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The Birth of Our Power

By Kate Millett

We’re honored to reprint this (slightly adapted) excerpt from Kate Millett's Going to Iran (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, New York 1982) -- her inspiring, heartrending and newly relevant account of her time in Tehran witnessing women’s struggles against Islamist misogyny after the fall of the Shah.

Today is expected to be a very big gathering. We have already passed throngs of schoolgirls marching and singing along the way, holding hands or carrying banners proclaiming women’s rights. The sight is beautiful, their hopefulness, their courage. Later we will hear that several were stabbed, and a child, a thirteen-year-old girl in her school middy, was smashed in the mouth with brass knuckles. Which here are called American knuckles.

Since the order to wear chador was officially directed toward ministry employees, women with secretarial jobs in the government, the role of feminists and women demonstrators is to support them. We converge from everywhere toward one idea, the Hall of Justice. Slowly, slowly, winding through the south part of Tehran, penetrating the older section of the city, the place of the poor, a place of terrible stares, of men in the streets who bristle at the sight of women alone and unveiled in a car, neighborhood of bazaar and mosque, thousands of men in the streets and only a few women, all veiled.

Although nothing ever does seem to begin on time, we are still not sure if we are too late as we park. And indeed, being two hours late, we are almost early. The place has not even begun to fill up yet but our Iranian friends are already here. Even a “team” from an American network, the woman with the mike spotting me in some disbelief and dragging me off in a corner with her two-man crew to ask me questions. All the other press is European, but there is very little of it. We could use a great deal more; the place is full of guns. Militia are everywhere, one is surrounded with machine guns. And it is like a trap—the huge main hall surrounded by tier upon tier of onlookers—many of them armed. Shooting fish in a barrel, I realize. Only one gun need go off, only one incident, only one person lose his cool, and we are all massacred. The front section near the door is full of men who have come to revile us, the militia holding them back, but not that strenuously and one wonders for how long.

Steadily now, women trooping in, filling the entire floor of this vast building, groups, filing in cheered, phalanx after phalanx; here now is Tehran University, a great cheer for them. Signs along the wall, along the first tier looking down upon us, proclaiming that these are the women workers of one ministry or another, the nurses of this or that hospital, secretaries of businesses, teachers of schools, and the schools named. We are safer already, the men of the first tier are either with us or outnumbered now by women. It is so crowded that the newcomers go up to the balconies. We are shoulder to shoulder. And the chants roar out, banging from wall to wall, the great stone walls of this curious building, part palace architecture, part penitentiary tier. And guns looking down from the upper tiers, men, more guns on every plinth, staircase, behind us and at all doors. And we roar like no chanting I have ever heard. It makes the skin prickle, it makes one proud. I have never heard women make this much uproar, a fury contained always with cool appreciation of those guns surrounding us. All work must have ceased for the day in the ministry, most of its employees, men and women, look on; the latter coming obediently this morning (lose your job or obey) in chador, but loose now, they too join the numbers looking down on us, until you hardly see any guns above now, perhaps they have come down to stand guard over the demonstrators on the floor, tighter and sharper. Yet each time the chants crescendo, and the guns move forward, we develop a peaceful stance, sit down, are quiet for a moment; it is always just short of violence.

I find myself thinking that men probably could never tread this fine line between great anger and great peacefulness. There will be much congratulations of the militia today for not killing us, absurd when you consider that we are unarmed and peaceful demonstrators, their very weapons upon us are an insult, an imposition utterly unnecessary. Yet how long before a group of men would lose their tempers being herded about this way, ordered, commanded to move here or there or forward, how long before you cuss them? And there would always be one fool who would “mix it up” with one of these nervous young soldiers; an insult, a shot. It is very difficult to abstain, particularly if you also see yourself as a fighter, a wrestler, a gunman. But then of course we don’t. We have never been provided with these fantasies in childhood, and even should we adapt them, reality here and now would disabuse us. It has been a long time since women bore arms in the revolution, and then very few of them. We are another sort of fighter, our courage is in the spirit that got us here against all odds and even danger, attack. One group of men guard us like felons, another, the fanatics, surge against them to reach us and tear us apart, calling insults, invocations of shame and inferiority heaped on the female since childhood. We never came here to hurt anyone. We are after something different and better than arms. Justice. The cry ringing over and over through the perfect acoustics of stone walls, before tier on tier of onlookers: like a theater we are now, not a place of assassination. “In the dawn of Freedom we have no freedom,” the voices surge, time and again. “Azadi, Azadi, Azadi.”

Sophie goes above to shoot film. I am in the sea of women, we are packed so tight it is hard to stand, still harder to sit down when the speakers begin. And yet claustrophobia never comes. Nor the fear of being lost here, not even the fear of being shot; the chants, the surge of upraised arms, the power of the crowd sustains me entirely. They are women, how safe one feels with women, that many women about one, how odd that one never fears physical harm from women, only from men, and there are now so many women we could overpower anyone, anything, the entire government—or so it feels. The Ayatollah clinging in a ubiquitous photo to the wall, and his minions, the tough young men with guns, behind them the robes of clergy, bureaucrats, the laws, the lies, the edicts—we are a greater force. Greater than I have ever felt in America in our demonstrations. Even the mammoth demos of the peace movement, we are a wild force with unknown power, fresh tapped, springing, yet careful, controlled for all its passion. And the chants are passion itself. Azadi, Azadi, Azadi.

Azadi, the easy one, the word for freedom repeated three times, tape-recording the rest, adding translations as someone tosses them at me. All of us standing up to chant for one very hard-hitting speech, sitting down again, almost delirious with the power of our voices, bringing down the temple of justice with the rhythm of Samson, the pillars vibrate to our force, the glory of us this strong, united, unmovable. We have occupied the place.

