I told him about Rimsha Masih, the young Christian girl arrested in Pakistan because a mullah put some torn pages of the Quran in her papers. “She has now been released on bail but is still under police protection because people fear that the fanatics may kill her,” I said.
“Yes, I know the case,” said Foroud, “but what’s your point.”
“Incidents like this make me feel as if we wasted all those years, struggling for an ideal which never existed,” I said. “I guess it is impossible to take the beast out of man.”
“Do you know Ahmade Shamlu?” asked Foroud.
“The 20th century Iranian poet? Yes, I do,” I said.
“He was more disappointed than you are when he returned to Iran after the revolution,” said Foroud.
Shamlu was a major force in the intellectual movement opposed to the former Shah of Iran. In 1976, he left his country in protest against censorship and the suffocation.
But the Islamic government also considered him a traitor because of his liberal views. His popularity prevented them from arresting him, but the clerics didn’t allow publication of his works for many years.
“Remember the poem I recited for you, “They smell my breath to make sure I have not said I love you, Nazneen?” asked Foroud.
I told him I did and asked him why religious groups, whether in the government or in opposition, fear love, beauty and women.
“Above all, they fear women,” said Foroud. “They fear women because women empower men, they cause them to think and resist.”