I can still hear the words of Saeed Soltanpour (the executed Iranian poet) who once famously ‎asked: What has happened to my country?‎

At the time, he had just been released from the shah’s prison, and was reading out loud a ‎forbidden poem. The crowd that filled the garden praised him repeatedly. Other poets flanked ‎him with impatience.‎

Today, those faces, and those times, are gone. When the sheikh despots took over the country, ‎they cut Saeed’s throat. They also put other poets either behind local bars, or sent them abroad ‎into forced exile. ‎

But if Saeed had been alive, how would he have recited his poem today, to fit the torn apart ‎country into his form and lyrics, in a country where one shah has been replaced with thousands ‎of shahs?‎

More than thirty years have passed since those despotic days but nothing has changed in its ‎nature. Everything has only multiplied. And like a shattered reflecting mirror, its thousand pieces ‎now display the Iranian dictatorship. ‎

Today, in this wounded motherland, blood continues to drop from this craving-for-freedom ‎vessel. The religious sickle of despotism which for the first time wears the uniform of the shah, ‎is relentlessly in action. It kills and flees. Perhaps the dead are lucky, and those who are alive are ‎pitiable. Those who manage to flee and come to freedom, see themselves in the claws of a ‎tyranny that extends across horizons and borders.‎

There was a time when Ali Akbar Dehkhoda strayed the streets of Paris and took the steps that ‎Sadegh Hedayat and GholamHossein Saedi would take later; There was a time when the first ‎generation of Iranian intellectuals published their newspaper Ghanoon (law) in Istanbul, Baku ‎and Cairo and raised the banner of freedom for other Iranians. Today, we live in a different time. ‎In Iran’s history - with a few exceptions - I and many like me struck our daggers at our own kind ‎rather than at the despots. Of course today we are an organized people and modern. We eat up ‎the heart of the enemy with the knife of democracy and pour it down with the wine of human ‎rights, cleaning up our hands with the napkin of freedom. But there have not been many people ‎who have gone through this path by being fair, even with their enemies, and instead of resorting ‎to character assassinations, scrutinized their ideas, thoughts, and writings, honestly.‎

The majority of intellectuals and elite have gone the wrong way. Yes, the words we hear today ‎are different from those of the predecessors, but the nature of the acts is the same. The culture of ‎dictatorship has turned everybody into a shah. And not only have individuals become victims to ‎this, but even the media has joined the ranks. ‎

Whether we like it or not, Voice of America (metaphorically and materially) is the voice that ‎reaches Iran the loudest. One can dislike the message and ask: Where are all those other voices ‎scattered across the globe, which you have not utilized? One can regret that this is only the voice ‎of a part of Iran and not all of it, and that it will not be the voice of the whole nation until ‎everybody says it. One can even claim that this view and assumption is not the view of all the ‎youth in the country today.‎

One can of course continue criticizing, but the slogan “Death to Voice of America” will ‎eventually have the same fate as the slogan “Death to America” has had. ‎

 

And while the spirit of Iranian dictatorship prevails across the world, let’s not forget to Saeed’s ‎voice, ponder a bit, and ask ourselves:‎

What has happened to my country?‎