Iran Stories

My name is Leila. I'm a lesbian from Iran. I migrated to Britain a few years ago. I was a teacher in my country and the story that follows happened in the summer of 1986 when I was in my twenties. In order to make my story understandable for a foreign reader, I should explain the situation of those years. Shortly after the 1979 revolution, a theocratic dictatorship began which harshly oppressed the women in Iran. In 1980,...

"The mountains are my friends." (an Iraqi-Kurdish saying) Up until the point of writing this journal, I would have characterized my life as not being particularly interesting, unless you happened to be in the computer programming profession like me. Don’t get me wrong. I have no complaints about my life. It is just that I have had a certain degree of difficulty in persuading other people that what I do is interesting. I w...

"Hashem Shaabani"(Raanana, February 11, 2016) I think I was six years oldWhen I held my father's hand in the sukAnd saw my first hanging,God is great.So was the heat of the sunThe dust and the gnats,Praised be He.I asked my dadWhy that man was dancing in the air,God is great.First he shushed meThen he saidThe man had waged a war against God,Praised be He.I asked my fatherWhat kind of man would do that,God is great.He whis...