Sophie joins me again, the movie camera high over her head, our fear of its being broken; its weight by now is great. And finally out of film. Militia helped her through the crowds, she says, probably thought she was a reporter. We de-escalate to still film, little cameras, both of us shooting. A light floods the speakers, some Italians shooting sixteen-millimeter film with a big movie camera, sound sync. We envy them a second, I remember the Eclair we had we had to leave at home for lack of crew to handle and carry; all the privileged opportunity we have here, our closeness to the principals—if only. There is but one roll of black-and-white movie stock left in our knapsack, today’s ration, we’ll save it for later. Meanwhile we have lots of thirty-five millimeter and each a still camera to shoot with, shooting like maniacs, loading for each other, Sophie often loading for both of us since I take longer; but loading and shooting continuously, the frenzy of the chants making us high, the fierceness, the valor of the women shouting down Islamic prejudice, the mullahs’ repression. Beginning the revolution again. This is how it must have been during the uprising, the fury, the fearlessness. And the guns surrounding us, an army undecided, never protective but at this moment neutral or almost, their own notions of what we are put aside, yet the finger still holds the trigger.

The light the Italian filmmakers carry has appeared at another portion of the room now, silhouetting a soldier standing on a column by a staircase, women in a sea below him, women thronging the tier above him. And he stands there like a bully and a fool yet even, one is sure in his case, proud of himself, superior to all the numbers about him by virtue of his self-importance and his gun, though probably the first makes him far more secure than the latter might guarantee against such numbers. The rule of men over women that he declares with his stance and his posture is as old as a spear, as a swagger, as a headman. He is having his picture taken and instead of feeling silly or an oaf, he is posturing absurdly. The light is on him, towering over the masses of women and now illuminated, the arc light, light grace or irony, a comment; I see it through his shadow on the wall behind him, the huge light and the monstrous shadow, bigger than he is, big as the media, big as movies, big as fantasy, the shadow of a gunman. I want this photograph. And I take his picture.

Now the militia have decided to evacuate us; our speeches are over, but the chants continue. The doors are locked, those right behind us, for example; if they were opened, we could disperse in a moment. But no, we will have to exit by the path of their choosing. This exercise of their power and guns. It will cause us to surge in line some thirty movements through narrow corridors and tight places, whereas the doors right at hand would admit us at once to the street, the cool air of freedom—but no, they have guns, we must do as they say, they must show us their power, must cow us, must order us, must be authority. Authoritarian. The stance, the pose, the gesture moving us along, the finger on the trigger and the gun pointing.

We continue to photograph them with the little gun of art, shooting their pleased vanity, putting them into an agreeable mood. They are reclaiming their building for men, for male government which employs women only in secretarial capacities (and in the Komiteh not even in that capacity; women circulate jokes about the unused typewriters in the Komiteh, no man has ever learned to use them), and we, using still another copying device, reclaim the reclaimers, their faces and stances, their humorless self-importance: the self-absorption of one posed with his rifle against a sunny wall, another trigger-ready as he walks the street when we emerge. They are the new order, smug, young, well-fed, cocky. But the first guard we captured back in the hall was an older type in the Near East, a permanent fixture, a small man with baggy pants who guarded against our just walking out the nearest door and saving ourselves the trouble of meeting the others. He is young, but he is old, looks like a Turkish soldier in the thirties; you could print him in sepia. Behind him is the sleeker, fatter figure of the Komiteh and the official, the bureaucrat, a knot of men in the distance and behind them a corridor leading to the power, offices, ministers, male power in a male state. The new breed of gunmen are loutish but fierce as desert warriors, the old faded little guard still breathes the air of civil service, long waits, bureaucratic tedium. To that obscurantism is now added the fascist force of the new militia outdoors. While within, the vast hall emptying now, the rule of petty tyranny is reasserted. Tier upon tier, Kafka’s ghost floating upward in the hall of state. Past the sad little guys, the sepia types, the small men who guard the entrance and protect it from people, people as small as women, so small as to be hardly visible. And above, high up, the voice of God, direct intercourse with heaven; patriarchal religion ruling here without the usual pretense that it is not, ostentatiously supporting the state, the rule of men everywhere.

It is time for fresh air, for something good to eat. Nelufar knows an excellent chelo kebab. It’s not that nearby, but it’s worth it. How wonderful to escape the mobs of hostile men lying in wait to attack the demonstrators, to go from that peril to the urbanity of going out to lunch. And into this very civilized old restaurant, public, even common, but uncommonly good in its adherence to tradition, to the best ingredients, to the only dish it serves, the lovely fillets of beef over buttered rice, the yoghurt, the sturdy bread, and probably loved by hundreds of thousands for being the real thing—yet still there comes the thundering voice of the Ayatollah. On radio, like some totalitarian big brother interrupting everyone’s meal to pontificate upon the veil—first the edict read by a mullah, then the interpretation of it by a female voice (radio is permitted women, television is not; radio is invisibility), both voices prevaricate, put off, claim and disclaim and then claim again, stuff about dignity, a code word for subjugation here, then the bitter pill—it will be required.

We have gone and shown our power and our anger and our temperate demands for justice. We have been answered. In words of impossible pomposity, rigamarole, repressive authority. There is no escaping. Even in a public restaurant; the diners resentful of the new loudspeakers, then hearing the subject, curious, the indifferent—for this being a public space and a pleasant one, they are nearly all men. Whatever else they feel, they do not show it. We have heard. We know we will demonstrate again tomorrow. This is only the beginning. This is a force roused from millennia of slumber, there is no stopping it now.

From February, 2006

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