Women. Life. Freedom. Iran vigil
If you’ve joined the Chaplaincy mailing list recently, this is an occasional extra mailing called Companionship which we send out, which tends to focus on a particular topic.
This one is to highlight the rally and vigil which is happening today for Iran. It will be at 5 pm on Lower College Lawn to show our community’s support for women, students and protestors facing violence and oppression in Iran. Iranian students and staff will speak at the event – further details here: https://events.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/women-life-freedom/
My wife and I spent three weeks in Iran in 2009, travelling independently. We saw the most beautiful mosques in Isfahan, tombs of poets set in gardens in Shiraz, a maze of ancient streets in Yazd, and nearly uncrossable traffic in Tehran. In many years of travelling we have never been to a place with more hospitable people. We met an Iranian woman on the plane over who invited us to her homecoming party in Isfahan where we joined her family for a delicious lunch including an unforgettable tahchin (chicken baked with saffron rice and barberries). We sat next to a Jewish woman on a park bench in Isfahan who told us about her community. In every garden we visited from Kashan to Shiraz, people would come up to speak to us, often students or schoolchildren, to share their love for the poet Hafez, or to invite us to join their picnic. We encountered in mosques people committed to their Muslim life but curious and open to hearing of my Christian path. We were invited to dinner with a guide’s friends where we saw video footage of an illegal heavy metal gig. It wasn’t my music – but I respected their desire to listen to it. We were conscious of the high levels of education for men and women, and the immense frustration many felt that they needed to go abroad (if emigration was possible) to fulfil their talents. We sensed a deep love throughout the country for Iranian culture, language, food, history and art, alongside a lament for the then limitations. And, from a distance now, I sense that these restrictions – in dress, incomes, freedoms and opportunity – have been even further curtailed.
In the Chaplaincy we have supported over the years Iranian students badly affected by currency devaluations, alongside students of the Baha’í faith who have been oppressed – as have people of other faiths and philosophies of life. We stand with the people of Iran and hope that the call of women – life – freedom will be heard across our world.
With friends in Iran, 2009:
Yours,
Donald.
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain