Shirin Ebadi’s “Golden Cage”

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(Photo: Shahram Sharif/Kaveh)

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi about her new memoir, The Golden Cage.
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Lisa Mullins: Revolutionaries in the Middle East might take cautionary guidance from the experience of Iran.  The Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979.  But what followed had little to do with the kind of freedom today’s protestors in the region are calling for. Nobel Peace Prizer winner, Shirin Ebadi, has written a memoir about three brothers that she knew when she was growing up in Iran.  Her book is called The Golden Cage.  The three brother subscribed to different ideologies and followed different paths.  And as Ebadi told us through an interpreter, none ended well.

Shirin Ebadi: [Speaking Arabic] Unfortunately, this is not the story of only one family.  This happened to many families in Iran.  Families fell apart and people went after different ideologies.

Mullins: I want you tell us about the three brothers, Abbas first, this is the oldest brother.  He was loyal to the Shah.  He was in fact a general in the army.  He was very successful.  But he ended up in exile in Los Angeles.

Ebadi: [Speaking Arabic] What happened to Abbas was Abbas was one of the high-ranking Iranian army officers.  He had a good life.  He was a very honest man.  He thought that when the revolution occurred that the Shah had been betrayed, and the U.S. had to be blamed for the betrayal.  The reason was that the U.S. ambassador in Iran had advised the Shah to leave.  And since Iran had common borders with the USSR at the time, that Iran had actually been sacrificed in the cold war.

Mullins: And how about Javad, the middle brother.  He was a revolutionary himself.  He joined the communist party and this made him an enemy of the Islamic Republic.  He was persecuted by the Khomeini regime, ended up in jail.  What is the larger story there?

Ebadi: [Speaking Arabic]  Javad was drawn to a communist party at his youth and he became the cultural attache of that party.  Javad and many other communists were tried in a mock trial that didn’t take more than two or three minutes.  They were all convicted and their punishment was execution.  They were all buried in a desert area, which is close to Tehran.  It’s called Havairan. There are no tombstones or even a list of their names.  However, every year the families and friends of these people go to visit them. The families usually bring flowers to their grave.  However, every time that people go to visit the mass graves there are conflicts between the past Iran[? 2:44], who are the Revolutionary Guards, and the people.  And a number of people get injured in the conflicts.

Mullins: This brings us to the story of the youngest brother, Ali, who was the one who was most aligned with the Islamic revolution because he was a fanatical follower of the Ayatollah Khomeini.  He eventually became disillusioned.  He was a commander in the Iranian army.  He ended up in exile in Paris after the disillusionment, and was killed by the Iranian secret service.  Why was he killed?

Ebadi: [Speaking Arabic] Ali was one of the younger people who joined the revolution with a lot of love and aspiration.  But then later he found out what the revolutionary government was practicing was against his aspirations.  Therefore, he separated from the government and did not want to work with them anymore.  And Ali was high-ranking in the security department of the government.  And since he wasn’t favorable to the government to have him out of Iran with all of the information that he had, he was killed later on.

Mullins: You write in this book, which is mostly about these three brothers, but you write a little bit about yourself and how you marched through the streets back in 1978.  You were shouting independence, liberty, the Islamic Republic.  You write, ‘At the time I really believed that an Islamic Republic would bring us independence and liberty.’  Now, I wonder, Dr. Ebadi, after going through the experience of revolution and hope, and then the disappointment with what Iran became through the decades, what it’s like for you right now watching the events of the Arab spring unfold this year?

Ebadi: [Speaking Arabic] Yes, at the beginning of the revolution I supported the revolution as well.  However, after very short period of time I determined that the government was not honest in what they said.  And that’s why I became a critic of the government. And in reality what I concluded was that with all the energy we put in we drove one dictator out and we replaced that dictator with a religious dictatorship.  This is what I want to point out to all Islamic countries, to make sure that they do not replace their dictators with another dictator.

Mullins: What keeps that from happening?  I mean revolutions, the excitement of revolutions, the openness of revolutions don’t always mirror the governments that follow revolutions.

Ebadi: [Speaking Arabic] You’re right.  The excitement can catch you.  Also, the aspirations of the people towards revolution may stop them from seeing what is happening in reality. What I suggest is that the revolutionaries pay more attention to wisdom, and as much as they can, stop blood shedding because fighting and killing people does not take you anywhere.  It has to be in the form of reforms.

Mullins: Do you see the Arab spring gaining any ground in Iran?

Ebadi: [Speaking Arabic] During the era of communication what happens in one country impacts other countries.  I think that what happens in Iran impacts other Islamic countries and vice versa.  And this is why I think that Iran is actually like a fire under the ashes, and any minute the flames can take up.

Mullins: Dr. Shirin Ebadi, very nice to talk to you again, thank you.

Shirin Ebadi: You’re welcome.

Mullins: Shirin Ebadi’s book is called The Golden Cage.  This is PRI, Public Radio International.

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