… in Tehran, commenting on events in Iran:
“Iranian people took up opposition and used an open space to express what they want. Their vote was not just against [incumbent President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad but [against] what he stood for.
… But the most amazing thing is just that so many people came out into the streets to demonstrate and protest.
And for me personally, the most important thing was that [Mir Hossein] Mousavi had taken up reformist slogans which he had previously fought against. I was there at the beginning and I was thrown out of the university that Mousavi shut down as part of the Cultural Revolution.”
[Interviewer]: You’ve talked about and write about the importance of literature and culture in the fight for human rights and liberty in Iran and around the world. But is art, culture, literature ever going to be more powerful than religion? Is it enough to start a revolution?
“If you look at it in the long term – yes it is. [I’ll] never forget when Paul Ricoeur, the philosopher, came to speak in Iran. He was an eighty-year-old but was treated like [the American rock star] Bon Jovi.
At one point the minister for Islamic Guidance said to him: “People like us [politicians] will vanish but you people will endure.” That will always remain with me. We don’t remember the king who ruled in the time of [14th century Persian poet] Hafiz, we remember Hafiz.
… I think Iranian women have become canaries of the mind. [The interview’s translator makes a mistake here. It’s canaries in the mine. But UD‘s enchanted by canaries of the mind.] If you want to gauge a society and how free it is, you go to its women.”