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Among the incidental virtues of tyrannies is the way in which the small stuff of life simply fall away in their shadow, to intensify the value of the big—love, art, pleasure, relationships. Oppression, like magic mushrooms, has been heightening the senses of urban Iranians for years. Inside the homes, in the safety of “drawing rooms,” the clock is always set to that Austenian hour, when art is as sacred as religion and life is largely defined in the symbiotic relationship with it, each informing the other. Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, for instance, was the rage in the days following the 1979 revolution, a piece which perfectly mirrored the national turbulence. Now it seems that Iran’s last three decades have ended by the very same notes they had begun with, just like Orff’s masterpiece.

It was in March 1979, when Iranian women took to the streets for a historic demonstration. Days after the victory of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the Islamic Dress Code, the hijab, to be reinstituted in government offices. The news drew thousands of women to the streets on International Women’s Day to protest the decision. At the time, it was unfathomable to disobey the glorified leader who had returned from exile less than a month earlier and delivered the nation from 2,500 years of monarchy. Yet, the women fathomed it, organized, and staged a dazzling protest.

Iranians love poetry and the metaphors in them. But on March 8, 1979, those demonstratin... >>>