture to make its voice heard. The West must no longer look the other way, whether it is Iranian women, child brides or extremisms which led, for example, to the attack on Salman Rushdie” declares the director, who did not want politicians on stage, except for the institutional presence of the mayor of Milan Beppe Sala.
In this context, of struggles for individual freedoms, does Recalcati think of an imagined scene – experienced? – from Elena Ferrante, that of the “pierced tongue”: the older brother of a boy who at school had to recognize Lila’s intellectual superiority over him tries to pierce her tongue with a pin, to re-establish the “primacy” of men over women. “The repression of women promoted by the patriarchal-religious regime of the ayatollahs has always been exercised on the assumption of the ontological and moral minority of women. It is no coincidence that it entrusts the surveillance of women’s bodies to a real and proper medieval-type moral police. Here it is not only sexuality that must be hidden by the veil of repression, but it is freedom itself – of which sexuality is a fundamental expression – that is constantly persecuted” Recalcati wrote on Republic.
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But what can we do, besides mobilizing? Scurati proposes to continue fighting for Western values: equality, freedom, democracy. “The history of democracy is the struggle for democracy, the history of freedom is the struggle for freedom and we must not stop fighting” says the writer. Gregory’s, as he explains in his video message, would like a less tepid left towards the ongoing Iranian revolution. “The left is a bit reluctant to join this fight for historical reasons, because Marxists in the late 1970s supported Khomeini’s revolution against the Shah and then participated in the revolution that then brought Khomeini to power in an anti-American vein. Young Iranians are posting videos of their grandmothers taking to the streets because, they say, what is happening today is their fault,” recalled De Gregorio.
And Farhadi, with the words entrusted to They earninvites “all artists, filmmakers, intellectuals, civil rights activists from around the world and from all countries, and anyone who believes in human dignity and freedom, to support the courageous men and women of Iran shooting videos, writing texts or in any other way. For a better tomorrow”.