This appeared to be the first real test of the limits of freedoms that the regime was willing to tolerate. More than sixty writers and poets were scheduled to speak. The organizers, who came from various political and ideological backgrounds, assured the German director of the institute, Hans Becker, that the gathering was going to be just a cultural event. The Goethe Institute had a history of sponsoring Persian poetry nights, and the organizers had no difficulty persuading Becker that they had no political intentions except asking the government for the formal recognition of their association. The Writers’ Association was formed in 1968 by a diverse group of writers and social critics and commentators.
The main objective of the association was to work within the legal frame of the time and defend the freedoms that were guaranteed in the constitution. When for the first time a group of writers filed for a legal status in June 1968, their application was denied based on a report prepared by SAVAK. The report concluded: “The members of this association are the same people who have been investigated before. Based on our records, they have socialist sympathies and dissident ideas. Therefore, based on section 312, the establishment of such an association with that type of membership is not recommended.” In another document around the same time, SAVAK reiterates that “the Writers’ Association is illegal and its members are disturbed individuals with communist, socialist, and extremist tendencies. They intend to influence the youth with their propaganda and hence we have objected to its legalization.”
In early 1977, with the changes in the political atmosphere, a number of writers and poets began a letter-writing campaign to revive the association. In a letter dated June 12, 1977, more than forty writers signed a petition to Prime Minister Hoveyda, demanding permission to resume their legal activities within the frame of their constitutional rights, establish a club for social gatherings, and publish a journal. The letter to the prime minister was also translated and sent to reputable international literary magazines and journals with the hope that it would generate support among influential writers around the world. Although government policy toward the association did not change, the letter, published in Europe and the United States, brought attention to the plight of the Iranian writers. In a letter addressed to the prime minister, the president of PEN, Richard Howard, condemned the repressive policies of the government and asked the administration to respect the freedom of expression in Iran. The international attention forced the Iranian prime minister, who fancied himself a sophisticated man of culture, to respond in a public forum. In a speech to the Iranian radio and television club, Hoveyda declared: “We all desire to live in a country in which the freedom of expression is respected, so long as it does not undermine the very being of our nation.”
The prime minister’s response emboldened the writers. Two weeks after his televised comments, the association issued a more poignant statement about the situation of the press and publishing in Iran. This time the number of signatories rose from forty to ninety-eight. Considering how closed public display of discontent had been since the 1953 coup, these statements generated a sense of courage and boldness among Iranian intellectuals. As Mahmoud Enayat, one of the most respected Iranian journalists, reminisced, “Although the statements were quite moderate, they left a significant mark. There was nothing radical about what those writers stated. They only protested the prevailing policy of censorship, without even criticizing the regime. But that dispassionate objection, which was unprecedented since 1953, generated passionate reverberation [among Iranian intellectuals].”
In August 1977, after thirteen years of service, the Shah sacked Hoveyda and replaced him with a more technocratic and liberal-minded administration led by Jamshid Amuzegar. The changes coincided with slum dwellers’ riots against forced evictions in neighborhoods in the southern and western edges of Tehran. When the city sent in bulldozers to level their accommodations, they resisted and vandalized police vehicles. Although the riots were effectively suppressed, they further revealed the discord between the Shah’s discourse of Iran as the “Gate of the Great Civilization” and the realities of social and political life in the country.
It was under these circumstances that the Writers’ Association seized the opportunity and stepped out of its immediate milieu to organize ten nights of poetry reading at the Goethe Institute in Tehran. By all accounts, no one anticipated the massive turnout for a few nights of poetry recitation. More than five thousand people, mostly university students, attended the first night on October 11. When the word spread that, despite heavy security presence, the grounds of the institute’s garden were protected by diplomatic immunity, the crowd doubled in size for the second night. Even heavy rain did not discourage the audience from sitting in the open for hours in an anxious environment to hear a few lines of poetry and commentary. For the first four nights, every speaker respected the agreement that they would not politicize the event, instead maintaining its literary theme, albeit with marked political innuendo.
The unspoken were the most important words that the crowd heard during the first nights. That, however, changed on the fifth night. Said Soltanpour, who was just released from prison as part of the new liberalization policy, broke the contract and openly condemned the tyrannical regime. One of the organizers of the event remembers that “all his poems were inspired by guerrilla warfare: bombs, explosions, and hand grenades. People were very receptive and punctuated his reading with their applause. He was agitated and showed no interest in leaving the stage.”
The Israelites and Their Excuses; The Painful Story of Moses
